UrbanDig Project: sport practices and artistic interventions for co-creating urban space

The 'UrbanDig Project' has been created by the non-for-profit organisation Ohi Paizoume, based in Athens, Greece. Behind the project lies the motivation to tackle the need for civic engagement and interaction with the urban space (either open/public spaces or private buildings), while suggesting that this cannot be a sterilized process but an ongoing, continuously unfinished “reporting from the front” of the (un-)measurable, the (in-)visible, the (un-)real. The organisation puts at the heart of its work the creation of site-specific content that forms the foundation of community programs researching the cultural capital of a neighbourhood, bringing people from various ages, backgrounds and disciplines (including arts and sport) together. Although primarily an arts-based practice, sport is among the key methodological tools used in the research and civic engagement process, while there is a strong sports-related component in the site specific performances that take place at the end of each project as a means of celebration of the collective effort and the creation of new/ enhanced narratives for each neighbourhood’s storytelling.

In this paper we aim to elaborate how sport and arts can sharply intervene and contribute to co-producing urban space and wellbeing. To illustrate these points, we are using the example of Urban Dig Project, Xouthou Street, an intervention in the urban space of Greece.