During the Open Space event at K 20 in Düsseldorf, Prasanna Oommen chaired a panel discussion in English on 20 January 2019. The artist Kader Attia (Berlin/Paris) joined urban researcher Hilke Berger (Hamburg), director of Aarhus Public Libraries Marie Østergård (Aarhus, Denmark) and Klaus Kaiser, parliamentary secretary of the Ministry of Culture and Science for the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, in a discussion of “Cultural Institutions as Third Spaces – What is their significance for the urban context”.
The following is a quote about the event that we particularly liked, courtesy of library director Evelyn Buchholtz from the Mediothek Krefeld:
The statements about the Third Spaces confirmed that libraries have long been providing a space for encounters between real people, irrespective of age, gender, background or status, and that they offer this without admission fees or any obligatory purchase. Despite its content being largely familiar to me, I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion, which was interpreted simultaneously between German and English, thanks not least to the calm and extremely competent host …
via https://mediothek.blog/2019/02/03/open-space-in-duesseldorf/