Skopje2803 was a short-term, no-budget media/culture project by KulturwerkStadt Südost and collaborators in the Republic of Macedonia following an incident on the main square of Skopje on March 28, 2009. That day, a group of activists gathered on Skopje’s central square in order to protest the plan to there build a new church. Instead, they wanted the space to remain open and objected to the use of state funds for a construction that they thought was unnecessary and politically charged. They met with an orchestrated counter-protest whose participants were not quite as peaceful.

The aim of the project Skopje2803, launched the day after the event, was to make information available to an audience beyond the local. This was necessitated by the lack of the availability of such news in international media and the fact that the problem - civic participation in urban development – is indeed an international one and not specific to Macedonia. For the duration of one month, Skopje2803 thus made available - in English - news updates, comments and reactions, and provided translations of key texts in the debate. It sought to provide a platform for information for those abroad wishing to follow the course of events or to retrieve information on the event at a later point.

It all began with a posting on Balkaninsight.com (1), which provided a first critical reaction to the event aimed at an international audience. (We also wish to acknowledge that it was this internet medium, which remained most committed to reporting the issue; see also 2, 3, 4.) We posted a number of "eyewitness reports" (5, 6, 7), comments sent to us (8), features in regional and foreign media (9, 10), as well as statements by key players in the debate: the Church (11), the Ministry of the Interior (11), the ruling party (12), translated texts by the student protesters (13 and 14) as well as counter-protesters (15). Further voices came from the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (16), a local sociologist (17), as well as the int’l community and various others (18). We also posted artworks produced as a reaction to the events (19, 20, 21), as well as an academic article (first publication) we were provided with and that soon become very popular (22). Finally, we have reported of a new protest (“Freedom Square”) staged on the Main Square (23) and have supplied visual documentation for it (24), and have watched the debate shift from church to the planned statue ensemble (25).