Call for entries: 2024
How can we change the way we imagine urban nature? What can we do to create a shared knowledge about green and blue infrastructures?
Scientists, landscape architects, policymakers, and others are studying the advantages of urban green and blue infrastructures, often referred to as GBI or “nature-based solutions,” which include parks, canals, and hedges. These infrastructures help tackle problems such as the heat island effect, noise pollution, and flooding. Despite their various uses and importance, these elements are often visually portrayed stereotypically.
At RECLAIM, we want to break down stereotypes by exploring how green and blue infrastructures work. We aim to show what they are made of, how they are used in different climates, their roles in social and cultural traditions and events, as well as how they are valued, maintained, accessed, and transformed over time. Our goal is to build a diverse, global GBI image database available to the public to be hosted on the free media repository Wikimedia Commons.
To achieve this goal, we launch the first Urban Green and Blue Infrastructures (GBI) International Photography Competition, organised by Nerea Calvillo for RECLAIM Network Plus, and curated with Gonzalo Herrero Delicado.
The competition is free and open to anyone in the world. Students, amateurs, emerging and established creatives are invited to submit photographs that reflect how green and blue infrastructures (GBIs) operate in their local contexts. Five photographs will be awarded 400 GBP each in the following categories: Best Picture, Most Unique GBI, Forgotten Cities, Under-represented Communities and Other Natures. Upload your picture/s to Wikimedia Commons by April 26, 2024, 7:59am GMT. The judging panel includes Lucia Pietroiusti, curator and Head of Ecologies at Serpentine, and Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, curator and Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art.
The winners and runners-up in each category will be displayed at the 2024 International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam—Nature of Hope in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and at the RECLAIM Engaging with Green and Blue Infrastructures Conference on May 23, 2024, to be held at the Barbican Centre in London, UK.
For further information and submission guidelines, please visit here.
About the RECLAIM Network Plus
The RECLAIM Network Plus is a UKRI-funded network focused on reclaiming forgotten cities and turning cities from vulnerable spaces to healthy places for people. The network aims to build a community of practice around urban Green and Blue Infrastructures, also known as GBI, to address knowledge gaps, implementation challenges, and fast-track solutions to allow cities to overcome climate and societal challenges. The members include city officials, business and industry, NGOs and academics, from the UK and worldwide. It is led by the University of Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) in collaboration with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the Universities of Bath, Bangor and Warwick.
To learn more about RECLAIM and join the network, visit here.
