Urban Gorillas
NGO
Urban Gorillas is a non-profit organisation that contributes to sustainable urban living by enabling projects that bring new energy and instigate change in city spaces and communities. The focus of our work is to enhance the notion of ‘public’ through interventions in public spaces and community engagement.
Behind The Scenes
Short description:
Urban Gorillas (UG) is a non-profit organisation run by a multidisciplinary team of urban enthusiasts who envision healthy, creative and socially inclusive cities. UG was established in Cyprus in 2013 and has since been active in sustainable city-making through urban regeneration, community engagement, and the implementation of socio-cultural and artistic projects in public spaces.
Urban Gorillas aspires to trigger citizens to collaboratively envision and create sustainable and inclusive spaces, through the creation of diverse toolkits for engagement. Our projects enrich the urban topography with socio-artistic interventions that respond to the current political, environmental and social challenges. UG’s activities include the creation of digital and non-digital platforms to facilitate discussions, exchange of views with citizens concerning community-related problems.
The organisation shares expertise in arts and architecture, urban design and planning, landscape design, environmental engineering, economics, communications, cultural project management, as well as a love for innovation …
View from your window: Trees and plants, greenery, old traditional houses, and a colourful palette of diverse people.
What's your contribution?
Our focus on enhancing public spaces was formulated from the beginning of our activities with our first large-scale project, the Green Urban Lab, funded by the EEA Grants in 2014-2015. This was the first time that public spaces in Cyprus were claimed as common democratic platforms, achieved through the conversion of public monuments via an artistic-activist project. An in-depth research followed that led to various academic outputs from peer-reviewed papers to a book publication extending beyond the project’s requirements. Green Urban Lab highlighted the importance of public spaces and proved the need for a transparent process in the governance and design of our cities.
UG investigates solutions for a sustainable urban future through research-oriented design and creation of new social processes. Using diverse approaches such as co-creating and co-curating with communities and their own methodology, as for example it was developed in the ‘adopt-an-artist’ project. “Adopt an artist” was the theme of the 2018 Pame Kaimakli Festival which is one of the main activities of Urban Gorillas.
Pame Kaimakli is a neighbourhood festival launched in 2013 by the residents of the Kaimakli district and Urban Gorillas. From a series of ad-hoc informal events that were taking place in the private houses of the neighbors, the Festival has grown into a well-known event, welcoming acclaimed artists; it became a cross-disciplinary place where local meets global. It is an annual community event that aims to explore ideas of publicness, co-creation and community engagement through creative interventions with the collaboration of residents and artists.
Additionally, at present the organisation is currently involved in two Creative Europe Programs “A-Place” and “European Creative Rooftop Network”.
What brings you here?
Our passion for participatory planning and community engagement are the main reasons that bring us here today.. We consider “The Empty Square” as an incredible way to connect, collaborate and exchange ideas with other urban enthusiasts across the globe! As the problems we encounter in our cities and in particular in the decline of public spaces are related to globalisation, we aspire to find some solutions to counteract against this trend and create better places in the city.
What's the most important?
Since the organisation's establishment in 2013 we have run over 80 activities in the form of urban installations, lectures & presentations, exhibition, workshops, research & publications, community actions and events.
Urban Gorilla’s work is renowned internationally and has been exhibited in some very important international venues, like the MaXXi Museum in Rome, the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Design Triennale in Milan.
Members of the organisation are also invited to run workshops about Sustainable cities and Communities across the world.
Equally Urban Gorillas has received in 2018 the prestigious “Outstanding Contribution Award” from the University of Nicosia for their contribution to the betterment of society.
Meet Urban Gorillas Here:
