Citizens' exhibition - "Mensch Görlitz!"

With our idea, we as the project team of the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences would like to make a contribution to the social participation of all people in Görlitz. The reason for this are still existing challenges in the social coexistence of the European city of Görlitz, due to the increase in heterogeneity of people in recent years. In doing so, we also want to recognize possible prejudices with regard to the increase in migration as part of social change and offer an opportunity for exchange. To this end, we are organizing a creative and participatory citizens' exhibition in various public spaces in order to reach as many people as possible in a low-threshold manner and create spaces for encounters.

We want to give Görlitz residents a voice in their diversity in the interviews we conduct (young/older people, people with a migration background, people from different social backgrounds) and encourage them to participate. Dreams, wishes, fears, favorite places and ideas of home will be addressed.

In addition to the exhibition, we would like to create additional meeting spaces for people from Görlitz in the form of vernissages and finissages, which we will pedagogically guide. Visitors will also be able to actively participate by becoming part of the exhibition themselves. Participation is therefore not only the aim but also the subject of the exhibition, which has been open since November 2019. Sustainability is also made possible by the distribution of accompanying booklets with the contents of the citizens' exhibition. Our project aims to raise awareness of prejudice and everyday racism without focusing on origin. The focus is on the idea of inclusion. As a pioneering border town, Görlitz serves as a model and role model for the whole of Lusatia, which is why we attach great importance to the mobility of the exhibition in the region, which is affected by structural change.

The exhibition was organized by social work students in their fourth & fifth semester as part of their project studies.