WeMakeThe.City Festival

By Makerversity

Will you be joining us for WeMakeThe.City, the festival that makes cities better? Five jam-packed days of workshops, lectures, film screenings, exhibitions, performances, games, labs and more, are happening all over the Amsterdam metropolitan area. All between June 21st and 24th, and tackling challenges in our urban environment. We’re super excited to be a part of the festival, and we’ve got a lot planned! We’ve got workshops, demos, an exhibition, and the election of Amsterdam’s first Junior Bicycle Mayor. Read all about them below, and check out the festival’s website for more on what else is happening around Amsterdam.

EXHIBITION

Drop by for a visit between June 21st and 24th and you’ll see an exhibition of our members’ work in the foyer of our building, right next to the newly opened Clubhouse Amsterdam. Studio Atmospheric Wood, Roger Bacon, Imagination of Things, Niceworks, M.E.T.A. Cafe, architects Janneke Hulshof and Katarina Labathova, Polimeer, Peggy Bannenberg, and more, will be displaying a mix of objects, prototypes, interactive installations and ideas.

Covering everything from interior architecture, to sustainability, to interaction design, the exhibition is open 10am-5pm, and entrance is free.

WORKSHOPS

Our members are running three different workshops exploring urban challenges and smart city solutions. Are you a student? We’ve got a few free places to give away to students for each workshop, email projects.ams@makerversity.org to get yours!

Smart Neighborhood

What’s a ‘smart’ city? There’s no one definition. For many city leaders — and especially the private sector — the term has become a shorthand for technology that makes cities work better or more efficiently. Participants of this demo presentation will have a unique opportunity to test drive some existing smart mobility solutions. Facilitated by Amsterdam Innovation Exchange Lab (AMSIXL).

Thursday 21st June, 14.00-17.00. Sign up here!

Maak je Stad / Make Your City

This workshop is an intense experience of discovery, where we will role-play and fabulate new possibilities for urban space. The process allows the participants to embrace radical imagination, creating insights and conceptual prototypes to tell a story of what could be. It’s a collaborative design process that uses fiction as a toolset for city-making. Facilitated by Imagination of Things and Studio Egle Tuleikyte,

Saturday 23rd June, 13.00-16.00. Sign up here!

Service vs Surveilance: Future of our neighborhood cameras?

What’s the future of our Neighborhood Cameras?
Come and check out a live demonstration of camera with advanced recognition software and discuss privacy in public space.

During the Festival, we will mark out a “facial recognition zone” to measure the behavior of the public in & around the zone. A simple experiment to see whom among us (in Amsterdam) are comfortable walking into the zone and who is not.

The camera installed DOES NOT HAVE FACIAL RECOGNITION software, but we will use its other features to achieve the following goals:
• Capture # number of people in the “Study Area”
• Capture # number of people entering the “Caution Zone”
• Capture types of behaviors in the “Study Area” vs the “Caution Zone”

PROGRAM
14:00-16:00 – Live demo of the camera with advanced recognition system.
16:00-17:00 – Urban Talk on open source data and privacy; Speakers: Marc Schoneveld (DataLab), Thomas van Arman (CITIXL), Bert Spaan (apps based on open source city data).

The camera will be installed on the Marineterrein (Kattenburgerstraat 5), in front of building E27 during the WeMakeThe.City festival. You don’t need to register for this event, but can find out more here.

The talk will take place at Schietbaan, just around the corner from Makerversity (and directions will be signposted during the festival!).