Curatorial Work → Common Ways
A participatory design project reimagining everyday public infrastructure as sites for connection, culture, and collective meaning-making.
Public infrastructure like bus stops often blends into the background of daily life. Yet, as media researcher Stine Ejsing-Duun reminds us, these spaces can hold transformative potential when reactivated through participatory urbanism — a way of practicing everyday democracy and making the invisible structures around us visible through shared action.
This idea inspired Common Ways — a collaborative design project developed as part of the Nordic Master in Visual Studies and Art Education (NoVA), a joint programme between Aalborg and Aalto University. Together with three fellow students, I explored two iconic elements of Superkilen park in Nørrebro, Copenhagen: a white bus stop from Kazakhstan and a blue bus sign from Jordan.
Our goal was to challenge how we perceive and use public space. What happens when infrastructure isn’t just functional, but becomes a platform for dialogue, culture, and connection? Common Ways explores how everyday spaces can be reclaimed as common ground — places where movement, memory, and meaning intersect.
Through a participatory and visual design process, we proposed a series of gentle but symbolic interventions — such as halting graffiti removal to preserve local voices and marks, linking different pathways around the site, and imagining a local “bus tour” that tells layered stories of the neighborhood. Each element aims to make the site more responsive to the people who use it and rooted in the social fabric that surrounds it.
Our process was grounded in collective ideation, sketching, critical reflection, and an openness to let the project grow with and through the community.