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ALE organised an event with Parktheater Eindhoven and LSA-citizens (the Dutch umbrella organisation for active citizens). Five ALE students from the minor Imagineering and business/social innovation took responsibility for concept and actual organisation. On Jan 18th, they were supported by six other group members of the minor as volunteers.
An IMEM-team of 5 students gathered materials for a video that can support the follow-up actions of the organisers. The students planned to deliver their final product on February 9th. The theatre will critically assess the result and compare it to the products often realised by students from different schools or even professional ones, like Veldkamp productions. Time will tell whether future opportunities will come up for IMEM. The collaboration of ALE and IMEM students is possible and adding value to the project.
More than 180 visitors showed interest in the efforts of 30 national and local citizen initiatives presenting themselves on the market square in the theatre and the diverse speakers during the plenary session. The students created a great atmosphere using the qualities of the physical space and the hospitality of the theatre.
Chair of the day, Roland Kleve, kicked off and invited a diverse group of people to the stage: Giel Pastoor, director of the theatre, used the opportunity to share his thoughts on the shifting role of theatre in our dynamic society. Petra Ligtenberg, senior project manager SDG NL https://www.sdgnederland.nl/sdgs/ gave insights to the objectives and progress of the Netherlands. Elly Rijnierse, city maker and entrepreneur from Den Haag, presented her intriguing efforts in her own neighbourhood in the city to create at once both practical and social impacts on SDG 11 (sustainable city; subgoal 3.2). Then the alderman Marcel Oosterveer informed the visitors about Eindhoven’s efforts on SDGs. The plenary ended with very personal interviews of representatives of two impressive citizen initiatives (Parkinson to beat; Stichting Ik Wil).
In the two workshop rounds, ALE took responsibility for two workshops. Firstly the workshop: Beyond SDG cherrypicking: using the Economy for the common good’, in cooperation with citizen initiative Ware winst Brabant en Parktheater (including Social innovation-intern Jasper Box), secondly a panel dialogue on local partnerships (SDG 17) for the sustainable city (SDG 11) addressing inclusion (SDG 10) and the livability (SDG 3) with 11 representatives from local/provincial government, companies, third sector and, of course: citizen initiatives.