Project
A Participatory Urban Arts
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Amount Funded
99,110 EUROProject Duration
01 Aug 2022 - 31 Jan 2024 -
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Lead organisation
Yayasan Kota Kita
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Kota Kita is a non-profit organisation based in Surakarta (Solo), Indonesia focused on working with citizens to make cities a better place. We envision a model city that is shaped and shared by informed and empowered citizens as we believe that citizens should beat the heart of cities’ decision-making processes. Our interdisciplinary team bridges dialogues between governments and citizens by influencing urban policies, encouraging open access to information, providing civic education, and facilitating the involvement of all citizens — especially the marginalised and excluded. Because without these voices, we will never realise a city shaped and informed by empowered citizens — A City for All.
Our work is driven by four core values: 1) Promoting the Participation of All Citizens; Kota Kita believes that everyone in cities is essential; we all have roles and responsibilities to actively participate in making our communities a better place. We facilitate and promote the involvement of all people, especially the marginalised and excluded, to bring in different perspectives, voices, and strengths, to make cities better places; 2) Empowering Future Urban Leaders; Kota Kita is committed to shaping the next generation of actively engaged urban leaders by promoting learning and developing tools. We do this through research, capacity building, and providing pedagogic experiences within our organisation; 3) Democratising Urban Information And Knowledge; Kota Kita believes that sharing knowledge can help people better understand how to take advantage of opportunities and overcome the challenges that come with rapid urbanisation. We are committed to raising awareness by making urban information available and accessible to promote action and change; and 4) Cultivating Creativity and Innovation in Cities; Kota Kita believes that creativity and innovation will be the driving force to address cities’ challenges today and beyond. We strive for out-of-the-box thinking and narratives that go beyond the status quo as a platform to engage and mobilise citizens into taking action and participating in the development of the cities.
In the past 11 years, Kota Kita has grown from a citizen-led initiative in Solo to become a leading civil society organisation that promotes participatory approaches in more than 25 cities in Indonesia. The organisation’s urban inclusivity initiatives have been recognized by UNESCO in 2017 and received a Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI) Global Urban Mobility Challenge 2019 award. In 2021, Kota Kita received the Best Place maker of the Year award and the Best Place maker in the NGO/Community (Public Space) from Place maker Awards ASEAN 2021 for a participatory placemaking initiative in Ngampon, a neighbourhood in the Indonesian city of Surakarta. We have also been recognized with the Zero Project Award 2021 for our participatory data collection approach to create a disability-inclusive city. We have also led and organised events such as the annual Urban Social Forum – a civil society-led forum that brings together civil societies, practitioners, and students in a collective goal to improve cities.
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Organisation
Kota Kita is a non-profit organisation based in Surakarta (Solo), Indonesia focused on working with citizens to make cities a better place. We envision a model city that is shaped and shared by informed and empowered citizens as we believe that citizens should beat the heart of cities’ decision-making processes. Our interdisciplinary team bridges dialogues between governments and citizens by influencing urban policies, encouraging open access to information, providing civic education, and facilitating the involvement of all citizens — especially the marginalised and excluded. Because without these voices, we will never realise a city shaped and informed by empowered citizens — A City for All.
Our work is driven by four core values: 1) Promoting the Participation of All Citizens; Kota Kita believes that everyone in cities is essential; we all have roles and responsibilities to actively participate in making our communities a better place. We facilitate and promote the involvement of all people, especially the marginalised and excluded, to bring in different perspectives, voices, and strengths, to make cities better places; 2) Empowering Future Urban Leaders; Kota Kita is committed to shaping the next generation of actively engaged urban leaders by promoting learning and developing tools. We do this through research, capacity building, and providing pedagogic experiences within our organisation; 3) Democratising Urban Information And Knowledge; Kota Kita believes that sharing knowledge can help people better understand how to take advantage of opportunities and overcome the challenges that come with rapid urbanisation. We are committed to raising awareness by making urban information available and accessible to promote action and change; and 4) Cultivating Creativity and Innovation in Cities; Kota Kita believes that creativity and innovation will be the driving force to address cities’ challenges today and beyond. We strive for out-of-the-box thinking and narratives that go beyond the status quo as a platform to engage and mobilise citizens into taking action and participating in the development of the cities.
In the past 11 years, Kota Kita has grown from a citizen-led initiative in Solo to become a leading civil society organisation that promotes participatory approaches in more than 25 cities in Indonesia. The organisation’s urban inclusivity initiatives have been recognized by UNESCO in 2017 and received a Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI) Global Urban Mobility Challenge 2019 award. In 2021, Kota Kita received the Best Place maker of the Year award and the Best Place maker in the NGO/Community (Public Space) from Place maker Awards ASEAN 2021 for a participatory placemaking initiative in Ngampon, a neighbourhood in the Indonesian city of Surakarta. We have also been recognized with the Zero Project Award 2021 for our participatory data collection approach to create a disability-inclusive city. We have also led and organised events such as the annual Urban Social Forum – a civil society-led forum that brings together civil societies, practitioners, and students in a collective goal to improve cities.
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Project
Youth with disabilities in many Indonesian cities often still face barriers in expressing a strong voice in the decision-making processes of their cities, notably due to limited awareness for accommodations to ensure their full and effective political participation such as the use of sign languages. Kota Kita’s research study in Surakarta (Solo), Central Java, Indonesia (2017) found that even though the participation of citizens with disabilities in local and national elections are relatively high at 60.1%, participation in neighbourhood meetings and in local budgeting meetings are low at 27% and 2.2%, respectively. This data indicates that citizens with disabilities are not yet involved meaningfully in expressing their needs and advocating for policies that directly affect them.
While Solo has strong history of inclusion over the decades, as noted in a report by Global Disability Innovation Hub and Kota Kita(2022), improvements are necessary to enhance the participation of people with disabilities in community dialogue in both formal and informal mechanisms. In fostering a more socially-just space for more meaningful participation, there is a need to deepen the way citizens interact as a collective, build shared awareness and solidarity, and explore the tension between spatial and social to influence change within the acknowledged existing power that currently shapes the city. For Solo, urban arts, particularly murals, have been a tool for citizens to express their needs of urgent issues in the city, and there is great potential in using urban art to deepen the participation of citizens who will enjoy the spaces—in contrast to the conventional method of commissioning artists.
The participatory urban art project proposes a series of activities for youth with disabilities in Solo to collectively build their position in the contested urban narrative through creative placemaking. Our project aims to converge the voice of youth with disabilities—particularly those who are deaf and have hearing impairments—and connect those voices with visual arts as a means of expression, awareness-raising, and reclaiming of spaces. Through this participatory urban art project, piloting in the City of Solo, Indonesia, we hope to celebrate and leverage the diverse, intersectional aspirations of the youth in the city, build solidarity, and mainstream discourses about urban inclusivity.
The project will incorporate a participatory creative placemaking approach through activities such as photovoice workshop, co-design, and participatory mural as primary tools to manifest the collective aspirations of youths who are deaf and hard of hearing. We will engage 10 – 15 youth participants to produce participatory mural artworks in three [3] public spaces in Solo, utilising the process as an exercise to enhance their agency and capacity to advocate for rights in the city and raise public awareness on urban inclusivity. The project will activate targeted public spaces by painting the mural together and sharing the learnings to other stakeholders in the city. The main objective is to use murals and art installations as a shared learning process and not merely as an end product—a process to make the invisible more visible.
Ultimately, we hope to see more people aware of power inequality in citizen participation and understand the implication of this situation for people with disabilities. The initiative might not target structural change initially, but we expect to see the collective awareness rise and lead to more collaborative efforts to enhance the quality of citizen participation by integrating initiatives in both spaces to bring changes within the complexity of our cities today.
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Youth with disabilities in many Indonesian cities often still face barriers in expressing a strong voice in the decision-making processes of their cities, notably due to limited awareness for accommodations to ensure their full and effective political participation such as the use of sign languages. Kota Kita’s research study in Surakarta (Solo), Central Java, Indonesia (2017) found that even though the participation of citizens with disabilities in local and national elections are relatively high at 60.1%, participation in neighbourhood meetings and in local budgeting meetings are low at 27% and 2.2%, respectively. This data indicates that citizens with disabilities are not yet involved meaningfully in expressing their needs and advocating for policies that directly affect them.
While Solo has strong history of inclusion over the decades, as noted in a report by Global Disability Innovation Hub and Kota Kita(2022), improvements are necessary to enhance the participation of people with disabilities in community dialogue in both formal and informal mechanisms. In fostering a more socially-just space for more meaningful participation, there is a need to deepen the way citizens interact as a collective, build shared awareness and solidarity, and explore the tension between spatial and social to influence change within the acknowledged existing power that currently shapes the city. For Solo, urban arts, particularly murals, have been a tool for citizens to express their needs of urgent issues in the city, and there is great potential in using urban art to deepen the participation of citizens who will enjoy the spaces—in contrast to the conventional method of commissioning artists.
The participatory urban art project proposes a series of activities for youth with disabilities in Solo to collectively build their position in the contested urban narrative through creative placemaking. Our project aims to converge the voice of youth with disabilities—particularly those who are deaf and have hearing impairments—and connect those voices with visual arts as a means of expression, awareness-raising, and reclaiming of spaces. Through this participatory urban art project, piloting in the City of Solo, Indonesia, we hope to celebrate and leverage the diverse, intersectional aspirations of the youth in the city, build solidarity, and mainstream discourses about urban inclusivity.
The project will incorporate a participatory creative placemaking approach through activities such as photovoice workshop, co-design, and participatory mural as primary tools to manifest the collective aspirations of youths who are deaf and hard of hearing. We will engage 10 – 15 youth participants to produce participatory mural artworks in three [3] public spaces in Solo, utilising the process as an exercise to enhance their agency and capacity to advocate for rights in the city and raise public awareness on urban inclusivity. The project will activate targeted public spaces by painting the mural together and sharing the learnings to other stakeholders in the city. The main objective is to use murals and art installations as a shared learning process and not merely as an end product—a process to make the invisible more visible.
Ultimately, we hope to see more people aware of power inequality in citizen participation and understand the implication of this situation for people with disabilities. The initiative might not target structural change initially, but we expect to see the collective awareness rise and lead to more collaborative efforts to enhance the quality of citizen participation by integrating initiatives in both spaces to bring changes within the complexity of our cities today.
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REPAINT THE CITY
Many People with Disabilities (PwD) living in Indonesian cities still face challenges in everyday life, particularly in expressing a strong voice in the city-level decision-making process. Even in Surakarta (Solo), Indonesia – known for its history of inclusion – significant improvements in accessibility practices are needed for people with disabilities to thrive. For Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing youths in Solo, these challenges are caused by limited awareness and accommodations in Indonesian Sign Language (Bahasa Isyarat Indonesia/BISINDO). Capturing the everyday realities and aspirations of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing residents is vital in creating a more inclusive urban environment in cities. Furthermore, considering the Nothing About Us Without Us principle, using an inclusive and participatory methodology is imperative in ensuring that narratives regarding the Deaf community are made with their involvement.
A shared urgency for active collaboration to raise awareness and build a more accommodating and inclusive environment in Solo led to the creation of the Repaint the City: A Participatory Urban Arts Initiative to Enhance Participation of Youth with Hearing Impairments project in mid-2022. The project is organised collaboratively by the KREASI consortium, which included Kota Kita, a nonprofit organisation focused on citizen participation and urban development, Ruang Atas arts collective, and Gerkatin Solo, the local chapter of the Indonesian Association for the Welfare of the Deaf (IAWD).
The Repaint the City project saw great potential for collaboration between artists and the Deaf youth community, using urban art to deepen the participation of Deaf youths in the city and advocate for urban inclusivity. Public art is frequently employed as a means of expression, and Solo has a well-known vibrant street art scene with murals adorning public places. From August 2022 to January 2024, the Repaint the City program organised various participatory art-based activities, starting with a series of public discussions, three photovoice workshops and an exhibition, and several co-design sessions, which all culminated in the creation of murals on three public spaces in Solo: Jl. Slamet Riyadi, Jl. Gatot Subroto, and Taman Monumen 45 Banjarsari. The mural production, which took place from January to November 2023, consisted of three different phases: documenting the challenges and aspirations of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing citizens using Photovoice, designing the murals using participatory approaches, and collaborative mural painting.
Throughout the Repaint the City project, various creative participatory tools such as photovoice, collage making, and co-design were employed to enhance the sense of belonging and participation for people with disabilities. These tools not only facilitated engagement for young people with disabilities but also served as a powerful means of self-expression, overcoming communication challenges due to gaps between Indonesian and Indonesian Sign Language. Using photography to convey narratives, the photovoice methodology effectively encouraged inclusion and active participation among Deaf participants. Co-design workshops and mural painting created an open space for interaction and expression of aspirations, fostering a sense of pride in displaying their messages publicly. “The spaces supported Deaf youths in Solo to be more confident and comfortable expressing themselves. They are also excited to learn something creative and new,” said Aprilian Bima, one of the participants and artists involved in the project.
The project also aimed to test inclusive collaboration as an advocacy tool, promoting democratic and inclusive urban spaces. The inclusive and participatory approach in decision-making processes strengthened the relationship within the KREASI consortium and provided transformative learning experiences. Organisations deepened their understanding of Deaf culture, learned Indonesian Sign Language, and expanded their advocacy efforts. The final exhibition, “Harmony”, co-organized by Ruang Atas and Gerkatin Solo, showcased Deaf artists’ works, indicating a commitment to future exhibitions highlighting inclusivity issues and Deaf culture. “Art serves as a platform to express numerous issues and is crucial for diversity. After this program, I hope to invite artist friends from the Art Institute of Surakarta and other campuses to learn about BISINDO. There is a growing awareness among artists in Solo who wish to learn about disability and inclusivity issues,” said Wahyu Eko Prasetyo, who coordinates the Ruang Atas arts collective.
The Repaint the City project concluded in January 2024 with the “Harmony” final exhibition. However, lessons from the initiative will continue to be amplified in the form of a guideline for replicating a similar initiative in other cities. A small-scale intervention such as murals may still be a long way from triggering a structural and transformative change in Solo; however, the project has laid pathways for shared learning and collective awareness across diverse stakeholders, which is expected to result in more creative and collaborative efforts that advocate for more inclusive urban spaces for all.