Of pupils and birds: A politics of survival and living well during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

How can birds and humans live well together in cities? For some time, sparrows and pupils did so quite nicely, cohabitating an inner-city school building in Berlin. The sparrows used the cladding for nesting, while the children learned and played in the building and on its grounds. When the pandemic hit, the school in Berlin had a pretty great set-up for pandemic purposes: not only did it have two separated school yards, every class room also had a second room adjacent used for after-school club activities. It thus had a build-in system of small cohorts that were established in many other schools only with much effort and creativity. Yet, this system was only to be used for a short few weeks. The school was long scheduled to be demolished in autumn 2020, as it had asbestos build in its walls and the city had acquired national funds to rebuild the school. The funds would expire if the process was not started in the year 2020, so all appeals by the school management to postpone the demolition to after the pandemic winter were in vain. The children and their teachers thus moved out in summer 2020. However, the school was not demolished until autumn 2021. This is due to COVID-related organizational delays in the building sector and then an intervention by local bird protection activists in spring 2021, as the demolition was due to start when the nesting season was already in progress. Due to Berlin nature protection laws, the activists succeeded and stopped the demolition for six months, enabling the new generation of sparrows to survive. Yet, in autumn 2021 the birds still became homeless, and had to move to adjacent hedges. The pupils by then had already survived the first pandemic winter in rather cramped temporary school buildings, the tight spatial conditions included rather small classrooms and only two big after-school club rooms per yearly cohort. This resulted in many children not being sent to after-school activities even if it was offered in this winter of on-and-off lockdowns. Survived they both have somehow – the pupils and the sparrows, but how and at which cost? This paper will ponder the politics of survival, namely the spatial and legal configurations that have come to matter in the intertwined lives of inner-city pupils and sparrows. What can we learn from this case about how humans and birds can live well together during inner-city crises? What kind of designs and politics do we need for multispecies city-futures? Meanwhile, in Berlin the new school building is taking shape already, and some of the pupils are actively remembering their former co-habitants, the sparrows, by advocating for alternative nesting places for the sparrow colony.