CITYMAKERS

Deutsche Version / на български

A kiosk that doesn’t sell but shares – that’s how the project Sharing to Empower began. It explored how newly arrived people from Ukraine in Berlin invent their own forms of sharing and how these practices can create a sense of belonging, help build community, and help shape a new urban environment.

The starting point was the construction of a mobile “Sharing Kiosk,” designed and built by a Wilkommensklasse (classes for learning German as a second language) from Berlin. They gave it the name Небайдужі – a Ukrainian word for “those who care,” “those who won’t look away.”

It all started with a simple question: What would you share with others – and what should be shared with you? Objects, knowledge, gestures, memories. We built a collective storytelling process from this question. The ideas took shape as a mobile vehicle: a kiosk on a cargo bike, carrying things, experiences, practices and messages from place to place.

Imagining ways of sharing

Some imagined a tiny hotel on wheels – a place to pause while on the move. Somewhere you could charge your phone, drink water, take a quick shower, fix your bike, and gather strength again.

Others envisioned a first-aid station for recently arrived people: shelves filled with essentials – hygiene items, clothing, medicine – alongside toys and crayons for children, food for pets. A shelf where you could leave something and take something in return.

One group wanted to dedicate the kiosk entirely to animals. Their reasoning: people often receive support, but animals rarely do. They imagined water fountains, feeding stations, and a small shelter to rest or hide – a piece of home for animals in the middle of the city.

Some looked back to their memories from Ukraine: games in the treehouses, friendships and conversations. Their vision was a kiosk similar to a treehouse – a joyful space with chairs in the sun, a secret box for wishes, and a glass cabinet to display and pass their messages.

Shared outcome

Not all of these ideas could be easily combined. But step by step, a small kiosk on a cargo bike came to life: with self-built chairs, swap shelves, and tools to repair bikes. Its roof could fold out – at times becoming a dining table, at others a print station or a workbench for new ideas.

The kiosk turned into a place for stories. The young people wrote messages and memories on its surface. Inside, they left secret texts – words not meant to be read – and uplifting notes for those who would later encounter the kiosk.

In the end, the Sharing Kiosk became much more than a functional space. It grew into a collective storytelling tool, a living example of how participatory storytelling can empower young people to shape their environment, activate communities, and create new images of “home” in a foreign city.

The project was developed in collaboration with Koopkultur e.V., architect Thomas Wienands, and Tanja Sokolnykova, cultural mediator, somatic practitioner, and activist.

Koopkultur e.V. (Berlin) is a migrant nonprofit organization and interdisciplinary network that initiates artistic, educational, and social processes. We see our work as a contribution to collective learning rooted in everyday experience, spatial relations, and shared forms of knowledge. Our practice engages with space both as a physical environment that can be shaped and as a social site of encounter and negotiation. For us, learning unfolds in the interplay between people, bodies, objects, and stories.