The theme for the month of September is Public Spaces.
UNESCO defines public space as,�an area or place that is open and accessible to all peoples, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level.� Therefore a large array of places�can be grouped as public space. These can be:
Streets
Parks
Markets
City Centre/ Town Square
Museums
Monuments
With this theme�we are acknowledging spaces, that are more often than not, taken for granted. So as you are gallivanting around your city, stop and�take a second look at these public realms and appreciate the design, its history, the architecture and most importantly the community cohesiveness these areas promote.
Want to contribute to the�theme of the month? Here are a few formats you can deploy and become a part of celebrating your city’s public spaces:
- Photo essay: Take a trip around your city and capture at least five public spaces of interest. Write long captions (up to 50 words each) explaining the importance of each one of the public spaces that you decide to include in your essay. Make sure your captions make for a fun read, and add to the story, rather than picking a random line from the same story.
- Interview a person of interest: Every city, small town have these interesting people — old restaurants — with that one dish which is so famous it attracts people from other towns (, a postman/old guard who has seen the geography change in a particular locality and now may or may not feel redundant, museum curators, a tea seller who has been doing business outside some monument or historical place for quite some time, and so on. This can be an interactive/conversation piece — say about in the region of 400 words
- Travelogues: Visit a public space in your city, or someplace you have wanted to visit and have been putting away. Or some place from your childhood, or as recent as last month. These would be first-person.
- Research Article: Write a research piece of up to 600 words on a local museum in your city or around the world that you think has played an important role in improving the heritage or cultural quotient of a city.