For one week, I took over the Placemaking Europe Instagram from Kraków, the city I temporarily called home. I’m Jill, a 22-year-old student from the Netherlands, studying International Event Management with a specialisation in Urban Life & Placemaking at Breda University of Applied Sciences.
This semester, Kraków was not just a place I studied, it was the city where I lived, worked, observed and experienced urban life on a daily basis. Through a course called Living in the City, my classmates and I don’t analyse cities from a distance. We become part of them.
Living in the City means exactly what it sounds like: learning by living. For five months, we fully immersed ourselves in one city, exploring how everyday routines, public spaces, events and social interactions shape urban life.
What makes Kraków especially interesting from an Urban Life & Placemaking perspective is how naturally history and daily life coexist. Here, history isn’t something you visit, it’s something you live with. Walking to work, grabbing a coffee or crossing a square often means passing layers of stories that are still very present in everyday life.
Kraków’s walkability and human scale make it easy to observe how people move, meet and use public space. These small, daily interactions form the foundation of how a city feels and how a sense of place is created.
Alongside my studies, I completed an internship at My Krakow Tours, where I worked as a guide and supported marketing and social media activities. The tours focus on storytelling, hidden places and local narratives rather than just well-known landmarks.
Through this work, I experienced firsthand how stories shape the way people experience a city. A street becomes more meaningful once you understand its past. A square feels different when you know who gathers there and why. Storytelling turns space into place.
An important realisation during my internship was that placemaking doesn’t only happen offline. It also happens online. Social media plays a major role in shaping expectations and first impressions of a city, influencing how people move through and experience urban spaces once they arrive.
This connection between storytelling, identity and place is something I will continue to explore in both my studies and future work.
Kraków is a city where events are deeply embedded in public life. Throughout the year, streets, squares and neighbourhoods regularly transform into stages for shared cultural experiences.
During my time in the city, I witnessed how events such as the Three Kings Parade or Kronika Polska temporarily reshaped the streets into a moving procession of music, costumes and stories. People of all ages and backgrounds came together, creating a strong sense of collective experience.
Another key example is the Jewish Culture Festival, which has taken place annually since 1988 in the Kazimierz district (the old Jewish quarter). What started as a small cultural initiative has grown into one of Kraków’s most internationally recognised festivals, celebrating Jewish life, heritage and culture through concerts, workshops, lectures and tours.
These events show how temporary interventions can activate public space, strengthen identity and bring people together through shared moments.
My classmates and I studied the Jewish Culture Festival through desk research, field research and interviews with people closely involved in the festival. This process led us to one central question:
“Whose story is it to tell?”
To explore this question beyond theory, we designed a small street intervention at Plac Nowy. Passers-by were invited to create their ideal Kraków tour guide and their ideal Jewish Culture Festival tour guide using prompt cards focused on background, education and characteristics.
The conversations that followed revealed how complex and personal storytelling and representation can be. Many participants reflected on their assumptions, while others chose not to engage at all. These reactions became valuable insights for our research and reinforced how public space can function as a platform for dialogue and reflection.
Living and studying in Kraków taught me that placemaking is often found in the everyday. History is part of daily life, local identity is strong, and despite being a popular tourist destination, local routines remain visible and present throughout the city.
At the same time, living abroad came with personal challenges. Winter days were short, cultural differences required adjustment, and being away from home was sometimes difficult. Yet these experiences also contributed to my personal and professional growth.
After five months of studying and completing my internship in Kraków, I am now back in the Netherlands, returning to familiar routines and everyday life. This transition has made me realise how much this experience has shaped the way I look at cities, stories and public space.
Looking back
This Instagram takeover offered a chance to reflect on my time in Kraków and share a glimpse into life as a student of Urban Life & Placemaking. Living, studying and working in the city showed me how deeply urban life, storytelling and placemaking are interconnected.
As I continue my studies in Breda and move forward, I hope this experience is only the beginning. I am eager to keep learning more about urban life and placemaking, and I look forward to exploring new cities, projects and opportunities in the years to come.
Thank you for following along.
And as I would say in my own language: Houdoeee en bedankt <3
