Mobilizing urban neighbourhoods: artivism, identity, and cultural sustainability

By examining how the process of transition affected cultural sustainability of post-industrial medium-sized cities in Serbia, the paper is an attempt at providing answers to essential questions: What happened to the cultural needs and habits of the working class – once so significant during socialism? How its members re-articulate their citizenship nowadays? To what extent artists and cultural workers can help them reconsider sustainable development through bottom-up actions and participative projects? The research focuses on cities which used to be pride of socialist development in Serbia: Užice, Kragujevac, Bor and Majdanpek. Authors discuss the ways of creating sustainable communities through artistic actions and projects, by showing the extent in which such bottom-up activities contribute not only to the revitalization of different urban neighbourhoods in the context of (culture-led) sustainable development, but also to the rise of new developmental visions among the former working class.