Suhl-North – in discussion again

Last year we opened a second unofficial.pictures room in Suhl-Nord. As a child, Rafael had already lived in this prefabricated housing area, which is to be almost completely demolished due to population decline. Unfortunately, the remaining residents were barely included in this process. In addition, the “baseball bat years” have not been dealt with and there is still a lot of racism towards the migrant neighbors who moved here in recent years. Even our multilingual posters have already been covered with werhmacht-glorifying stickers or even been torn down. In the rest of the city, on the other hand, the neighborhood is often associated with classist prejudices or only “the right-wingers” are seen. Many have already given up on the neighborhood.
This summer, thanks to a grant from the Fonds Soziokultur, we can now become active in Suhl-Nord and want to try what we are quite good at – bringing people from different backgrounds into an exchange about their different perspectives with the help of photography.
To do this, we are looking for pictures that show the personal aspects of life in the neighborhood over the past decades, and we want to show a selection of them in an open-air exhibition on the many now derelict sites where apartment blocks once stood.
In addition, we are planning a workshop in which people with a connection to the neighborhood will bring their topics, implement them using various photographic strategies, and work together to create a neighborhood newspaper that counters the prejudices about the neighborhood with differentiated and diverse images.
In order to get in touch with each other casually, we are inviting everyone to a street party on July 23 from 2 to 8 p.m. directly in front of our office in the Ärztehaus. You can already bring pictures and tell stories about them or create collages for the redesign of the neighborhood. At the same time, several associations from the area will be presenting themselves at various booths and there will be other activities for young and old to participate in. More information can be found on the website suhl-nord.de, which was specially designed by Büro222 for the occasion.
Throughout the summer, photography student Carlotta Steinkamp is supporting us, especially in this project, first as an intern and now as a freelancer. Big thanks to her!