| Skill
is will
Henk Oosterling (sept. 2007) |
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“Creativity
in the world of work is not limited to members of the Creative
Class. (…) I strongly believe that the key to improving
the lot of underpaid, underemployed and disadvantaged people
lies not in social welfareprograms or low – end make
work jobs (…) but rather in tapping the creativity of
these people”(Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative
Class, p. 10
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Rotterdam
Skillcity is a research model for urban revitalisation and
renovation, focused on the specific social-cultural and socio-economic
situation of Rotterdam. Having transformed itself over a period
of 40 years from an industrial harbour town with an international
exposure to an economic-cultural metropolis, famous for its
architectural landscape, his urban festivals and top sport
events, Rotterdam strives to harbour service oriented enterprises,
creative industries and information technologically based
business.
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Traditionally
Rotterdam was dependent upon the immigration of low paid labourers,
most of whom populated the socio-culturally weaker developed
neighbourhoods of Rotterdam. After the post war immigration
wave from Greece, Spain and Italy, in the course of the 1960’s
of the 20th century immigrants arrived, mostly from countries
like Turkey and Morocco, but over time from all those countries
that want to profit from the globalisation process. On top
of that the decolonisation process resulted in the immigration
of people from Surinam and Antilleans.
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Over
a period of 40 years the socio-economic infrastructure of
Rotterdam qualitatively changed, An international harbour
turned into a global business area as a result of which more
sophisticated and technologically enhanced skills were demanded.
Recently the Economic Development Board Rotterdam (EDBR) advocates
creative industries as a cultural-economic impulse of the
urban economy.
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However,
in this turbulent process of urban upgrading many lower paid
and lesser schooled groups within the population are not able
to connect, many a pupil leaving school before attaining even
the most basic starting qualifications that are needed for
entering the job market. Unemployment within these groups
is beyond the national average.
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Rotterdam
Skillcity not only provides a bottom up analysis of this socio-economic
backlog, it also develops educational and socio-economic strategies
to counter these tendencies. In doing this Richard Florida’s
concept of cultural capital and his analysis of the creative
city is downscaled to the neighbourhood level and Robert Putnam’s
critique on the loss of social capital and his appeal to enhance
‘civic skills’ is applied to rephrase the concept
of social cohesion.
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Demography:
‘greening’ of the population
One
of the presuppositions of Skillcity is a demographic tendency that
deviates from national averages. Instead of facing a ‘gray
wave’ – the disproportional increase of the elderly
- the Rotterdam population will be ‘greened’ over the
next 10 years. This increase is mostly effectuated within families
with an allochtonous background. Rotterdam harbours more than 160
nationalities and the percentage of the population with an allochtonous
background is nearing 60%.
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Primary
school: Educational deadlock
The
educational system gradually got overburdened. Since the necessary
broadening of the school tasks – de Brede School - in order
to counter the loss of social infrastructure partly due to flexibilisation
of the job market, partly to the deregulation and privatisation
of the sociocultural backbone of community services (maatschappelijk
middenveld), teachers no longer can adequately perform their core
business of teaching.
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Secondary
school: Lack of trainee posts
At
the same time secondary school system deteriorated. Mergers between
smaller school units were propagated as a result of which school
life became more anonymous and less controllable. Playing truant
and prematurely leaving school go hand in hand with a structural
lack of trainee posts.
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Gentrification
Overdue maintenance in the socio-economic weaker neighbourhoods
led to the deterioration of real estate. Building corporations changed
their policies in the 1990’s due to the privatisation and
deregulation policies of the Dutch government. As a result of the
withdrawal of governmental institutions from public space, getting
semi-privatized and deregulated, the quality of public space deteriorated
as well.
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Ecological
footprint
Being an industrial area for more than a century,
providing unlimited automobility due to the post war urban planning,
air pollution in Rotterdam has reached intolerable limits. Recently
this has been acknowledged by local policymakers and politicians.
This resulted in subscribing the Clinton initiative. But being embedded
in the global consumerist culture the excessive consumption of fast
food has not strengthened the physical awareness of the ecological
food chain. This has again placed Rotterdam at the top of the obesity
ridden areas. The percentage of children and adults suffering from
overweight is disproportionably high.
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FOUR
TARGETS FOR INTERVENTION
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‘Skill
is will’
The crucial concept of the research model Rotterdam Skillcity is
skill. This covers a wide range of competences that are realized
within practices of actual craftsmanship. Apart from the conventional
definitions of craftsmanship, skill has artistic, sportive, cultural,
social and communicative connotations. Moreover, skating, rapping,
judo techniques, school mediation, preparing food, all of these
practices presuppose a specific attitude. Eventually skill is a
double edged sword: socio-culturally it gives the skilled person
a certain esteem within his or her community – (s)he is taken
serious - and socio-psychologically it provides the skilled person
with a crafty focus and engenders a feeling of proportionality and
a sense of limit. Focused on skills, wills are produced. All this
can be realized by looping apprenticeship trajectories, trainee
posts and community services by students of professional and academic
institutions back into the whole educational trajectory, beginning
with the primary school. This will not only provide assistance –
15 year old students of intermediate vocational education (MBO)
assisting with sport or cultural activities on primary school –
and vocational expertise – 19 year old students of higher
vocational education (HBO) assisting in care or classroom –
or even academic expertise – economy students helping starting
entrepreneurs with an allochtonous background to make a business
plan – but also role models for youngsters that needs pro
active scenario’s to compensate for their less favourable
starting positions.
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‘Being
interested’
In
referring to craftsmanship skill includes education and apprenticeship.
Within the context of secondary education being skilled brings to
the fore the relevance of training posts and, especially in relation
to social and cultural skills, community services. Against this
background it is evident that being skilled is per se not an individual,
but a collective and concrete practice. The invested creativity
does not refer to an autonomous individual, but is always already
‘interested’, i.e. embedded in social, cultural and
economic networks. Given this educational and professional perspective
skill is embedded in a career, in a more contemporary terminology:
it is a stage on a trajectory that crosses other trajectories, all
eventually knitted into a network. In an educational perspective
this network provides a social safety net. ‘Being interested’
is skill’s main interest and it is precisely in this strict
interpretation of the Dutch word ‘interesse’ that we
‘are’(esse) always ‘in between’ (inter).
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‘Rules
of engagement’
Being
interested presupposes a positive attitude and a receptive mind.
Within the present culture of fear this receptiveness is rather
exceptional. Security policies and nodal surveillance are the imperatives
of tackling the problem of religious and political radicalisation
and sociopolitical indifference as has been conceptualized in the
Research Report of the Scientific Council for Governmental Policies
(WWR)
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‘Geloven in het publieke domein’(Believing in the
public domain)
From
2006 Rotterdam Skillcity acknowledges the necessity to counter the
aggression in public domain, but opts for a transformation of repressive,
restrictive and even preventive measures into social and cultural
enhancement of competences and talents in order to engage groups
with society from a positive enhancement of their creative sources.
This engagement has integrally to be taken into account within the
educational trajectory that spans the primary, secondary and higher
education up to an academic level. Professional and social skilling
reinforces social cohesion, i.e. engenders social capital once it
is performed through community services within the communities where
pupils and students factually live. Skilling is one of the main
rules of engagement.
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‘Ecotriptique’:
physical, social, mental
Focusing solely on physical and material aspects of bio systems
provides too strict a definition of ecology. The scope of urban
life surpasses this strict definition of ecological processes by
far. Rotterdam Skillcity propagates a threefold interpretation of
ecology that includes all aspects of an ecological awareness that
is needed to tackle the problems where Rotterdam is faced with.
The creation of ‘child friendly neighbourhoods’ does
not exclusively entail the reducing of CO2 emission in pushing back
the use of private cars – auto mobility – by stimulating
public transportation – commobility. It also need the strengthening
of social cohesion and the empowerment of groups and individuals
in order to enhance engagement. Physical ecology therefore presupposes
a social ecology: the development of socio-cultural skills. But
as long as this social ecology is not yet anchored in a mentality
of openness and receptiveness, i.e. as long as it is not backed
up by a mental ecology, the problem is not attacked at its roots
(radix). In this sense the approach of Rotterdam Skillcity is radical.
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