Street & Urban Creativity International Research Topic, Portugal
Street & Urban Creativity International Research Topic develops actions to generate stronger articulations between researchers through collective applications, applied research, public space interventions, projects and scientific published material.
International research topic created with the purpose of knowledge gathering and scientific recognition of Urban Creativity as Graffiti and Street Art studies area. We organize annual scientific meetings (conferences, seminars) and publications, books and the Street Art & Urban Creativity Scientific Journal. UPark, an urban park as “laboratory”, is our applied research based activity in the metropolitan area of Lisbon, from there we also develop Services.
Urban intervention, street art and public space: Editing this publication opens a new approach for the Urbancreativity publication activity, for the first time editing content that’s developed by partners and not by the research topic structure alone. This book it has its direct origin on an international call for papers, issued by Pedro Costa and Paula Guerra, which aimed to give body to a publication on the thematic of creative milieus and cultural scenes in contemporary urban spaces.
The organizers of that publication were surprised by the great quality and interest of the proposals for papers which were presented, even if many of them were not focused specifically and directly on the “creative milieus” and “urban scenes” approach they were looking for. Interestingly, many of the papers raised the issue of the relation between urban interventions (particularly street art approaches) and public space. That was so stimulating that the authors, drawing also upon previous work on that area, decided to give birth to another project, complementary to the edition of the original idea of book, which would be specifically focused on issues of urban interventions, street art and public space. For that, they joined Pedro Soares Neves, which have been working for years in the field of street art and urban interventions, is executive director of Urbancreativity international research topic on Graffiti, Street Art and Urban Creativity*. The diversity of contributions put together in this book acknowledges the variety of debates and perspectives that mark contemporary discussions on the relation between art and public space, with particular reference to the case of graffiti and street art, which attracted most of the contributors that came from various disciplines and backgrounds.
The topic is characterized by the aftermath of the 2014 Conference and the present version of the Journal scientific committee (19 PhD researchers from 12 countries).