Write Your Name

What is your name? Leave your mark, let your neighbors know who lives or come here!

Alex Zeitlin, Suzana Thalheimer Gross and I, at the marketplace in Delfshaven, the Netherlands. We hung a white A3 sheet on a lamppost and invited pedestrians to write down their name. The neighbourhood was very diverse and some people asked us which name they should write down. Our answer was the name that you feel the most related to.

While people were writing their names down, we introduced ourselves. By opening up, we connected with this neighbourhood. We shared stories of ourselves and we even took selfies with some of them.

This was a fun intervention and we got to know introduced ourselves to this neighbourhood.

What I’ve learned is to be more open or even vulnerable. Invite others to be part of your conversation so we may gain knowledge from their perspective towards our world. By doing so, we will understand and learn from our own perspectives too.