Too often, meaningful encounters, collaborations, and in-situ practices fade away because they are never properly documented or shared. Too often, the living knowledge born from inclusion, community work, and artistic creation remains invisible and absent in libraries, bookshops, and institutions. The Publishing Power of Place seeks to fill that gap: to make visible the genius of co-produced realities, and to write them into our shared memory.

The Publishing Power of Place is a multilingual co-production publishing house dedicated to put into stories the many initiatives and actions with communities that develop collectively the place they inhabit, whether a neighbourhood, a street, a cultural hub, a school, a park, a whole city or a lived territory. We turn our own and others’ fieldwork into shared works.

Our ambition is to reveal what has been done, to amplify the voices and ideas, and to celebrate the power of place as a catalyst to develop untapped potential. In doing so, we build an accessible living archive for regenerative practices and futures. .

A new team.

Insaf Ben Othmane Hamrouni, founder of Œcumene Spaces for Dignity (NGO) and Œcumene Studio (social enterprise), has devoted her work to exploring how human life is shaped, negotiated, and cared for within cities and territories. Working at the intersection of participatory urbanism, culture, and social justice, her practice unfolds through exhibitions, seminars, films, digital platforms, maps, reports, MOOCs, and place-based narratives. These works are rooted in long-term collaborations with communities across Tunisia (Tunis, Maamoura, Metbasta, Tataouine, Nefta), Egypt (Cairo, El Obour, Gamassa, New Damietta, Alexandria), Lebanon ( Tyre), Uganda (Mpeji), Jordan (Madab), Morocco, Ireland (Ballinrobe) , Palestine, Burundi, and Saudi Arabia( Khoubar). Space is approached not as an object to design, but as a shared condition to be understood, repaired, and re-imagined collectively.

Over the years, Joke Quintens has developed numerous initiatives through Wetopia that place “the power of place” at the heart of her regenerative development work. In each local community project, the unique potential of place is the starting point. This has already led to a rich array of publications in many forms: websites, printed books, exhibitions, reports, films, podcasts, research documents, photo series, and more. These stories have emerged from diverse places and communities in Cape Town, Brussels, Molenbeek, Marseille, Oostende, Tunis, Nairobi, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Napoli and Genk.

A new project.

Now, the time has come to bring this work together and to weave it into a shared collection – our Publishing Power of Place bookshelf – and new collective fieldwork to take the next steps: creating a space for publication and public engagement, inviting others to build upon and share this growing body of work.

We build the bridge between you and the community you serve and we make it last!

Since many years Wetopia is working on the Power of Places, here some photos from previous adventures: