During RECIPROCITY 2012, “Welcome to Saint-Gilles” had demonstrated how design can help catalyze neighborhood changes starting from the local community.
While continuing to work on this project, in 2015 RECIPROCITY also leaned on Seraing, a city in the province of Liege with an important industrial past.
ERIGES (Eriger Seraing) and RECIPROCITY have therefore initiated a collaboration: ERIGES is the autonomous municipal authority (RCA) of Seraing who runs the successful implementation of the Master Plan based on urban renewal and redevelopment of 800 hectares of the city. Design with and for the people.

In January 2015, a design laboratory for social innovation has been set up: during two workshops, a group of experts – Virginia Tassinari and Nik Baerten, curators, Pablo Salazar Calderon, Henriëtte Waal, Yara Al-Adib and Elisa Bertolotti – the FabLabs of the Euroregion and a school, the MAD Faculty of Genk, worked in close collaboration with the people and organizations active in the area. The designers have walked the streets of the Trasenster district and met the inhabitants and merchants, inviting all to join them at the old town hall to present their ideas and receive theirs. During the months that followed, a series of micro interventions, ranging from the use of windows of empty shops as communication surfaces to self-directed services to food distribution, changed perspectives and relationships.

The results, along with the successful ones in Saint-Gilles, will be presented at the Cité Miroir during the exhibition Welcome to__ coordinated by Baerten and Tassinari, in the framework of RECIPROCITY 2015. Through objects, images, stories and diagrams, the exhibition will provide a broad overview of the process and the interventions made. The exhibition will also host a “public innovation space” and a “debate room” for workshops and meetings (agenda will follow).
“Welcome to Seraing” is an initiative of RECIPROCITY design liege, made possible through the collaboration with the Province of Liege, ERIGES, the city of Seraing, Interreg and Euregio.

Video by Gilles-Ivan Frankignoul

Welcome to__
Design & local communities

La Cité Miroir
Place Xavier Neujean, 22
4000 Liege
www.citemiroir.be

In situ interventions: Saint Gilles de Liège neighbourhood / Trasenster de Seraing-Ougrée neighbourhood
Curators and scenography: Nik Baerten / Pantopicon (BE) & Virginia Tassinari / MAD Faculty Genk and members of DESIS (IT / BE).