Convivial creativity in everyday life: Cultural resources in encounters and ruptures

I’m strolling towards the Rhine, the sun is shining, and the city centre of Cologne is bustling with activity. It’s one of the first spring days in April 2025. I had actually intended to avoid the crowds and get to the riverside promenade as quickly as possible, to see the calming, flowing, and simultaneously powerful river that, coming from the Swiss Alps, still has a long journey ahead of it before it flows into a large delta in the North Sea south of Rotterdam, merging with the sea and no longer recognizable as the Rhine. The encounter with people, objects, and the environment is an ongoing and never-ending creative process that is neither predictable nor controllable. This gives rise to spaces for action, possibility, resistance, and negotiation, which also include productive conflict and failure.