The SpaceSyntaKs team, in May of this year, has started the process of identifying and documenting the locations of ‘house-schools' in Prishtina, to create the digital map of the spaces that have enabled the organization and facilitation of education process in the ‘house-school’ system throughout the 90s in Kosovo.
We have chosen maps as the main tool for organizing and communicating the findings on the education process in 'house-schools', firstly to illustrate its spatial manifestation and secondly to enable the documentation of the physical spaces which have been destroyed.
Simultaneously, we have started to work on documenting the collective memory. People directly involved in the parallel education system have been interviewed and their stories will be shared on this platform.
In order to include as many voices as possible in the construction of the historical narrative of this event, this platform is intended to serve as an invitation to everyone who wishes to share their stories, photographs, documents or memories for the purpose of documenting the history of the parallel education system in ‘house-schools’ in Kosovo.
We have chosen to bring back the history of the parallel education system in ‘house-schools’ via cartographic representation. We want to map one of the most characteristic features of this story, which is the organization of citizens to turn their private homes into classrooms.
The interactive map presented in this platform contains the geographical coordinates of the buildings which were turned into 'house-schools'. For each 'house-school' we have placed as the main identifier the name of the homeowner and the name of the school whose activity took place in that space.
The book “Shtëpitë Shkolla në Fotografi” (House Schools through Photography) by Zijadin Gashi, was used as the main reference tool for locating 'house-schools’ buildings. During field visits, we assessed the current condition of the buildings and recorded the geographical coordinates. The map was created via GIS (Geographic Information System).
To document the collective memory of these events we have started interviewing people who have been involved in the process of the ‘house-school’ education system, with the intention of writing and sharing their stories. These stories are intended to serve the purpose of illustrating the events that took place in the ‘house school’ spaces from the perspective of the participants who engaged in different roles such as organizers, teachers, administrative staff, students, homeowners, people who have helped with logistics and all those who enabled the facilitation of the parallel education system in extraordinary circumstances.
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SpaceSyntaKs team Gresa Neziri
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External contributors Zijadin Gashi
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GeoTaggers 01 team Altin Boshnjaku
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