My Fort Kochi - ThanalKoottu

WRI India with support from KMEA College of Architecture is organizing ‘My Fort Kochi - ThanalKoottu’. This people led one day event will adopt a ‘tactical urbanism process’ of revitalizing the Vasco da Gama Square,  Fort Kochi into a vibrant people oriented activity space. This will be achieved using temporary furniture, installations and activities. The aim is to demonstrate neighborhood building that uses short-term, low-cost, and scalable interventions to catalyze long term change.

Currently, our public spaces/ parks in Kochi, far and few in between, are either timed, ticketed and barricaded or encroached upon by parking and illegal commercial activity. Citizens in the city have limited choice of public spaces and common greens to unwind and have a healthy balanced lifestyle. Citizens often rely on malls, cinema theatres for their recreational purposes for lack of accessible public spaces. Thanalkoottu is the first step at reclaiming our city by creating safe and accessible public spaces in a citizen-led manner. Thanalkoottu will be a temporary and pilot event that would be a testing ground for creative use of space. This would give dynamic feedback from the citizens which would be helpful in creating permanent infrastructure for effective public spaces in the city.

The event will comprise of the following activities

28^th May: 7am to 12pm – Build your space - Volunteers form neighborhood are welcome to contribute in creating the public space. They can contribute furniture on a temporary basis.

28^th May: 3pm to 7pm – Claim your space - Heritage walking and cycling tours, Conversations with city representatives, interactive board activities about fort kochi, Treasure hunt, Games, Competitions, soccer and frisbee, performances and cleanliness drive.

WRI aims to create this as a ‘people led approach’ and we expect that the people of Fort Kochi will contribute towards making this a successful process. 

'Kochi Public Transport Day' team supports the event (www.kochipublictransportday.org)

Detailed list of activities

The areas is divided into 4 zones – The stage, the triangle, the arena and the beach