South fan groups, which we recorded on video. During these events, interviews
were conducted and lifestyle elements, clothes, personal identity markers, and
accessories were collected and catalogued by Museum Rotterdam staff. We
issued four periodicals containing articles on the background of local Roffa
groups, which were distributed freely to the inhabitants of the district 5314.
The Internet played an important role in the Roffa project.
A Facebook-like website was set up, where the Roffa youth posted their own
pictures and web logs, and created their own virtual Roffa 5314 world. The
results of this program were presented in a neighborhood exhibition hall and
curated by members of 5314. This project attracted national attention and
was considered a ground-breaking participation project from a modern
urban heritage point of view.18
The neighborhood documentation project is another example of our changing
approach to local heritage. It operated by the mantra: one must look
behind the scenes in order to know how people actually live. The project concentrated
on the transnational western part of town, an area that contrasts
sharply — physically, socially, as well as culturally — with the modern inner
city. From the 1960s onwards, Rotterdam’s western area offered abundant
cheap homes for low-income households, often migrant families from the Mediterranean.
From the mid-1970s the left-leaning city government targeted these
areas for an urban renewal scheme, in essence the renovation of existing
Houses in a Rotterdam-South neighborhood that are to be demolished. This area has
become a favorite place for “5314” pieces. The graffiti ranges from detailed pieces to
short, messy tags. Photo taken by Hans Walgenbach.
44 PAUL TH. VAN DE LAAR
housing stock and the building of socially acceptable new homes. The central
idea was building for the neighborhood, which implied not only improvement
of housing conditions, but also a renewal of the physical, social and cultural
environment. We selected one of these neighborhoods for the pilot project