The action Greetings from Beyond the Construction Site promotes the idea of urban gardening as practiced for the past three years by the Beyond the Construction Site project, a community-based garden intervention in a degraded urban space in Ljubljana.

With the 10 cubic meters of soil they had delivered outside the +MSUM building on 21 June, KUD Obrat invite anyone wishing to create an urban garden of their own to take their share of the soil and claim their right to green.

Supported by the Bunker institute, KUD Obrat initiated the Beyond the Construction Site project near Resljeva Street in 2010. In collaboration with local residents and other interested people they turned a long-fenced-off plot of land into a community space intended for urban gardens, socializing, ecological projects, education, and culture. Beyond the Construction Site shows the potential of degraded urban areas and the possibility of their receiving new value through temporary use and community-based interventions and encourages urban community-based gardening. In addition to serving to increases self-sustainability with food crops it also performs an important social role: community gardens provide a place for socializing, learning to manage local resources as a community, practice solidarity and forge a sense of community.

Cultural workers of various profiles, artists and architects active in the fields of contemporary art, architecture and sound have come together in KUD Obrat. Focusing on process and research, their interdisciplinary projects deal with current phenomena shaping contemporary society and urban space.

Photo: Onkraj gradbišča, Ljubljana, August 2010, KUD Obrat archive