Rotterdam children learn about history to find their identity

It had to be a book with a message. Not a non-committal comic book, but a serious graphic novel with stories about Rotterdam then and now, and especially about the people of Rotterdam then and now. That was the book that Ellen Schindler had in mind, and that will now be presented on November 22 in Theater Zuidplein: Subway 010. From that date it will also be available in bookshops and next year all approximately 9,000 students in the first year of secondary schools in Rotterdam will receive a copy.

Schindler is partner and CEO of De Zwarte Hond, a design agency for architecture and urban planning. In Rotterdam, the office is responsible for the design of Theater Zuidplein, the Praktijkcollege Zuidwijk and the recent housing project De Boezem on Boezemweg.

To do your job well as architects and urban planners, you have to get to know a city, make it your own, maybe even love it a little, says Schindler. At the same time, you must realize that you are not only building the city for now, but also for future generations, starting with the current young residents. And then you also have to ask yourself what young people actually know about the city. “Do they know the history? Do they feel part of the city, do they feel they can make a difference?”

With these questions as a starting point, Schindler initiated the book. As a director she put Rotterdam historians, illustrators, photographers and city poets to work. Abdelkader Benali wrote the story about Franny and Joey, which runs like a red thread through the book. The main characters are two students who get on the metro together, which, as a result of an experiment with nuclear energy on the Maasvlakte, goes haywire and makes a journey through time.

At each stop, Franny and Joey attend a key moment in history. They are there when the dam is built in the Rotte in 1270 and when the expanded village receives city rights fifty years later. In the nineteenth century they helped to dig the Nieuwe Waterweg and were bombed in 1940. After the war, they demonstrated for urban renewal.

Influence on your own city

Questions about the identity of Rotterdam and the people of Rotterdam have occupied Schindler for some time. She herself started to feel like a Rotterdammer from the day she came to the city from Heerlen at the age of seventeen to study at the Willem de Kooning Academy. Before her time at De Zwarte Hond, she worked in Amsterdam for more than ten years. “I really longed to go back to Rotterdam. I like the no nonsense. Today we want something, tomorrow we will just do it, and the day after tomorrow it will be there. That’s how this city is put together and that’s how I am. That is how the book came about.”

It is no coincidence that the book is awarded to students in the seventh grade. “That is the moment that instead of going around the corner of the street with your scooter, you go to your new school with a bicycle. You increase your range, explore the city,” says Schindler. An excellent moment to learn more about your city, and about the history of the city.

The book is published by the foundation Ken Je Stad, Maak Je Stad!, founded by Schindler to introduce young people to history, architecture and urban planning, by giving these disciplines a place in education. “We want to show that young people can influence how their own street, neighborhood and city develop. A city is not made in a moment, by one person, but is created over time with a community. And everyone is part of that.”

‘Rotterdam is a fantastic decor for comics‘

The book is financed by the municipality and several sponsors and is published by nai010. It will be a school edition that will also include teaching materials. Teachers and students can get to work with this, under the motto: the city in the classroom. In addition, the intention is that students can go out: the classroom in the city. Discussions are underway about cooperation with various cultural institutions, such as the library. It is also planned to run the project over the next five years, longer if successful.

In the board of the foundation, Karim Amghar has to maintain the bridge to education. Amghar has been teaching at Zadkine for thirteen years, is chairman of a committee that advises Minister Dijkgraaf about inequality in opportunities in MBO and made a program for Open Rotterdam about Rotterdam’s identity. “Education has the task of teaching children to make themselves self-reliant and resilient, to teach them to deal with setbacks. That is only possible if they are grounded, if they know who they are. That’s why identity development is so important,” says Amghar.

Responsible for the future

At the same time, identity, both personal and cohesive with the environment, is not something you impose, but that arises. It is especially difficult to grasp in a multiform city like Rotterdam. Amghar: “A person never fits into a single box. Diversity, our differences, are important, but just as important is what unites us. Rotterdammers can still be reserved about each other: you are for Liveable or for Think, you are a believer or an unbeliever, a Christian or a Muslim. But if you let go of that, many of those contradictions fade away.

You notice that when you meet another Rotterdammer somewhere in the world: there is an immediate click.”

Amghar hopes that through the book and the project, classrooms will talk with knowledge of the past about everyone’s responsibility for the future of Rotterdam. It becomes clear that the history of the city you live in is something that everyone shares. „If you first work towards common ground, or a common goal, then you can discuss the most difficult topics. That common ground is the Rotterdam identity, a kind of we-feeling. This allows you to bring young people together and also tackle bigger issues in the city.”

These issues are addressed when Franny and Joey’s journey is over and the book ends with a number of drawn future scenarios. What will Rotterdam look like in 2050? As an inclusive city where everyone is welcome, where there is room for sports and games, where technology provides solutions? Where nature has overgrown the buildings? Or is it going in the wrong direction and the city has become unlivable by then: RotterDoom.

Ultimately, the book is a way of discussing one’s own living environment, how it arises and what role it plays in a shared identity, says Schindler. In a city with so many different nationalities and cultures, that is not obvious. “I notice something striking in that regard: many young people, regardless of their origin, feel more Rotterdam than Dutch. Knowledge about the history of the city can reinforce that.”