The event takes the form of a citizen lab at the House of European History in Brussels. People of all ages, backgrounds and experiences are welcome! If you want to take part, there’s still time! Register on Eventbrite.
Built with Bits Brussels builds on the New European Bauhaus values to encourage participants to consider how we integrate nature and our experience of it in a city like Brussels, and to use virtual spaces to be creative and experimental when exploring the relationship between function, beauty and sustainability.
Participants might choose to discuss questions like: does Brussels need to reduce pollution by encouraging more cycling, pedestrianising larger areas and creating low-traffic zones? Should we focus on illegal dumping of waste? Or is it more important to make train and metro stations greener and more welcoming? Do you think our public spaces, gothic squares, Art Nouveau buildings and EU administration offices should have a more human and community-centred feel?
The best ideas will form part of a mentoring programme for students of LUCA School of Arts and KU Leuven, in which students will be supported to further develop the ideas and produce a virtual version of a real space.
During the mentoring programme, participants will use virtual reality software and open source material from repositories like Europeana to image a better Brussels. Raising awareness of Europeana as a resource, and demonstrating how to find and reuse digital content will open up creative, cultural and educational inspiration and possibilities to the audience.
About the Festival of the New European Bauhaus
The Festival of the New European Bauhaus will take place from 9 to 12 June 2022 and aims to bring together people from all walks of life to connect around the ideas that can shape our future. A future that is sustainable, inclusive and beautiful. As a hybrid event, core activities will take place in Brussels, with side events across the EU and beyond, everyone is welcome to get involved and join onsite and online.
About Built with Bits
Built with Bits Brussels follows on from the inaugural Built with Bits eight-week mentoring programme, which took place earlier this year and combined collaborative learning experiences and digital cultural content and technologies with the New European Bauhaus values. It was aimed at teachers and educators working with students in secondary education in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, and explored how virtual experiences can be used within education.
In an interview about the programme, course conveners Daniel Llamas and David Mingorance told us that, ‘The programme focused not only on building virtual spaces, but also covered topics including user experience, art direction, design and conceptualisation, use of cultural material, types of licences, mediation, gamification and facilitation, concerning virtual spaces through weekly ‘learning pills’.’ Read interviews with all the winners of the first Built with Bits programme.
We hope to create a positive impact and demonstrate to our audience that digital transformation can lead to a more sustainable, diverse and inclusive space for all. Our participants include students in higher education who may be the next generation of developers, creators, planners and architects. By making sustainable design a core consideration for them now, we hope they will carry that knowledge into their careers from the outset.