SeeMyAlmere
Almere is Netherlands’ youngest city and SeeMyCity’s very first project.
Introduction
SeeMyCity´s first project was held in Almere, The Netherlands’ youngest city. It is the largest municipality in Flevoland with 191.495 citizens (9 May 2011), and the 7th largest in The Netherlands. Being such a young city, but also a planned city, built on the IJsselmeerpolders, it’s quite unique and interesting. It’s a modern city with fascinating, colorful, original and eye-catching architecture, but you can also find beautiful parks and polder areas, such as the Oostvaardersplassen.
SeeMyCity wanted to inspire the citizens of Almere to start noticing and capturing their city through their mobile lenses and show them to the world, show that it’s a city worth visiting aa well as living in. The pictures taken by SeeMyCity members and participants in the competition during the project, put Almere in the picture worldwide and resulted in comments like “I want to visit Almere”, “Almere is on my Places to visit- list now” and “I am very proud to be a citizen of Almere after seeing these pictures”. The project showed that the concept of SeeMyCity works.
Coming soon in this section: online exhibition with all pictures exhibited
Workshop
SeeMyCity’s first event SeeMyAlmere photo workshop was held in February 2012 in the New Library and was attended by about 45 participants. The workshop was offered for free, with support from Almere Citymarketing
The objective of the workshop was to inspire the participants to “see”, notice and appreciate Almere and teach them how to take more interesting pictures with their mobile phones and finally encourage them to share them through social media. The SeeMyAlmere workshop started with 3 presentations held by SeeMyCity photographers and ended with a “photo walk” around Almere city centre where the participants could put their learnings into practice while asking the teachers for advice.
Omroep Flevoland, a local TV channel, covered the event. It can be seen here (only in Dutch). Read more about the event and the presentations in the article “SeeMyCity takes on Almere”.
Mobile photo
competition
From February to May 2012, SeeMyCity arranged a photo competition called SeeMyAlmere, to encourage and motivate the participants to appreciate their surroundings and to capture these creatively with a mobile phone or iPod. To participate photos were posted with the hashtag #seemyalmere on Instagram and twitter or to our Flickr group.
The most honorable prize was to have a picture exhibited at the SeeMyAlmere exhibition in “Stadhuis Almere” May/June 2012. The winning pictures can all be seen in the exhibition section below. 5 winners got a special mention and a sponsored prize from our partners and sponsors.
Partners we worked with:
“I’ve been living in Almere for almost 10 years, long ago, and was glad to leave. Now, since IG and SeeMyCity, and this shot, I’d like to go back… That’s what a good shot is doing to me.” [@lidyvps]