UrbanDig Project: sport practices and artistic interventions for co-creating urban space

A paper authored by Dikaia Chatziefstathiou, Eirini Iliopoulou and Matina Magkou and published in Sport in Society. Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics. Routledge/ Taylor & Francis Group.

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Abstract:

The paper argues that sports and art can compose a common cultural language that operates as a tool for communities to co-create urban space. In particular, we present the research/artistic/community platform ‘UrbanDig Project’, based in Athens, Greece. The platform employs artistic and sport practices as a means to activate and bridge local communities, collect stories, call for participation and action and finally narrate, re-imagine and even re-construct urban space. We choose to discuss certain moments of the platform’s projects, as fruitful examples of its social impact. Within the conceptual framework of the production of space and the sports-art representations, we discuss how sport and artistic practices can intervene in the urban space, map the communities’ aspirations and lead to collective decision-making as an alternative grassroots participatory-planning method.