Heinrich Boell Foundation Yerevan Office-South Caucasus Region, in cooperation with the NGO NIDID, continues the multimedia memory project “Visualizing Yerevan”. The project was launched in 2021. It aimed at exploring the complex urban memory landscape of the capital of Armenia under active participation of residents and the use of novel visualization methods. Through a variety of methods participants have studied the peculiarities of Yerevan. Based on the materials compiled during the fieldwork they have developed maps including visuals and short auto-anthropological texts. Furthermore, it reflects how the participants experience the city and what they identify as the most pressing urban issues.
The goal of the second phase of the project is to enable participants of the 2021 kick-off workshop to now pursue in a self-responsible manner their own alternative urban itineraries (5-6) which have been ideated in follow-up mentoring sessions in October. To this end, participants who have successfully submitted a project idea are to receive through the project budget small-scale grants which allow them – based on their developed itinerary theme – to conduct background research, compile visual and audio material and identify an itinerary with up to 10 different spatial sites within the urban landscape of Yerevan. The final itineraries will reach a wider audience of Yerevan’s residents and other people interested in questions of urban transformation and the historical legacy of the city. The immediate result of the project are 5-6 alternative city itineraries worked out by the participants under supervision of mentors from NIDID which can be already presented in a final online event to a larger audience and put into practice in the form of public, in-person alternative city tours conducted by the responsible members of the project teams.
The project contributes to the emerging debate on Yerevan’s urban development by focusing on the complex intertwining between its past, present and future, as well as highlighting critical aspects of current urban transformation.
The project will be implemented from July 2022 to December 2022.
