HSE Urban Fest Gathers Urban Development Researchers
On September 12th, Urban Fest was held at HSE University. Students, staff and guests of the HSE University learned what revitalization means in the context of urbanism and why every conscious citizen should delve into this process. The participants immersed themselves in the study of the urban environment, listened to lectures from experts and visited a fair of HSE student organisations.
Urban Fest focuses on an important issue — revitalization, that is, the process of regenerating and breathing new life into city spaces. Its main principle is to open up new opportunities for old territories and buildings.
‘Urban Fest boasts a combination of highly-knowledgeable expert speakers, and student creativity,’ says Alexey Entaev, third-year student of the HSE Political Science programme, one of the festival organisers.
Urban Fest was held at two venues. Invited speakers from the ‘Vnimanie’ (‘Attention’) Foundation, Tom Sawyer Fest, Graphite and Artplay creative clusters, ‘Urbanissm’ magazine and the DOM.RF delivered lectures to guests at the HSE Cultural Centre. They discussed how street art can revive even the oldest and most neglected territory, why the city needs to be ‘smart’ and how architects and volunteers are able to restore and save buildings.
Daria Shubina, Project Manager at DOM.RF, presented a topical issue discussed within the framework of the recently concluded All-Russian Economic Forum. She spoke about a masterplan for the city - a strategy for urban development that the government has created in cooperation with citizens and businesses.
Evgenia Klyuchenkova, project manager of the the ‘Vnimanie’ (‘Attention’) Foundation, spoke about the revitalization of buildings. ‘Unfortunately, now in Russia there are a lot of abandoned historical buildings, which the state does not pay attention to for various reasons,’ explains Klyuchenkova. ‘These objects just stand there, although they are very interesting: some of them are culturally important former residential buildings and factories.’ In her speech, Evgenia noted that residents can take the initiative and restore an object important for themselves and for the city.
In the atrium of the university building on Pokrovsky Bulvar, an event organised by the 'Chisty List' ('Blank Page') team took place, alongside a poster exhibition organised by the ‘Kotoburo’ Foundation for the Protection of Urban Animals and the student organisations Green HSE, HSE Chess Club, Soft Skills Lab, Art Club and HSE Tour Club.
Alexey Entaev has been interested in urban studies for a long time, and his friends from St. Petersburg Matvey Prishibilovich and Askar Zakiev supported his idea of organising a thematic festival. ‘I often watch videos on YouTube related to urbanism, and I wanted to invite interesting speakers to share their experience with HSE students,’ explains Alexey.
Matvey Prishibilovich, third-year student of the Economics programme at HSE University in St. Petersburg, was engaged in communicating with speakers and various student organisations at the festival. ‘I was responsible for the communication between our team and the outside world,’ says Matvey. ‘In order to gather a large number of people, you need to properly build lines of dialogue with the participants. I think we succeeded because people came, took pictures, and participated in the activities — all the clubs we invited did something interesting and cool at the festival.’ According to Matvey, the Urban Fest features the gentle, but convincing promotion of an important agenda. ‘We have made an interesting platform where you can not only listen to a lecture, but also relax, draw, play chess,’ he added.
‘It is never easy to implement projects,’ says Alexey Entaev. ‘It took us about three months to organise the Urban Fest from the initial idea to the final product.’ He also added that in the future, the students plan to hold case-study championships as part of the festival.