Welcome to Our City Festival 2011!

We are delighted to have been invited to curate this year's Our City Festival. As we all experience Phnom Penh in different ways, the festival's program offers a variety of reflections and perspectives on our shared environment across the arts and architecture community. The events, exhibitions, performances and talks celebrate this diversity.

Like the ever-evolving city, Our City Festival itself is a process. Now in its fourth year, we sought to create a theme for the festival which responded to the thoughts and ideas from previous year's participants and the contemporary dialogue around urban space. "In Between Places: Participation in the City" was chosen to consider the notions of being 'in between' and our position as 'participants', in an increasingly urbanized city and global arena. We hope to highlight the sense of ambiguity that change, in a broad sense, can bring: that of being in a state of flux, neither in one place nor another, whether physically in space, in time, or mentally in how we identify ourselves. Given the local context of increasing migration to urban centres, and the pace of change in Phnom Penh, how can we to contribute towards creating an inclusive city? It has been a privilege to work with the many participants in this year's festival. We hope you will join us at this year's festival to add to the discussion initiated through the program.

Kate O'Hara and Natalie Pace,
Our City Festival Curators