Sven De Visscher

Urban public space and the construction of social life: a social-pedagogical perspective

This paper addresses the question of what meaning urban public space has in relation to the process of children’s socialisation. It builds on data from qualitative research into the social-pedagogical meaning of three contrasting neighbourhoods in the city of Ghent. In this research, the neighbourhood was studied as a social and spatial context in which particular socialising practices are constantly constructed and reconstructed through the everyday social actions and practices of people, including children, and hence influence the socialisation processes of children. The research shows that different patterns influence the strategies through which children learn to deal with issues like diversity, otherness and unpredictability in different ways, ranging from excluding this diversity from the everyday lifeworld, through enclosing oneself within one’s own social group, to learning through the everyday confrontation with diversity.

Positioning community art practices in urban cracks

This article addresses the position of community art practices and the role of practitioners in urban cracks. Community art practices raise possibilities for a reconceptualisation of the concept of community and an extension of the concept of art in public space. Urban cracks are conceptualised as spatial, temporal and relational manifestations of changing dynamics in the city, in which different logics and needs conflict. Urban cracks can be seen as tempting urban spaces for adult educators and artists because they have the possibility to challenge the consensus over living together in the city, to fuel collective learning processes and democratic moments and to make urban spaces more ‘public’. Therefore practitioners in community art need to make an investment in reading and analysing the social and spatial context of their work. In this view, community art practices position themselves as a contextualised praxis in the community: not only working in but also working with this context.

Mapping Children’s Presence in the Neighbourhood

Within Gert Biesta’s framework on civic learning, public spaces are considered as the main fields where processes of civic learning can take place. Learning is always ‘in place and time’. Place matters, not only as a spatial background or set of conditions that can facilitate or hinder the learning process, but as a pedagogical process in itself. So in order to facilitate processes of civic learning, which are – as Biesta mentions – always out of order, we first need to understand the pedagogical meaning of the neighbourhood. Taking children’s here-and-now citizenship seriously influences the role of educational research and of the educational researcher. In this chapter, I build up a methodological framework for mapping children’s presence in the neighbourhood. Three questions about children’s fellow citizenship underpin this framework. How are children able to be present in their neighbourhood? How are children allowed to be present in their neighbourhood? And how are children willing to be present in their neighbourhood? An analysis of three neighbourhoods in the city of Ghent (Belgium) with these questions shows that neighbourhoods differ by the opportunities and limitations they offer in relation to civic learning. Children contest and shift the spatial and social boundaries within their neighbourhood sporadically and gradually.

Victim-offender mediation and social work: Focus groups with mediators in Flanders

The role of social work in the restorative justice field remains largely unexplored. This article reports on the findings of focus groups conducted with mediators of juvenile and adult mediation practices in Flanders (Belgium) to gain more insight into how mediators perceive their professional role and to what extent they refer to individual and structural dimensions of social work practice. Implications for future social work involvement and research are made.

Storytelling in Urban Spaces: Exploring Storytelling as a Social Work Intervention in Processes of Urbanisation

This contribution will report on the student project ‘Storytelling in urban spaces’ from University college Ghent. Combining theories of cultural studies and public pedagogy the project explored the semiotic framework ‘readers and writers of the city’. In the optional course ‘creative welfare work’, third year students from the professional bachelor of social work applied this semiotic framework by reading and interrupting urban areas in the center of Ghent. Applying the art of storytelling in processes of urbanization, students scrutinized a more cultural approach to social work that envisions civic learning as a process of wayfinding in society. To explore the values of this cultural approach, this contribution will focus on the link between the general semiotic framework and three student projects. In the concluding remarks, the issues of learning, the city and culture will be discussed to the background of this semiotic framework.

A Cultural Perspective on the City

This chapter introduces a cultural perspective on civic learning in urban as spaces as the general framework of this publication. Western societies tend to think of urban public spaces as key sites for civic and political formation. Based on socio-spatial frameworks that picture civic learning as a positive outcome of the free mingling of strangers in streets and other material structures, urban planning too often reduces urban spaces to people and bricks. From a cultural perspective such binary images of the city are questioned. Referring to culture as an ongoing communicative process between subjects and objects producing (symbolic) meanings, the production of space appears as an ongoing interaction among subjects, symbolic frameworks and dynamic infrastructures. A spatial grammar of urban learning is introduced. Learning the city results from the relations between people, materials and environment. The papers in this publication contribute to an understanding of civic learning as an everyday practice in which subjects, symbolic frameworks and dynamic infrastructures are interconnected. In other words, we are interested in learning as an everyday practice that alludes to a sense of co-ownership, rather than an act of social conformation. To understand civic learning in urban spaces as a cultural process, the different contributions in this publication will focus on the multiple relationships between learning and the city. They will explore different understandings of civic learning in, through and as a result of urban spaces.

Towards a Social Pedagogy of Urban Design

The social and cultural position of children in the city is largely influenced by urban design logics. Urban designers have a social pedagogical role when they design spaces for children in the city. We discuss three clusters of childhood constructions that affect current prescriptive ideas on the perfect child in the perfect city: the private, the autonomous and the public child. The aim is to focus on the particular interrelations between these constructions, pedagogical theories and perspectives on design. In conclusion, we will suggest an approach to design as a collective learning process, in which children are addressed as political subjects and fellow citizens who take part in this collective research and negotiation process with other citizens about possible future scenarios for urban spaces.

Die Sozialpädagogik des Urban Design

Die soziale und kulturelle Lage von Kindern in der Stadt wird weitgehend durch Design Logics beeinflusst. StadtplanerInnen ubernehmen eine sozialpadagogische Rolle bei der Gestaltung von Raumen fur Kinder in der Stadt. Wir diskutieren drei Cluster von Kindheitskonstruktionen, welche die aktuellen normativen Vorstellungen uber das perfekte Kind in der perfekten Stadt betreffen: das private, das eigenstandige und das offentliche Kind. Ziel ist es, sich auf die besonderen Zusammenhange zwischen diesen Konstruktionen, padagogische Theorien und Perspektiven zum Design zu konzentrieren. Abschliesend werden wir einen Ansatz empfehlen, der als kollektiver Lernprozess zu gestalten ist, in dem Kinder als politische MitburgerInnen angesprochen werden, die an diesem gemeinsamen Forschungs- und Verhandlungsprozess mit anderen BurgerInnen uber mogliche Zukunftsszenarien fur urbane Raume teilnehmen.