UTVrijhof CultureNinety Minutes

Ninety Minutes Yonas Negash

In the 2017 CuriousU course, “Smart Cities”, participants from 12 different nationalities designed amendments to the European directive (legal) frameworks of both water and energy in a creative way. At the end of the week they pushed themselves to make some art pieces about these amendments. 

Over the course of a week, the participants explored topics such as resources and infrastructure, digital city, and social innovation. Following this, the groups were given the task of using their creativity to make art related works to display their proposed amendments on the frameworks. All of this had to happen in ninety minutes. The results are shown in this exhibition. 

One of the three themes of “Smart Cities” was Social Innovation: Smart Cities in the end aim at improving the quality of living for its inhabitants. How should governance be transformed? What are cities currently aiming for in their digital strategies? And how could the interaction between politicians and the public be improved using digital technologies?  

That last question is also a topic that is of interest for one of the students that assisted during this course week: Yonas Negash. He is a student in Public Administration at the University of Twente as well as an entrepreneur developing software tools that should bridge the gap between politicians and citizens. He assisted at the sessions about Liquid Democracy. The concept of Liquid Democracy goes to the heart of the debate about the democratic deficit in Europe. The main goals for these sessions were increasing political interest and participation by citizens while exploring issues through different perspectives. 

Yonas Negash was the initiator of this exhibition in the Vrijhof. 

The opening in will take place on Thursday 18 January 2018 at 5 pm.

Vrijhof Culture dish 

Between 17.00 and 18.00 the Vrijhof Culture dish will be available at Sodexo’s Theatercafé!