April Talk - Youth Activism in the City

Architects for Peace is bringing back its talk series. If you're in Melbourne, please come and join the first conversation which will focus on Youth Activism in the City.

A social and cooperative city can offer its citizens the right to participate in the production of a city according to their own needs and desires and, fosters feelings of personal safety, security and street support.

Young people want to actively bring something new into being with a myriad of youth groups participating in city formation and questioning the de-urbanising tendencies of top down strategies. Globally, the youth remain on the edge of decision making in cities, with limited influence on political, economic, social and cultural development.

In this talk, guest speakers Prof. Soumitri Varadarajan and Dr Julie Rudner examine the opportunities and barriers for young people in their quest to meaningfully contribute to civic life.

Date: Friday 8 April 2016, 6:30pm Venue: RMIT Building 50, Orr Street, Carlton Entry by Gold Coin Donation Refreshments provided Book here Share our Facebook Event here

Dr Julie Rudner is a senior lecturer in the Community Planning and Development Program, La Trobe University, Bendigo.  Her ambition is to shift current ‘risk culture’ and worse case scenario thinking so uncertainty and possible danger is viewed as a challenge and learning opportunity.  Through research, consulting and teaching, Julie explores the gap between policy and everyday life, with a particular focus on children's, young people's and migrants’ use, views and experience of their environments. Her main interest is how we create a ‘public knowing’ of risk that limits people’s freedom to use public space independently and seeks to support active citizenship through community participation in planning.  Julie has over 10 years professional experience as a planner and consultant.

Soumitri Varadarajan is Deputy Dean, Industrial and Interior Design, at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia) & Editor (South and South-East Asia) for the Encyclopedia of Asian Design. He worked at Hitachi in Japan and has directed studios in Israel, India, Netherlands, China, Turkey, Portugal and France. He has run an SME focused upon fabrication and metal furniture production in India. Focussed upon the social he approaches design from a range of social, aesthetic and material culture perspectives. In health his practice takes the approach of de-medicalising and re-contextualizing everyday practices of 'patients' by developing new traditions and artefacts.

We hope you can join us!

If you are not in Melbourne or are unable to attend, please contact us if you would like to contribute or to share ideas with us. The Architects for Peace vision is to ensure that urban spaces are planned, designed and used in the interests of social equity and environmental protection. It is very important to us to build strong connections with like-minded professionals around the world.

Keep in touch,

the architectsforpeace team