Description:
Istanbul is a multicultural metropolis where millions of people from diverse linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds live together. While this diversity enriches the city’s social and cultural identity, it also creates a need for accessible and inclusive communication methods in shared areas of responsibility, such as waste management, recycling, and environmental awareness.
Silent City: The Common Language of Waste in Istanbul aims to develop a wordless illustrated book (Silent Book) that communicates waste management practices through a universal visual language.
The project approaches waste management not only as an environmental and technical issue but also as a shared social responsibility that connects people across cultural and linguistic boundaries.
Through visual storytelling inspired by everyday life in Istanbul, the book will explore different forms of waste generation and management in homes, streets, local markets, schools, public spaces, and coastal areas.
Designed to be accessible to migrants, refugees, children, people with different literacy levels, and local residents, the book will provide a common visual framework for understanding waste reduction, reuse, separation, recycling, and responsible disposal.
By eliminating written language, the Silent Book seeks to overcome communication barriers and encourage environmentally responsible behaviour among diverse communities.
The main objective is to create an inclusive, accessible, and visually engaging guide to waste management that can be understood regardless of language, cultural background, age, or literacy level.
The project specifically aims to:
Promote inclusive environmental education: Make essential waste management knowledge accessible to diverse communities, particularly migrants and refugees living in Istanbul.
Develop a universal visual communication tool: Use wordless storytelling to communicate practical waste management principles without relying on written instructions.
Increase environmental awareness: Illustrate the environmental consequences of everyday consumption and waste disposal practices.
Encourage sustainable everyday practices: Demonstrate waste prevention, reuse, recycling, and responsible disposal in familiar urban settings.
Strengthen social inclusion: Establish a shared understanding of environmental responsibility among communities with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Create a transferable educational model: Develop a visual guide that can be adapted and implemented in other multicultural European cities.
The Silent Book will be structured around interconnected visual stories taking place in different parts of Istanbul.
1. Homes and Residential Buildings
Household waste, packaging, food waste, used cooking oil, and waste separation practices will be illustrated through everyday interactions between residents from different cultural backgrounds.
2. Local Markets and Food Waste
Traditional neighbourhood markets will serve as settings for exploring food waste prevention, organic waste, reuse, and composting.
3. Coastal Areas and Marine Pollution
Through scenes along the Bosphorus and Istanbul’s waterfronts, the book will illustrate how improperly discarded waste reaches marine ecosystems and affects wildlife.
4. Schools and Shared Learning Spaces
Children from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds will demonstrate how environmental awareness and responsible waste management can become shared learning experiences.
5. The Journey of Waste
The book will visually follow waste from households and public collection points to sorting and recycling facilities, highlighting the essential role of waste collection workers and urban recycling systems.
The project’s innovation lies in combining environmental education, visual storytelling, intercultural communication, and social inclusion within a single accessible publication.
Unlike conventional waste management guides that rely on written instructions, the Silent Book uses illustrations and sequential narratives to communicate environmental knowledge.
Istanbul serves as both the setting and the starting point for developing a model applicable to other cities experiencing migration, cultural diversity, and complex urban waste management challenges.
The project also recognises that environmental sustainability requires more than infrastructure and technical solutions. It depends on public participation, accessible information, and shared responsibility.
The project is expected to contribute to:
The effectiveness and accessibility of the visual narratives can be evaluated through workshops and user testing with participants from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Although the project begins in Istanbul, its long-term vision extends beyond a single city.
The Silent Book is intended to become a replicable model for inclusive environmental communication that can be adapted to different urban contexts across Europe.
By transforming waste management into a shared visual language, the project seeks to demonstrate that environmental responsibility can be communicated, understood, and practised beyond linguistic and cultural boundaries.
One city. Many cultures. Different languages. One shared responsibility.
A wordless guide to a more sustainable and inclusive urban future.
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The participants can contact via my website or either way wocial media;
www.ilkearseven.com
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