Everyday Experts

By “everyday experts” we refer to people who possess specific knowledge or skills acquired not necessarily through formal education but through their daily lived experiences. Europe takes shape in the local routines and everyday practices that connect people to each other and to the material world. These “micropractices” encompass a wide range of activities – whether it's taxi drivers navigating complex street networks, baristas working in coffee shops, fishermen adhering to EU fishing quotas, bakers, musicians, or retail workers. Each of these individuals holds valuable, specialized knowledge about their environments, the social structures that sustain them, the legal frameworks shaping their work, the craftsmanship required for their tasks, or the global supply chains that provide the essential materials. In processes of urban transformation, everyday experts offer crucial insights into existing social and spatial dynamics. Recognizing and incorporating their knowledge is essential to fostering sustainable and inclusive urban development.

Spend a day alongside an everyday expert – immerse yourself in their world. Experience their daily routines firsthand, become an active participant in their networks of micropractices, and engage fully with your hands, head, and heart. Observe closely and reflect. In these everyday realities, routines sometimes break down, familiar action scripts become ineffective, and new practices emerge. It is in these moments of disruption that design and design thinking reveal themselves – not as abstract concepts, but as practical, adaptive processes rooted in real life. Opportunities to learn about transformation are everywhere, embedded in the ordinary and the unexpected.

During the seminar week in Athens, instead of adopting the perspective of traditional tourists, each student was paired with an everyday expert to accompany for a day. Students spent time individually with a diverse range of people – dancers, musicians, farmers, a fisherman, homeless individuals selling newspapers, members of bottom-up initiatives, and city office workers engaged in administrative tasks.

Each student documented their unique experience through a one-minute video. These individual clips were then combined into a collective 15-minute film, which the students presented at Communitism. After each minute, they passed along the portable projector, transitioning from the specific setting of one clip to the next, creating a dynamic and immersive presentation.

[Seminarweek Athens] Charlotte Schaeben, Ben Pohl

[Fieldtrips Studio New Ruralities] Juan Barcia Mas, Sophia Garner

[Contributors] Maria Athina Tzioka (Athens) and every everyday expert