Have a seat! At the beginning of the year, this call had produced 25 ideas from Chemnitz residents for their city. 13 of them could have been realistically implemented and ten of them also received the prize money of 2025 Euros after an online vote. Now it’s time for the winners to start implementing their ideas. In the coming weeks, we want to present the individual projects in a little more detail – today the Zietenpark.

In the beginning there was garbage. A lot of garbage. But the members of the Association for Solidarity, Democracy and Education, SDB e.V. for short, knew how much work their project would entail. The office is right across the street – the small gap between the buildings at the corner of Zietenstraße and Jakobstraße catches their eye every day. They had long since decided to create a small open-air meeting place there again, so the call was just right. “Take a seat! is an incitement to civic engagement and the right way. It is often said that the city administration has to… No, the city belongs to the citizens and everyone has to help out if he doesn’t like something in front of his door. The city administration should support this – financially and where necessary also professionally. Like this campaign,” says co-initiator Thomas Bossack.

That this can work has already been proven in several projects, such as the Knappteich pond in the Yorck area (www.knappteich.de). And this time too, local residents have been involved. “We put up small pieces of paper in the surrounding houses and called for work. Together with our club members, we were then around 15 people who first cleared the rubbish, then mowed the lawn and took away the rubbish again. Afterwards seats were created as a border and rubbish bins were dug in. So it looks already more cultivated. Next spring we’ll start planting,” says Oliver Treydel, the association’s chairman. In addition, a water and electricity connection is planned. There have already been agreements with the owner of the adjacent house. And a WLAN hotspot would also be good, of course. So this corner could become more and more a meeting place in the neighbourhood. Especially since the club itself is currently carrying out renovation work on its premises (Club and OpenOffice) – with the free seat in front of the door, this could be very beneficial for the volunteer existence. And at SDB e.V. many volunteers come and go. As the supporting association of the citizen platforms Mitte-Ost and West and contact point for citizens’ initiatives, the association supports all kinds of projects, whether the regular work of interest groups or one-off projects of people from the neighbourhood. “Some may only want to hold one event, for which we as an association can provide the administrative background, so that they can collect donations, apply for funding or enjoy insurance cover,” explains Oliver Treydel. The small projects are what he considers important on the way to becoming European Capital of Culture: “The micro-project funding or Take a seat is going in the right direction. There must be these support programmes for small, uncomplicated projects. We have to let people do what they do, and sometimes even fail. So what if they have squandered 200 euros, so what? They’ll be smarter next time. The main thing is that they get involved, do something, and their ideas are taken seriously. That’s what will ultimately bring Chemnitz forward, the commitment of every single person. It already worked for Zietenpark.

Photo: Ernesto Uhlmann