neue Gesellschaft
für bildende Kunst

At the suggestion of the Council of the Arts, the Initiative Urbane Praxis (Urban Praxis Initiative) was created in 2020, bringing together project partners from across Berlin to develop new structural proposals for these challenges at the interface of civic stakeholders, municipal
administration, and politics. An important point of reference is the initiative Haben und Brauchen (To Have and To Need) and its accompanying manifesto and two open letters (2011–13), from which, among other things, the new city tax-based funding model or the broad rent policy movement emerged.

As a collective movement, Urban Praxis draws essential support from three directions: the artistic and curatorial, the urbanistic / planning and artistic / constructive, as well as from sociocultural and activist practice. The Initiative Urbane Praxis is working towards a cultural change in Berlin so as to clarify the kind of city in which we want to live together in the future. This includes its physical space, environment, processes, artifacts, communications, forms of interaction, and politics, as well as the link between qualities of urban space and artistic forms of practice.

Building on the 2019 Urbane Kulturen (Urban Cultures) conference, the work group SITUATION BERLIN of the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst/nGbK has organized two workshop conferences. Conceived as part of the Initiative Urbane Praxis, they contextualize the potential of the movement and its artistic, creative, and activist methods, and situate it within a discourse. Therefore, the Glossary Urban of Praxis as well as 11 Theses Towards a Manifesto of Urban Praxis were elaborated in German and English and published in print and online form:

Funded within the framework of DRAUSSENSTADT by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe