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This project is closing... but... it will continue as abetterplace.io!
Day 1, Guerrilla Gardening and more...
Every day I'll do something to improve Rotterdam, to make Rotterdam greener and the people more positive, connected and happier. These are the ideas and suggestions we gathered until now to make that happen...
- Guarilla Gardening
- Free assistence, have a sign with 'Can I help you?' at the station and help people with anything they need. Carrying bags, directions, etc...
- Leave positive messages everywhere, this can be done with chalk on the street, letter in the mailbox, on mirrors, etc..
- Give free dance classes outside on a square.
- Free Hugs
- Pick up trash, alone or organize a trash event so people will join cleaning up the street/park
- Run around in a funny costume to make people laugh, for instance in a bunny costume on Easter
- Public dinner in the city. The idea is to put a table in the city, with two plates and people can join me for dinner.
- Free listening
- Help the elderly for one day
- Blow bubbles
- Decorate the city, city knitting, hang swings.
- Combine a couple of the ebove ideas and do them all together during Queensday (Dutch national holiday event)
- Play cupido, spread love in the city
- Switch bike lights off when somebody forgot
- Try to change the city slogan from 'Stronger through battle' to 'Stronger through effort'
- Public meditation/picnic for World Port, World City, World Peace
- Get to know you neighbours and organize a dinner with them
- Have a third eye, which means to stay aware of the surroundings and respond when you see something or somebody could use help or improvement.
- NEW: Welcome in Rotterdam, suprise people entering Rotterdam with cheers, confetti, etc....
- NEW: Create a game that people can play on the street or park
If you have any other suggestions or want to join, let me know!
Comments
A lot of people will recognize some of the ideas they have posted earlier, that's nice!
Yeah it's true. Also happy to do a little bit of guerrilla gardening today, since spreading seeds was placed second twice already...
hey, i thought that since you generally like rotterdam, perhaps you could make a list of the things you DO like, and find a way to share that with the people of rotterdam... like printing a photo with that list and to hang it all over the city. or like the idea of your smiling shirt. (and if you make that shirt, you could sell it on queens day and donate the money to some good cause in rotterdam for instance?) it might open peoples eyes to the nice things about rotterdam, and make them appreciate the place more!
secondly, a fun but pricy thing to add to your list above, could be to take your polaroid camera and walk around the city, photographing people and handing out the photos to them. maybe you could also ask them to share a few of their favorite things about rotterdam or ideas of what to improve as a 'barter' for the photo!
...bake something tasty and share out the goods...
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I really, really like the polaroid idea! Can we crowdfund a bunch of polaroid cassettes for maarten?
I like the idea of sharing the nice things of Rotterdam and also the polaroid idea. @sara, do you have good polaroid films still? Because the last ones that we used were very very difficult to make nice pictures with, or well, sometimes they were nice, but the result didn't represent what was photographed :-) it became a very vague, messy blueish color mash... abstract let's say :-)
well...my last film turned out all pinkish and rather messy too...reminding more of cell division than anything else. beautiful, but perhaps not really fitting this purpose!?
sometimes a guy with a modern polaroid shows up in bars trying to sell you a picture (the same guy carries a bunch of flowers to sell at the same time). Maybe you should do the same and give the pictures and flowers away for free. (But i do not know what that camera cost)
Hm, expensive: http://www.fotokonijnenberg.nl/product/1610361/polaroid-z340-instant-digital-camera.html
Well, I can still do the flower part! :-)
The polaroid as well. There are a lot of companies that use polaroid camera's. The Aids Fonds had some ass well. Maybe you can borrow them? And yeah, crowdfunding for the films.
Well, I have an old SX70 camera, but finding good films for those became very difficult. I never knew that The Aids Fonds used polaroids as well, as a form of advertisement??
Extra idea's:
- Wrap one of the big buildings in Rotterdam as if it's a present, with ribbons and stuff.
- Draw a hopscotch track on the sideways
- Congratulate/compliment people with random stuff and hand out treats
- Create extra crosswalks at dangerous places
- Decorate the city with birthday garlands
- stick little signs to buildings/objects with title, artist & short story/ explanation, as if they are pieces of art and you're walking in an exhibition
Thanks for the input, I like the idea of making everything in Rotterdam part of an exhibition a lot! And I also thought of making a hopscotch, more games in the city is nice I think...
I like the idea of making crosswalks! Add some nice extra drawings to them, then they'll be both funny and usefull. Ask via twitter and facebook for places that people find dangerous.
Maarten! The AIDS Fonds did this project at De Parade in which they had a live- size-cut-out of BN'ers doing a show at De Parade. People could take a Polaroid picture with the cut-out and then got asked the question whether they would drink from the celebrity's glass if he had HIV (not AIDS). More of an awareness campaign. Was quite good.