ECLECTIS European Citizens’ Laboratory for Empowerment CiTIes Shared

In the context of growing urbanisation and digital shift, European cities have to face an acceleration of urban, social, cultural and economic fragmentations, reinforced by the economic crisis. There is a real demand from citizens, professionals and political stakeholders for new processes to make the city, bottom-up and participatory, favouring innovative answers, adapted to new uses. Thus, cities need more than ever to exploit their creative resources to favour a smart, sustainable and inclusive development.

ECLECTIS European cooperation project aims at implementing an innovative structuring European process to favour citizens’ integration in the urban making, valuing European diversity, intercultural dialogue and new technologies as sources to stimulate creativity and new practices.

6 Laboratories will be implemented through artistic residences and workshops based on local, participative and crossways approaches, integrating complementary fields: art, urban planning, architecture, new uses and new technologies. In Amsterdam, Barcelona, Kotor, Ljubjana, Paris and Torres Vedras, multidisciplinary artists and citizens will be invited to answer local issues, through innovative and artistic projects, experimenting tools and methods to facilitate citizens’ knowledge and action potential on urban environment.

Artistic participatory events in public space will mobilise citizens, raising their awareness on urban issues and their action capacity, opening windows for sharing and dialogue between citizens, partners, local stakeholders.

Partners will conduct a reflection on their experimentations, to evaluate and put them into perspective, in an integrated approach, from local to political levels, in order to design tools and draft concrete political recommendations. These results will be shared with professionals from cultural sector, urban planning, citizens and political stakeholders during a final symposium. They will be the basis for the publication, to be disseminated to various European resource centres.

ECLECTIS action will be extended by the creation of a European network on Citizens’ empowerment in urban context.

Project co-funded by European Union – Culture programme- cooperation projects

OBJECTIVES

• To enhance European urban space diversity | For a connected and transverse approach
• To encourage creativity and new appropriation of urban space | For participatory experimentations
• To empower citizens to drive local change | For long-term impacts

ACTIVITIES

• Artistic participatory residences and workshops, restitutions
• Participatory public events
• Final symposium and round tables
• Mediation and communication
• Evaluation, analysis and publication

PARTNERS

Co-organisers :

• Waag Society [Amsterdam|NL] www.waag.org

• Prostoroz [Ljubljana|SL] www.prostoroz.org

• Expeditio [Kotor|ME] www.expeditio.org

• Transforma [Torres Vedras|PT] www.transforma.org.pt

• Idensitat [Barcelona |ES] www.idensitat.net

• European Forum for Architectural Policies [Brussels|BE] www.efap-fepa.eu

• Dédale [Paris|FR] www.dedale.info

Associated partners :

• Sinapolis [Beijing|CN] www.sinapolis.net

• European Network of Living Labs [Brussels|BE] www.openlivinglabs.eu