Kerrin Banz

I am a Program Maker...

...for the Arts & Crafts department. I started as a coordinator for the Arts & Media courses and am now responsible for the Dynamic Events we organize at X each month. I also co-organize the Activity Market and evening program for the OWee. Last year was the first time, my team organized an alternative program for students, who prefer activities, that are a bit less “loud”, where they can focus more on themselves or on socializing with others in a more relaxed setting. So we had creative evenings, candlelight yoga or language exchanges. We received very positive feedback on this, which again confirmed my assumption that amongst the student community there is a huge range of personal and social needs, which we are trying to address and answer to. Hopefully, with our dynamic program we reaching most of them!

These days I’am busy organizing The Summer Hub,...

... which is a home base at the Cafe for students, who stay in Delft during the summer vacation. Summer is usually a very quiet period at X, as many students are leaving campus to visit their families and home countries or go on vacation. But of course, there are a lot of students who, for multiple reasons, cannot travel or visit their home countries. For them, we will transform the upper area of the café into a small living room with couches, a record player, some books and board games, which hopefully serves as a cozy meeting place.

With The Summer Hub we would like to create a space at X, where they can meet and hang out without any obligations, play games, read, chat and get involved in some fun activities.
Some of these activities are creative ones, like creating a vision board, trying out pottery or sing karaoke together. Others are more active and sporty like the water balloon fight and then we also offer some workshops like coffee and chocolate tastings! Everyone is welcome and there is no need to sign up.

I hope that the summer hub can be a place...

...where people meet and connect and make new friends. Sometimes I miss areas at X, that are cozy enough that you just want to spend hours there. But those are the places, where people come together, where unexpected conversations unfold and unusual connections begin.
At the moment, X is a mainly functional place and every area has its own purpose. If you want to do art, you go to the art studios, if you want to work out, you go to the fitness area, and if you want to have a drink, you go to the cafe. While these spaces are great in what they offer, The Summer Hub is an experiment to see, if there can be a place without a purpose, where people simply spend time to hang out, hopefully creating a feeling of comfort and safety.