KomshiLOOK is a community-based model that turns residential spaces into collective places of culture, connection and pride, shaped by local residents and shared experiences that strengthen relationships, neighbourhood belonging and everyday forms of citizenship.
Define the problem/need you are solving or addressing with your project. How does it address the Open Call criteria, such as environmental impact, social engagement, circularity, user experience, resource efficiency, and community-driven solutions?
Komsiluk is a Balkan value based on care, responsibility, proximity and the everyday practice of living with others. Yet in many contemporary residential areas, these bonds are weakening. Shared spaces still exist, but they are often underused and rarely seen as places for participation, exchange or collective life. KomshiLOOK starts from look as an invitation to pay closer attention to our surroundings. Through multidisciplinary art formats, it reuses existing residential architecture, local knowledge and everyday routines, transforming these environments into low-resource, community-driven cultural spaces. This method connects social engagement with resource-conscious practice, using adaptation instead of new construction. By activating places where people already live, it nurtures relationships, reinforces neighbourhood identity and encourages participation as a form of citizenship. Through this process, residents become co-curators and co-authors, shaping a cultural experience that reflects local identity while reinforcing responsibility, recognition, and collective ownership of shared space.
Please describe your project, reflecting on the concept, inspiration, materials, technical aspects, methods and process(es).
KomshiLOOK is a one-day neighbourhood format created through a three-month collaborative curatorial process. It is designed for residential areas of different social and cultural backgrounds, in both urban and rural settings, usually involving communities of up to 300 residents or about 150 households. Each edition includes over 100 participants and reaches around 2,000 visitors. The project places multidisciplinary art formats inside private and semi-private spaces, from balconies and windows to yards and domestic interiors. Residents take on small but meaningful hosting roles, while artists and creatives develop the programme through spatial dramaturgy and close collaboration with the community. In this way, neighbours also encounter new artistic formats and ways of participating in culture. The result is a collective process shaped from within the neighbourhood itself, making KomshiLOOK a one-day rehearsal of an ideal neighbourhood, where everyone contributes to a shared experience.
What do you think makes your project innovative compared to the existing efforts and ideas in the field it addresses?
KomshiLOOK connects social practice, spatial design and multidisciplinary art in one community-based model. It places culture inside the neighbourhood itself, using existing architecture as a living platform for collaboration. Through different artistic-formats and a process of spatial dramaturgy, it creates new ways of meeting and working together in places where culture is often absent or inaccessible. Its value lies not only in artistic output, but in building trust, collaboration and resilience. The artistic programme becomes one layer of a wider process in which people begin relating differently to one another and to the spaces they share. In this sense, KomshiLOOK functions both as a cultural format and as a model for active neighbourhood citizenship. It is a low-resource, adaptable approach that offers a strong alternative to institution-based programming and top-down community engagement. It also brings together multigenerational residents from different backgrounds, connected not by profession or status, but simply neighbours.
Does it impact or reflect young people need(s) and how?
KomshiLOOK reflects young people’s needs by responding to the lack of accessible, meaningful and participatory cultural spaces in everyday life. Many young people experience culture as distant, expensive, institutional, or disconnected from their own environment. KomshiLOOK brings art directly into neighbourhoods, streets, villages and shared spaces, making participation easier, more open and more relevant.
It also responds to the need for visibility, belonging, expressio and connection. Through the project, young people gain space to experiment, meet others and see their surroundings differently.
KomshiLOOK supports social imagination, local pride and a sense of agency. It shows young people that culture can happen where they are, and that they can actively shape public life, community relations and the identity of their own environment. It also offers a strong example for future generations and a reminder of what it means to be a good neighbour.
