In your own view, what challenges does your project address?
Ramash Imanifardazar: I started to work a year ago on Refugees’ Kitchen. I learned most of all how to participate and engage with others from diverse backgrounds. Sometimes we couldn’t even speak each other’s language just to mention one of the difficulties. But nothing stopped one of us with moving forward. It just brought everybody closer to each other, more like a big family rather than a group. Seeing the result in real life always warms my heart, but when I see the project in news or publications I become certain that it is not only important to us but also there are other like-minded people.
In how far do culture and creativity contribute to your project’s innovative and inclusive character?
We become creative and imaginative through interaction with others, while gaining skills and knowledge beyond our daily work. Here culture and art were our main tools. They were opening physical doors (to workshops) and they were helping us in translation: We had to find ways and strategies to understand each other on the construction site. In order to work together, we had to learn how to communicate properly – strangeness became closeness. We learned to see ourselves from a different angle to understand how things and how we as people are working. In this lies the great potential of change.
Please describe the transformative potentials of your project and explain its innovative character.
What has definitely changed during the project is our relation regarding slowness. We are living in principle in a society where rapidity counts as strength and leadership skill. What matters on our construction site : calm, patience and insistence bring us further. That could actually speed up the whole process in the end. But the basic idea is to try out a new economy of work. In this matter will be achieved: the spirit of innovation and co-creation.
Kitev is nominated for this year’s NICE Award. Find the complete shortlist here.