A Wild Spot is a special hotspot: it is a community wellbeing area to disconnect from digital mindless scrolling and anxiety, and reconnect with nature and others.
Wild Spot AUC was developed as a temporary urbanism intervention by Anthropologies of Community students from Amsterdam University College. The installations are based on research on the community’s everyday stressors and anxieties, well-being practices and ways to relate to nature. The first set of installations invites individuals to pause, notice nature and reconnect with themselves; another set aims for conviviality and plants seeds of interaction among the concrete; last but not least, a set of installations is dedicated to supporting non-human life. A calendar of well-being and community activities ideated by students has been rolled out in June 2023.
The installations were part of the Amsterdam Science Park landscape festival “Met andere ogen” (“with other eyes”) organised by Waag up until the 31st of August. The project was presented during the Midsummer Night Celebration on June 21 2023: an evening of talks, walks, picnics and music. Students prepared a special surprise for the evening!
The Wild Spot participatory process and pedagogical content were ideated and facilitated by Marta Arniani (Futuribile) with the support of Nicoletta Piersantelli and Andrea Balestrini (LAND), Rosalie Baak (Waag) and Hadas Zohar (Aalborg University) in the framework of the T-Factor project. A special thanks to our host from AUC, Professor Scott Dalby.
