Gelsenkirchen.
How do Schalke see their district? Is it littering, social problems? The project Heimatwerkstatt Schalke is looking for answers, especially positive ones
Schalke, that is: center of life, home, district, homeland. But what does that actually mean, homeland? House Eintracht on Grillostrasse, the door is wide open, it’s an early Tuesday evening. Anna Schimanski has come, the 88-year-old has a lot to report when it comes to her Schalke. Later, she will start talking and the people around her will listen intently. It is the prelude to a project that should even be visible in a few weeks: the home workshop Schalke.
Gelsenkirchen: What does home mean for Schalke?
“Identification with your city” – that is the main theme of the home workshop Schalke. Katrin Jeuschnik from the Urban Planning Department explains the background of the project: “We want to work out the positive things, what is special about Schalke, what are the defining places, what has changed?” You want to show that there are other topics that make up this district, other topics than football and the social problems. “It’s important to us to exchange ideas with people, to really start a conversation,” explains Doris van Kemenade from the Schalke district office. Expressly, and they attach great importance to this, it is not a citizens’ meeting.
The home workshop will keep Schalke busy for several months. The project is on two levels, aimed at adults from Schalke and also quite explicitly at the children of the district. Katrin Jeuschnik says that young and old are deliberately brought into line here. And this is where the cooperation partners come into play: the facilities known beyond the city limits, the Zoom Erlebniswelt and the Musiktheater im Revier (MiR). Children who visit the girls’ center and the offers of the Amigonians, who are based in the Eintracht building themselves, are invited to look behind the scenes of the zoo and the theatre. They get insights they might never have gotten otherwise.
Gelsenkirchen’s Schalke district: what do those who live here remember?
The certainly impressive experiences should then be processed in subsequent workshops, artistically accompanied by Rodica Lupu, who studied theater. In the end, all threads of this project, which were spun by the adults as well as the children to Schalke at home, come together with her. “It’s about better perceiving the beauty of Schalke,” explains Rodica Lupu. This should also be possible with the help of old photos, which the participants should bring with them.
“We’re setting out together with this project,” says Doris van Kemenade, always with the idea that people can start a conversation. And that’s how it is on this April evening: They’re sitting in three large groups, but they’re all together and they’re supposed to do some “brainstorming,” as Rodica Lupu calls it. The usual problems come up too quickly, the littering, the vandalism, the dissatisfaction that has grown over the years.
That’s a part of Schalke, but it shouldn’t be about it. And only a short time later, once you’ve had a chance to vent, it seems it gets almost nostalgic. It reminds you of the Konstantin ice cream parlour, here of the roasting of potatoes on Schäferplatz. And then there was the liquorice factory. “It was really urban life here,” comes from a corner.
Gelsenkirchen-Schalke: “That was all Grillo with us”
Anna Schimanski also looks back, “that was all Grillo with us,” she says. And also tells of how a nun came to take care of the sick. Anna Schimanski will continue to explain the Schalke story from her perspective, while at the next table there is talk of “one to two centimeters” thick layers of red dust on the window sills. At the end of the evening, the initiators are satisfied with what was already possible at the start.
And what’s next? After the workshops for the children and the adults, the results are brought together – and at the end the artistic translation for the design in public space follows.
There is already a specific location: along Florastraße, graffiti is to be displayed on a previously drab concrete wall, showing what they have come up with together about their Schalke. “We want to make the results of the home workshop visible to everyone,” explains Katrin Jeuschnik. So that the idea of ”Heimat Schalke” also has a lasting effect.
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