Riga Pulse
Tanja Klaus
Jekaterina Rupota
Polina Sirojegina
Olga Vertjajeva
We are department of one of the biggest youth NGO in Latvia. We connect teenagers and young people, who are interested in urban exploration, activism, street art and architecture with professionals (architects, sociologists and urban planners) to create engaging and fun activities. We participate in local competitions for area development and exploring interesting aspects of the city life in a creative and playful way.
Core team is Olga - founder of Urban Folks is spatial designer and artivist, that usualy curating and managing projects, & Daria - graphic designer that helps to present projects in a attractive and smart way.
Participants and co-authors usually are just curious Riga citizens and changes form project to project. The youngest member was 16 y.old and we love the diversity in our group, but we are now looking for international professionals and collaborators to learn and exchange experience to create a bigger impact and inspire more people to be interested in topic of our ''playful urbanism''.
"Riga Pulse" is partisipatory art project that explores Riga as a living entity with a body, skin, scars, veins, and eyes, maybe even a heart. Can we feel the empathy to the city? What does it mean to belong to the city, and to be a particle of a whole organism? Do you agree with the idea that people are the pulse of the city?
We wanted to involve young Riga inhabitants into a visual hunting game.
For nearly four months, participants of the project received new themes almost every week. in our created instagram account. Within a week, they had to find the given subject in the urban space and share picture with us. There's no correct answer; only associations and emotions related to the certain ''organ'' of the city.
There was a plan to make installation that every photo will have a mirror at the back that symbolize that viewer possibly is a reflection of the city phenomena.
But project was finansed from the personal resourses and only exhibiton was possible. Luckily we had a chance to have exhibition in a public space in one of the Riga markets and have opening during the youth festival. It recieved a positive feedback and we would love to try this concept in other places and make it as a site specific installation with more public engaigemnet. We also see a potential to apply it as a method on a certain topics ( like environmental issues, or poverty) that looks like a funny observation game but also keeps focus on a actual problems.