The ‘Fabrika’, venue of the Student Cultural Centre, hosted another ‘Divan’ about the future development of the former ‘Petar Drapšin’ factory on the initiative of the ‘Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’. Tenants that lease office spaces, citizens and expert public, representatives of the City of Novi Sad and Foundation participated in this edition of ‘Divan’. The topic was WHAT should be the content of this space in order to transform it into a new cultural-creative centre until 2021, when Novi Sad will be European Capital of Culture.
Nemanja Milenković, CEO of the Foundation, stressed that series of very important conclusions are the result of a democratic and transparent decision process. The most important conclusion is that the space of the so-called Chinese Quarter should preserve its authenticity and heritage.
– The Plan of Detailed Regulation defines the look and purpose of the space, and therefore excludes commercial, residential and storage objects. We defined the framework, taking into consideration cultural-creative industries, as well as the minimum of joint interests with craftsmen, and we concluded that the existing users of this space are welcome to jointly build the future through co-existence with creative sector, through creativity or by aiding creativity – Mr Milenković added.
At the end of the ‘Divan’, the proposal was put forward to form a Panel (working body) for management of the space and Youth Creative Polis project that would consists of one representative from each of the following organisations/institutions: ‘Novi Sad 2021’ Foundation, OPENS, competent city administrations and work group for capital investments and infrastructure, then representatives of craftsmen that perform their activities in this quarter, and artists, i.e. their expert associations. In this way, with the work of the Panel, we will come to mechanisms for creating functional and architectural solution. The Foundation will inform the expert public about these conclusions at the Cultural Forum on 31 August 2017, which will also express its opinions on these questions, and give its assessment and proposals.
We would like to remind that the ‘Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’ Foundation initiated discussions on the topic of reconstruction of the space of the so-called Chinese Quarter, as part of the long-term process to transform city of Novi Sad. Furthermore, we conducted numerous studies that showed that the biggest percentage of surveyed citizens, expert public, as well as tenants in the so-called Chinese Quarter are aware of safety, visual and functional deficiencies of this part of the city. Therefore, the majority agrees that the reconstruction is necessary and desirable in the context of defining its purpose and to raise tourist and cultural-creative potentials of the city.
We are proud that, through dialogue, we reached very concrete conclusions and solutions regarding this issue important for development of our city and strategic development of culture. We invite all who are interested to join us at next ‘Divan’ that will be organised on 5 September 2017, where we will discuss financing capital and infrastructural changes that are envisaged within the Youth Creative Polis Project.
