What: Hospitality tour
When: Sunday, November 6th from 18:00 – 19:30
Starting point: Under the new city Markethall, Poeljemarkt (beside the City Hall)
Capacity: Unlimited

Description:

This tour of 1,5 hours will make you feel at ease in the city of Ghent. Our guide will not only show you around in the historic center of Ghent but will also tell you about the history of Ghent. You will be given practical information as where you can find taxi’s, where to take the public transport, the restaurants, where to buy the best Belgian chocolates, the conference venue – in short: after this tour you will feel at home in this beautiful city.

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What: De Circusplaneet, Brugse Poort/Malem
When: Monday, November 7th from 9:30 – 11:30
Starting point: Louis Pasteurlaan 2, 9000 Child in the City Venue – Registration hall
Capacity: Max. 30 persons
Description:

The center of the policy of De Circusplaneet is to develop a ‘community Circus’: a social-artistic place with ‘circus’ as a medium, in the middle of a neighbourhood. De Circusplaneet wants to be a place where people work together around circus, where children and youngsters get the chance to develop themselves, where inhabitants of the neighbourhood ‘Brugse Poort’, but also from other places in Ghent, can enter into dialogue with each-other and push, through circus, their own ideas, dreams and limits.

In time they want to reach annually more than 100 children from the neighbourhood on a circus spot where they feel welcome and where they receive intensive support to develop their physical and other talents. That way there will be a response to the great lack of meaningful leisure for children of the neighbourhood. On this field trip you get a view of this organisation and see how Church of Malem was given new function.

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What: House of Kina
When: Monday, November 7th from 9:30 – 11:30
Starting point: Louis Pasteurlaan 2, 9000 Child in the City Venue – Registration hall
Capacity: Max. 25 persons

Description:

The House of Kina is a science museum for children and youth. The museum wants to open up its unique natural history collection digitally and through engaging exhibitions, child-friendly publications, innovative projects and surprising activities for a wide audience to spread knowledge, to arouse amazement and instill respect for nature. During this visit you will get an explanation of the museum staff of The House of Kina. You will find out how they prepare their exhibits in a child-friendly manner and shape (literally). At the same time, there will be is an exhibition on children’s rights being held.

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What: Tour of the New Ghent Neighbourhood
When: Monday, November 7th from 9:30 – 11:30
Starting Point: Louis Pasteurlaan 2, 9000 Child in the City Venue – Registration hall
Capacity: Max. 20 persons

Description:

Ghent has historically developed into a city with very diverse neighbourhoods: in terms of architecture, as well as social and cultural composition. During this walk, we will explore Sint-Pieters-Buiten – an exclusive upper class with a unique collection of interbellum architecture – Steenakker – a typical example of the implementation of Garden Cities in Belgian social housing in the 1930s -, and Nieuw Gent – a typical example of the implementation of modernist architecture in Belgian social housing in the 1960s/70s.  In each of these neighbourhoods we will reflect on the question of how children are able, allowed and willing to be present in public space, and what it means to grow up in each of these neighbourhoods.

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What: Visit to the Brugse Poort District
When: Tuesday, November 8th from 9:45 – 13:00
Starting point: Louis Pasteurlaan 2, 9000 Child in the City Venue – Registration hall
Capacity: Max. 30 persons

Description:

The aim is to get acquainted with an extended and engaging Ghent youth Initiative (called: Young), giving rise to exchanges between the participants. Young will explain how they see the neighbourhood, how their work in Brugse Poort is developed for children and young people (e.g. the toy library), how does their initiatives effect on children and young people. This will also address the issue of Intra European Migrant Youth.

In addition to an informative section of the trip, which visited various locations, the association Young wants to interact/discuss with the participants about various opportunities and limitations of such initiatives within the entire district. Various expertises of participants will also be discussed.

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What: Interactive Workshop in the Dampoort Neighborhood: The Child-friendly Urban Space as a collective learning process
When: Tuesday, November 8 13:30 – 17:30
Starting point: Louis Pasteurlaan 2, 9000 Child in the City Venue – Registration hall
Capacity: Max 30 persons

Description:

After the elections in 2012, the city of Ghent announced its ambition to become the ‘most child friendly city of Belgium’. In the light of this current interest in ‘being a child friendly city’, the multidisciplinary research project KIDS (Children in Urban Spaces) combined insights and methods form both departments of Social work and Landscape Architecture to develop a planning- and reflection tool for child friendly urban spaces.

Instead of trying to define child friendly urban space by a set of universalistic (design) criteria, however, we developed a model to approach child friendly urban space as a collective learning process. This collective learning process focusses on specific urban spaces, and creates forum for different inputs and viewpoints. Here, everyday experiences of the neighbourhood of children, can meet technical knowledge of the planner designer for example. Both are relevant and valuable in the planning and design process, and the dialogue between both creates a different basis for (urban or spatial) change. In this workshop we want to present the perspective of ‘Child friendly Urban Space as a collective learning process’ and discuss the implications of such an approach for planners, designers, social workers and policy makers or even fellow citizens.

The approach of the child friendly urban space as a collective learning process, induces other ways to involve children in the construction of the city and of urban space. In this approach, children appear as fellow urban citizens who are competent in studying their urban environment, confronting different perspectives on urban space and to think about and discuss the future of the city. Inspired by Million and Heinrich (2014) we developed a five step model to research the child friendly city as a collective learning process: (1) see and explore the neighbourhood, (2) exchange and order perspectives, (3) experiment and design future scenarios, (4) select ideas and go public, (5) intervene and change.

We developed a number of participatory methods to achieve this collective learning process in the specific context of an urban renewal project in the disadvantaged Dampoort neighbourhood. The renewal project was initiated by the local government of the city of Ghent, and a private project developer was appointed to make the preparatory studies for this project. In the Dampoort case, we focussed on the first 3 steps in the collective learning process between children from the neighbourhood and the designers of the private project developer.

In the first step we tried to capture the everyday knowledge and experience from children, through exploring aerial maps, drawing and discussing mental maps. We gathered a diversity of meaningful descriptions, experiences and stories about the environment into a socio-spatial database and an experienced neighbourhood map.

In the second step we used the information from the socio-spatial database and the experienced neighbourhood map to exchange perspectives between children, and between them and other groups or stakeholders. This exchange is a crucial part of the collective learning process. The collective learning process that we are striving for, does not limit itself to what children can learn from each other, but intends to equally affect other groups in the city as well as planners, designers and policy makers.

In the third step we let children envision and experiment with future scenarios for places and issues defined in the previous step, together with the designers of the private project developer of the Dampoort area.

To foster a better understanding of the value of this specific approach, we redo parts of the workshops we did with children, with the participants of this workshop. We will use material from the socio-spatial database and the experienced neighbourhood map to explore the neighbourhood, exchange perspectives, and order them into themes to think about the future of the neighbourhood.

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What: The Play Layer Bike Tour
When: Wednesday November 9th from 9:45 – 13:00
Starting point: Louis Pasteurlaan 2, 9000 Child in the City Venue – Registration hall
Capacity: Max. 20 persons

Description:

We cycle through the city and visit public places where children but also adults meet each other. The concept ‘play-layer’ is about formal and informal play- and meeting places in public space, and about the connection between them. During this tour, you will experience the meaning of this concept, as well as how it relates to the idea of child friendliness. Switching between places happens in a comfortable, but also safe and flexible way, very typical to the city of Ghent – by bike.

Several characteristics, objectives, qualities of these places will be discussed: accessibility for all ages, mobility between the places, relation to the environment (shops, schools, child care, roads).

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What: Antwerp Bike Tour
When: Thursday, 9 November 8:45 – 16:00
Starting point: Koningin Astridplein – in front of the Antwerp Central Station
Capacity: Max. 20 persons
Cost: €75 euros per person (travel to Antwerp exclusive)

Do you want to visit child-friendly public spaces in Antwerp? We offer you the opportunity to join a guided tour through the city! It gives you the possibility to watch adventurous playgrounds, play nature, child-friendly streets and places, playing with water, …

The station has luggage lockers: http://www.belgianrail.be/en/stations-and-train/search-a-station/6/antwerpen-centraal.aspx

We will be going around the whole day on rented bikes at an easy pace. Food and drinks will be taken care of for you.

Once you have signed up for the field trip, we will send you more information regarding the travel to Antwerp from Ghent.