Date: Saturday 26th September 2026
Time: 12:00–14:30
Location: Varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)
RSVP: Register via this form
Participation: Free

What does safety feel like beyond surveillance and control?

In this hands-on workshop, we’ll use sounds, songs and memories to explore how identity shapes our experiences of safety and belonging in the city.

When do you feel welcome, watched, protected or exposed? What makes you relax in a space, stay alert, change your route or feel that you belong somewhere? And how might those experiences shift depending on who you are?

Starting from these questions, we’ll work with personal memories, recordings, music and other sonic material. Through simple sound production in Audacity, each participant will create a short audio piece based on their own experience.

Beyond surveillance

The workshop is part of the co-creation process for Blind Spots, a participatory installation for Dutch Design Week 2026.

Blind Spots asks what safety in public space could look like beyond surveillance, control and exclusion. Instead of starting from cameras, barriers or monitoring, the project looks at the everyday experiences, relationships and forms of care that can make a space feel safe.

There is no single experience or definition of safety. Identity, perception and context all shape how we move through public space differently. Currently, we’re collecting a wide range of stories and perspectives to make these differences visible and audible. With your consent, the audio piece you create may become part of the sonic landscape of the installation.

Blind Spots is being developed by Fairspace, a non-profit working towards safer and more inclusive public spaces through research, training and creative participatory projects.

Can’t make the workshop but want to contribute?

You can still share your story with the project by emailing imreismen@gmail.com.

More about Blind Spots: https://ddw.nl/en/programme/blind-spots-a-speculative-care-infrastructure

More about Fairspace: https://fairspace.co/

Practical

Date: Saturday 26th September 2026
Time: 12:00–14:30
Location: Varia, Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam
RSVP: Register via this form
Participation: Free

Please bring a laptop + headphones.

No previous Audacity experience needed.