20-10-2020 // MEETINGS, MEETINGS, MEETINGS

• Eric, area coordinator Emmasingelkwadrant

• Olha, strategic advisor on citizen engagement

ERIC

We started our day with a meeting with Eric. Eric is the area coordinator of the Emmasingelkwadrant, the ‘ears and eyes’ of the area. Eric is also someone we wanted to get to know; he could be very useful for our project. We had not prepared any questions for the conversation with Rolf; the conversation was meant to get to know each other and to see what Rolf had to say about the Emmasingelkwadrant. The intention of the conversation with Eric was the same, only we tried to get some more specific information from him, such as contact details of important stakeholders. Some information Eric shared:

• See what's already there and where you can hook up. Look where you can make a connection. A number of parties in this area are trying to improve the quality of life in a certain way. It would be a shame if you act as a dependent party, even though you can help each other. Vital Zone is, among other things, working on improving the vitality in this area. VANTOT will install the Sunseeker street lighting/lighting installation in the first two weeks of November. They also have ideas to "spice up" the neighborhood further. The contact person of this organization is Esther Jongsma, Designer / Creative Director. → Idea: organizing a meeting with all the involved parties at the end of November.

• The developer of the area is Foolen & Reijs Vastgoed

• interesting stakeholders could be the TAC, businesses, and cafés adjacent to the Victoriapark, Holland2Stay, and the Jumbo. 

• Approximately 900 new homes will be built in this area. How can you get the new resident enthusiastic about this area?

• Every now and then a ‘leefbaarhiedsoverleg’ is organized by the residents that live in this area. This meeting is mainly attended by (members of) the association of owners and residents of the area. The next meeting will be Monday the 26th of October at 6 pm. We are invited to this meeting, to see what the needs are in this area and to introduce ourselves and our project.  

• Eric will send us the stakeholder analysis he is creating, so we can add these stakeholders to our analysis as well. 

• The ‘carcass’ (the stripped building) attracts homeless people. The homeless, people with alcohol and drugs cause nuisance in this area. First, it was mostly around the carcass, now people are also taking drugs between different apartment complexes. 

OLHA

The conversation with Eric was very interesting. The conversations with both Rolf and Eric help us to create a picture of the Emmasingelkwadrant, to see what is going on and who are the stakeholders involved. The second meeting of the day was with Olha. Olha is a strategic advisor on citizen engagement for the municipality of Eindhoven with a keen eye for innovation, tech, and data. Lately, she has been diving into gamification as a tool for placemaking projects and looks forward to starting a pilot project with the matter. As we will be trying to connect to the inhabitants of the area, she could be a valuable contact for advice on how to get the locals involved in our project.

Similar to our approach regarding the other orientational meetings, we did not prepare any specific questions. Our aim was to properly introduce ourselves and our project and get new insights into how to approach the project and the stakeholders involved.

• Olha explained to us that the municipality is used to communicating with organized neighborhood communities, as there are more possibilities around helping with subsidies or permits when there is a unified group that appointed a treasurer. 

• Furthermore, she told us that the municipality has trouble including individuals to participate in the developments of the city. Especially the young and international inhabitants are fairly underrepresented in participation projects. This shows us that it could be interesting to find out how we can organize a stable neighborhood community as this opens up more opportunities in the long run. When it comes to the involvement of internationals, apparently it is not normal that governments involve civilians and provide insight into the developments of the town. This was a new insight for us in the Netherlands the municipality is obliged by law to do so.

• Another valuable insight came from the fact that the corona-lockdown forces open meetings around participation projects to be held online. These meetings have shown that the young and international inhabitants of Eindhoven are more likely to join participation projects when they are held online than when they are held in a community center. This insight provides us with some direction for when we would organize any meetings in the future of this project. By telling us about this, Olha confirmed Rolf Simons words about these same insights.

• In a way, she informed us about the importance of involving a well-represented audience in the neighborhood. To help us with that she emailed us the link to an inhabitant compound research conducted by the municipality’s district analysts. It provides a lot of insights into who actually live and work in the area specified as ‘Witte Dame’ (part of the Emmasingelkwadrant) https://eindhoven.infogram.com/1p1jwkrm6kxnw0tmd3xmj2295qa6vjjqmy3. Interestingly is that she told us most of her colleagues do not use these research results yet and as a matter of fact, no one had told us about the existence of the data before.

• Furthermore, Olha warned us to be careful with arousing the expectations of the stakeholders we plan to work with. She emphasized on keeping contact with the people so that they will be kept up to date. Furthermore, we should be clear about our goal, roles, and possibilities right from the start.

• We discussed the possibilities of using gamification and a geofencing application the municipality could use to ask questions to people that are at highlighted locations in a virtual map of the city.

• She offered us the possibility to get us in contact with the district analysts if we would be interested in specific data in the future.

All in all another valuable meeting and Olha could become a very valuable contact during the project.