The partner cities from this Implementation network have a common need to improve the implementation of their existing integrated urban strategies and action plans by including new approaches linked to creative and cultural industries (CCI) – creative places, people, and businesses. The joint policy challenge for the network is to better facilitate the above 'creative ecosystem' to be able to attract (more) creative entrepreneurs and boost creative entrepreneurship in dedicated urban areas, this comprises activities that create economic value through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property. A city is able to mobilise ideas, talents and creative organisations when it knows how to foster a creative milieu by identifying, nurturing, attracting and sustaining talent. Local governments all over the world are increasingly becoming aware of the CCI’s potential to generate jobs, wealth, and cultural engagement.
Boosting creative entrepreneurship through creative-based urban strategies
The INT-HERIT implementation network brings together 9 European cities facing challenges related to the revitalisation of their cultural heritage. These cities learn from each other and help each other to develop local strategies in order to make their cities an attractive place to live, work and visit. The network focuses on the implementation of innovative models through integrated and sustainable local strategies. It will increase awareness of strategies and plans, improving the capacity of cities to manage their heritage and enable their social and economic development.
The Action Planning network MAPS (Military Assets as Public Spaces) was focused on enhancing former military heritage as key elements for sustainable urban strategies, combining both functional and social aspects. Highlighting the potential of the dismissed military areas can be deemed as the new symbols of a more conscious and participatory urban planning.
The challenge of this Action Planning network is the activation of vacant buildings and building complexes for a sustainable urban development by self-organised groups. In many European cities smaller and larger derelict sites, underused premises, so called “voids” can be found in or near the city centre. These sites often have a negative impact on their surroundings, nevertheless they present a great opportunity: they can be used to complete a compact settlement structure, to provide space for needed functions in the city.
KAIRÓS is an URBACT Action Planning Network focused on cultural heritage as a driver for sustainable urban development and regeneration. In ancient Greek KAIRÓS means the propitious moment, and this is the moment to test an innovative policy framework, combining a sound integrated approach with a real transformation purpose. To meet this challenge, the KAIRÓS model pursues the proper assemblage of five key dimensions, namely: space, economy, social accessibility, attractiveness and governance.
The INT-HERIT Implementation Network is one of the approved projects and gathers 9 EU cities/communities who are implementing a strategic development plan based on cultural heritage. The network is composed by Baena in Spain as lead partner, Alba Julia in Romania, Sigulda in Latvia, Mantova in Italy, Espinho in Portugal, Dodoni in Greece and the Intercommunale Leiedal in Belgium – and will engaged in several knowledge exchange activities to devise innovative approaches to cultural management in order to improve and extend the impact of the foreseen investments and action plans.
Neighbourhood was not only at the core of the SSA of Heerlen but has also become a main topic of the meeting: on Wednesday the Heerlen team has presented two different approaches of neighbourhood policy during a bus tour in Heerlen-North and Maastricht. These two cities in the South of the Netherlands had a similar mining industry, after which closure they faced the same challenge of upscaling their cities. Maastricht chose to invest in education and healthcare, thus it became a vibrant university city – this is what Heerlen team wanted to show us. At the same time, Heerlen didn’t invest in society so wisely and unfortunately became a city without rebonding potential. This is what Heerlen is tackling to change since the early 2010s, focusing on the social system.
After the bus tour participants could enjoy a BBQ dinner by ULG-member Evert Hartman at Luciushof, a location offering approachable food for the elderly that has also become an important meeting point and at the same time a pleasant place for tackling loneliness.
The discussions on elderly and the issue of loneliness continued on Thursday, when the Small Scale Action of Heerlen was presented by Mark Weyts general practitioner and representatives of care provider Meander Group: Jack Jansen chairman of the board and neighbourhood connectors, Andrea Heijenrath and Wendy Halbach. In the framework of the SSA GPs connected their elderly patients with non-medical type of problems with neighbourhood connectors who contacted and organised community programs for them which has lead to a decreased number of GP visits. (More information and video of the Small Scale Action coming soon.)
The thematic sessions ended with the presentation of Pernille Randrup-Thomsen about a Danish SIB on labour market inclusion. Their programme “Staircase to staircase” tackles people with a long history of unemployment, approaching it with a complex team. The secret of the successful programme is to put the people in the centre of problemsolving, finding the best employment with a flexible and multidisciplinary team.
After the presentations the SIBdev team was joined by Roel Wever, mayor of Heerlen who gave a welcome speech for the closing lunch.
Besides the IAP peer reviews and thematic sessions, the meeting had a further goal: to summarize the most important highlights of the SIB journey so far in short interviews with all cities’ representatives. The result will be showcased soon, during the Urbact City Festival in Paris.
City administrations are frontline actors when it comes to developing and supporting cultural policies, especially cultural policies that foster social inclusion. That is why towns and cities must trial new, better ways to make culture accessible to those segments of the population that are more fragile and frequently excluded from mainstream cultural practices. URBACT Expert Laura Colini highlights URBACT’s contribution to the EU Urban Agenda (UA) on questions of culture and inclusion, presenting a selection of city solutions shared through EU UA Partnerships...
Culture and social inclusion are key indicators for social equity, and participating in creative and cultural activities can be life-improving. As many cities discover through URBACT, promoting an open and inclusive culture can facilitate empathy towards others, and foster creativity and appreciation of the diversity of human experience, while reinforcing democratic principles.
This is why the European Commission offers a generous number of programmes – and streams of funding – dedicated to cities and regions, architecture, gender, performing arts, and more. In fact, culture is at the core of European heritage, while social inclusion represents one of the EU Cohesion Policy priorities, particularly for people with disabilities, younger and older workers, low-skilled workers, migrants and ethnic minorities, people who live in deprived areas, and women in the labour market.
With culture, social inclusion and participation high in URBACT’s priorities, the programme has contributed to EU Urban Agenda Partnerships on ‘Culture and Cultural Heritage’ and ‘Inclusion’, sharing capitalisation expertise and city practices, and co-designing proposed actions. These partnerships bring together relevant people from the European Commission, national and local governments, and a wide range of international organisations, to propose better knowledge, funding and regulations at EU level. While there is no obligation for EU institutions to implement these proposals, the EU UA has provided an important framework since 2016, to propose new investments, highlight barriers and present good practices to decision-makers at EU level.
The experiences of cities in the URBACT networks ACCESS, ONSTAGE, and Rumourless Cities are particularly interesting to share. For example, together with Eurocities, URBACT co-led an action for the EU UA Partnership on Culture and Cultural Heritage entitled “Cities’ needs for future research on local cultural services as drivers for social inclusion”. URBACT also contributed to the action “Promoting the inclusion of migrants and minorities in art and culture” coordinated by the Migrant Policy Institute as part of the EU UA work on inclusion.
URBACT supporting EU city actions for inclusion
What would local governments find useful to help them develop better local cultural policies and activities? This was a question URBACT addressed together with Eurocities in an Action they co-led for the EU UA Partnership on Culture and Cultural Heritage. A first step of their action, entitled “Local cultural services fostering social inclusion” was to identify precise research topics linking culture and social inclusion. They shared a survey among URBACT and Eurocities partners working on culture and heritage. As a result, 15 cities fully responded to a comprehensive questionnaire that covered cities' needs in terms of culture and space, education, health, wellbeing, resources and policies.
Eurocities is now engaged in further sharing the results with the European Commission to better profile future calls such as Horizon 2020, Erasmus plus and others related to culture, which take into account local governments’ needs and perceptions.
At the same time, in the EU UA partnership on the inclusion of migrants and refugees, URBACT contributed to a parallel and thematically close action on ‘Arts and Culture‘ focusing on migrants and minorities. The result is a study, “Promoting the Inclusion of Europe’s Migrants and Minorities in Arts and Culture” by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).
Analysing cultural institutions in 11 countries, the MPI study includes examples from URBACT cities, including those in the ONSTAGE network of music schools for social change described below. The study records that in Europe, many institutions that form the backbone of urban cultural ecosystems – including museums, libraries, theatres and concert halls – have in recent years taken steps to engage more actively with migrants, refugees, and minorities as potential visitors and audiences, and to support them as producers of art and shapers of the cultural landscape. However, the study warns that power imbalances within the cultural sector are understudied and that “strategies to increase the representation of migrants and ethnic minorities in the cultural life of a city should look beyond token inclusion projects”. The study concludes that “The combination of anti-racism movements and the pandemic has been as a major wake-up call for cultural venues in Europe and elsewhere (...), but the engagement of a broad group of stakeholders – from policymakers at the local, national, and European levels to civil society and schools requires further commitment.”
Cultural and social inclusion in cities
While the survey with Eurocities was designed exclusively to consult with and provide input to public authorities, the Migration Policy Institute study covered a broad range of local institutions providing cultural activities with and for migrants. URBACT’s support to the development of those EU UA actions included the sharing and showcasing of practices identified in URBACT networks in an online event, ‘Cultural and social inclusion in cities’, in November 2021. Here’s a brief summary of four key practices used by cities in the URBACT ACCESS network, as presented at the event:
1. Research to reach those who do not engage
Small-scale research on the social impact of larger-scale cultural projects was undertaken in London within the framework of ACCESS. The study helped support culture for Londoners by providing valuable information, insights and an action plan on how to ensure culture enriches and empowers all Londoners equally. In particular, the study identified innovative ways to address and remove barriers for people who do not traditionally engage with culture, and to help build relationships, encourage social participation and reduce social isolation. The impact on people of the arrival of ‘Little Amal’, a 3.5 metre tall puppet representing the history of young refugees travelling from Syria, in the city in October 2021 was taken as a case study on innovative practice.
2. Culture as beehives
Riga’s ‘BeeHives’ are mobile cultural spaces offering diverse cultural activities in neighbourhoods lacking a cultural centre. They host concerts, lectures, exhibitions and events for children. Over the three years since their introduction, BeeHives have become a very popular initiative in the city, helping to offer a sense of ownership and empowerment for residents, and achieving significant numbers of attendees at their events up until the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
3. Open-air museums
Estonian partner in the URBACT ACCESS network, Tallinn, has created a unique “museum without walls”. The Kalamaja Museum, in the southern district of Kalamaja, fosters community engagement and participation through the collection of small items, narratives and traditions from the local neighbourhood.
4. Innovative outreach
Dublin’s City Council Culture Company is also part of the URBACT ACCESS network. Dublin explored cultural participation by holding informal group chats over a cup of tea. They asked people about their thoughts and ideas on the city and culture, with questions such as: “What do your city and your community mean to you?” or “How might culture connect us all?”.
Lithuanian partner in ACCESS Vilnius also tested new cultural interventions to improve inclusion in neighbourhoods with low levels of cultural and community activity. The city offered different opportunities for interaction such as musical picnics, open-air libraries, history rooms – as well as ‘Tea & Chats’ – inspired by Dublin.
Music, climate action and more
Alongside ACCESS, URBACT has sparked a wide range of other cities to address the topics of culture and social inclusion in diverse ways. Here are just two examples:
The URBACT ONSTAGE network was set up to democratise the access to and production of music and art with an integrated, cohesive and participative approach. Based at the EMMCA (Escola Municipal de Música - Centre de les Arts), a municipal arts centre and music, drama and dance school in L’Hospitalet (Spain), the project has enabled culture to be placed at the centre of the city’s social change, boosting links between citizens and tackling segregation.
Meanwhile, C-CHANGE transferred a model developed by the Manchester Arts Sustainability Team (MAST) to other European cities, helping them mobilise their arts and culture sectors to contribute towards local climate change action, and develop plans to engage citizens to act.
Challenges ahead for culture and integration
In conclusion, cultural participation represents a very important sign of progress towards the social inclusion of vulnerable people. However, within the EU, gaps and challenges still exist. Areas in need of further examination and discussion include:
The capacity to measure cultural participation at subnational levels;
Effective methods for improving participation with less advantaged people;
Methods for measuring the effectiveness of social inclusion strategies especially at local level;
The need for differentiation of passive and active culture in policy design;
The role of cities in decolonising cultural offerings;
Strategies for improving working conditions in cultural sectors in response to the effects of international emergencies.
More to look out for…
The outcomes of the EU Urban Agenda on Culture and Cultural Heritage will be presented in Rome on 20-21 June 2022.
Building on the experience of Manchester’s Good Practice, Mantova has established ARC3A a new group for arts and culture sector collaboration on climate working closely with the city, designed and implemented climate-themed cultural activities to raise awareness about climate emergency and act to mitigate its effects and a range of sector support and policy measures to frame and drive sector action on climate
Solutions offered by the good practice
The small town of Mantova is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with fine architecture, which has a thriving creative scene and hosts hundreds of cultural events, including Italy’s most important literature festival. At the same time, addressing climate change is a key political priority for the city.
The municipality wanted to encourage more cross-departmental projects and integrated policy-making within the municipality. Having worked with a group of cultural stakeholders in a previous URBACT network, they discovered a strong interest in the links between art and culture and the environment, corresponding with the aims of C-CHANGE.
The cross-sectoral approach sparked a wealth of ideas and actions to reduce CO2 emissions, including small-scale activities - from reusable cups to bio-gas buses - at cultural events. The group also directly contributed to a new ‘plastic-free’ city strategy, environmental criteria in the city’s UNESCO management plan, and green public procurement processes for cultural events. Meanwhile, inspired by Manchester, small groups of stakeholders delivered carbon literacy training to their own communities.
Sustainable and integrated urban approach
The focus of the practice is the adaptation, if not mitigation, to climate change with the inclusion of the Art sector: art as a means and as an end. As such, it covers many areas of the work of municipalities, from social to economy, via heritage and education.
The work of the ULG (see below) has also ensure active cross-departmental approach within the administration.
Participatory approach
Environmental experts joined city hall staff and councillors involved in environmental policy, cultural events, venues and heritage in Mantova’s new URBACT Local Group (ULG) - a twist on the MAST model. They conducted a survey on environmental practice in local cultural venues and provided support such as training on sustainable events and an online tool to track audience travel impacts.
Whilst encouraging the local group to be independent, the municipality took on two roles: as sector ambassadors, pushing for sustainable solutions for cultural events and venues; and as fundraisers, securing over EUR 50 000 for additional C-CHANGE activities in the first year.
What difference has it made
Mantua enjoyed a C-CHANGE season of COVID-adapted events in summer 2020, including: children’s workshops; an installation on greenhouse gas emissions; a photography exhibition; an amateur photography competition; and children’s radio programmes. These events also reduced their own environmental impact, for example Festival Letteratura rethought the food it serves to its volunteers, and Woodstock MusicAcustica reduced waste and energy use, even changing its name to the C-Change Carbon Free Acoustic Music Festival.
Transferring the practice
Mantova enjoyed a C-CHANGE season of COVID-adapted events in summer 2020, including: children’s workshops; an installation on greenhouse gas emissions; a photography exhibition; an amateur photography competition; and children’s radio programmes. These events also reduced their own environmental impact, for example Festivalletteratura rethought the food it serves to its volunteers, and Woodstock MusicAcustica reduced waste and energy use, even changing its name to the C-Change Carbon Free Acoustic Music Festival.
An “inspirational” trip to Manchester introduced Mantova to members of MAST. They discovered examples of climate awareness raising, from a live energy display in a studio lobby, to sustainable food-sourcing on menus, and Carbon Literacy certificates.
Already looking beyond C-Change, the URBACT Local Group took on a new identity as ARC3A in summer 2020. ARC3A’s journey as a unifying force for supporting the crucial role the arts and culture sector has for improving climate resilience has only just begun.
In addition, Mantova is now set to transfer its adaptation of the C-CHANGE Good Practice to up to seven more Italian cities, thanks to the 2021-2022 URBACT National Practice Transfer Initiative.
Creating a place for mobilising citizens, fostering civilian power and urban stewardship through raising awareness towards the values of built heritage
Affecting the discourse on built environment and cultural heritage may have striking influence. Audio-visual documentation, storytelling and promotion via internet is a good way to raise awareness and bring visibility to places and people that are otherwise not under the radar of the decision makers.
Sharing stories of buildings brings about the dimension of time in living environment that helps in animating and enchanting the world and community.
Pori has applied the basic idea of the Budapest100 good practice in an innovative way (partly because of the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic), transforming an abandoned radio station in the eastern suburban location of the city into a Story Café which offers a cultural, creative and social space, reaching the locals and bringing them together to share stories.
Solutions offered by the good practice
Pori is an old industrial city on Finland’s West coast. The city selected an action area for the Come in! project in its eastern suburbs, which sprang up in the 1950s-1970s in proximity to a copper factory. The area is located 4km from the centre consisting of a park and the nearby residential areas, representing the main trends of post-war architecture in Finland. The park area remains unbuilt because of a shortwave radio station located in the middle, which is owned by the City of Pori and used since 2012 by a local artist community as well as an old vehicle club. With the permission of the city the artists operate the building as a creative space. In the last years, they have opened it to the public several times. Even so, there seemed to be a need for something, bringing together nearby residents, like the good practice of Budapest.
Pori has had various projects in the action area and it has offered funding numerous times to different NGOs to do projects, which resemble the Budapest100 good practice closely, there hasn’t been the level of integration and cooperation between different operators achieved, especially regarding the activating of the local population. All the elements and opportunities for adopting something like the good practice have been present but the impetus for it hasn’t manifested itself.
By 2020 the ULG felt ready to create a community festival highlighting the built environment of the neighbourhood, its character and stories, and introducing the radio station and its potential as a social and cultural space the people could claim as their own. Sadly, due to Covid, these plans had to be cancelled. Instead, a socially-distanced pop-up exhibition showcased the station's history in September 2020 and finally a two week long Story Café in May 2021 opened new spaces in the radio station for public and created a place for histories, stories and art to be shared.
As the society around came to a halt, organisers wanted a new digital approach to dealing with community and a way to highlight the built heritage. They decided to build a website for the history of the building and the local stories relating to it. Stories, photos and different kinds of historical material was crowdsourced with the help of social media, and collaboration with local radios and other media.
The local group members are committed to further develop the radio station and surrounding area into a shared space that brings people together to celebrate the built heritage and take part in active citizenship. The aim is with the development of the cultural use and the digital dimension of the radio station also to reach an audience beyond the boundaries of Pori and Finland.
Sustainable and integrated urban approach
As the city itself has become more aware of the station thanks to the community activities, an interest in its development has grown significantly. Using built heritage to draw attention to a peripheral area succeeded since the municipality started to renovate the radio station and involve the area to the city-level participatory agency project. So, the usage of built heritage helps to gain tangible and visible results that can be communicated both on site in the neighbourhood and online to wider national and international audiences. Many further local actions have been initiated by the community engagement around the area:
- The Väinölä school with over 280 pupils decided to take the area and its multidisciplinary investigation as a theme for the whole school year 2020-2021
- Raised awareness of the international architectural value of Himmeli elderly house
changed the discussion on how to treat the building during its renovation, after a lecture by architect Juhani Pallasmaa (organized by the project coordinator of Come In!) on the heritage of architects Reima and Raili Pietilä who designed Himmeli
- In the end of 2020 the city ordered a master plan for the park area from one of the leading companies in Finland designing smart cities
- Best experts of Finland and students from the Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture from Helsinki carried out a full professional standard historical report on the radio station in May 2021. It will be published in summer 2021 working as a guide book for treating the building as a valuable piece of Finnish, European and global cultural heritage.
Participatory approach
For the local coordinators, this building and its surrounding green area seemed like an unused connecting tissue between the suburbs – an urban green space full of history and legends to be discovered to stimulate community spirit.
They built a website to be a platform where not only the official history and unofficial stories and legends, but also the present and ideas concerning the future of the radio station can be shared
The new place means new opportunities also to integrate migrant communities which live in the surrounding suburban locations.
What difference has it made
Too early to say – the place is just now in the process of opening due to the delay caused by the pandemic.
In January 2021 over 600 square meters of new space for culture, art and social gatherings was freed from the radio station when the car club moved away. The same area is part of a new national suburban development project (2020-2022) which offers also investments in infrastructure and so gives sustainability and continuity for the efforts of Urbact.
In May 2021 the Story Café concept proved to be a success with over 750 visitors during two weeks. It demonstrated very well, that a cultural, creative and social space is a very good idea and it has to be developed as well as the overall cultural use of the building.
Transferring the practice
After being awarded the URBACT Good Practice title, Újbuda was able to create the Come In! Transfer Network to which six European cities (Gheorgheni RO, Forlì IT, Varaždin HR, Pori FI, Plasencia ES, Targówek/Warsaw PL) were invited. Equipped by URBACT with a toolkit, the cities could learn from each other. The transfer process was not one-sided, during the transnational meetings the existing practices of some of the transfer cities inspired Újbuda and contributed to the development of ideas to further improve the Good Practice.
At first sight the case of Pori is different from the original practice, insofar it uses a stable place to activate residents from surrounding areas, offering for them new cultural and leisure opportunities. On the other hand, the methods to be used to get the place accepted, are very similar to that of the Budapest100 good practice.
The city of Siracusa has created a new ‘House of Associations and Volunteers’ transferring the practice of of the city of Riga leading the ACTive NGOss Transfer Networks, and a comprehensive governance model that sees as protagonists the local NGOs and the municipality, by boosting the uses and linking three civic spaces located in strategic locations in the city.
Solutions offered by the good practice
Through the experience of ACTive NGOs, Siracus succeeded to organise the co-management of new social aggregators regulated by a Protocol of Understanding among the Municipality and 27 associations active in the city.
Siracusa is a medium-sized city on the east coast of Sicily. With its rich ancient past, the city is listed by UNESCO as a world heritage site. Its main economy is tourism but its population suffers from under investments on utilities and infrastructure due to public budget cuts on social services, and endemic unemployment especially hitting the youngest population and migrants. In order to address some of these issues, the municipality wanted to cooperate more closely with various social and economic actors, and involve NGOs in promoting social inclusion and citizen participation. However, NGOs had limited opportunities and needed better physical spaces to carry out recreational, cultural and social activities, training courses, and citizens’ services.
In this frame, Siracusa wanted to experiment locally the Riga practice of the NGO house. Riga’s relied on substantial public funds for its large structure and dedicated staff, but this was not the case for Siracusa, which then decided to adapt the Riga example starting from the local resources. These were the three, already existing but dormant, civic spaces needing better management.
The solution is therefore a formalisation, through a “Protocol of understanding”, of the common use by NGOs of these under-utilised civic spaces:
The Citizens’ House, a social center in the periphery of Siracusa, called La Mazzarona. The Citizens’ House was first established in 2015, after the city of Syracuse decided to join the GeniUS! URBACT II Transfer Network. La Mazzarona district presented many challenges, including high levels of unemployment, social exclusion and poverty. At that time except from a school, no services were available for the neighborhood’s residents. Public participation was for the first time activated in La Mazzarona thanks to the GeniUS! project, but the project encountered a halt which have been revitalised through the project House of Associations and Volunteers resulting from the ACTive NGOs URBACT III network.
The Officina Giovani, (Youth Lab) located in the historic center of Ortigia, a space inaugurated in 2015 dedicated to aggregation and participation of the city’s youth.
The Urban Center, located in the nineteenth-century city center, a space newly restored dedicated to citizens and local associations. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic the Urban Center has been temporarily converted into a Covid-19 vaccine location.
The three civic spaces are meant for organizing seminars and workshops, laboratories, events and thematic talks to address societal issues.
Sustainable and integrated urban approach
The case of Siracusa shows three main aspects of sustainable integration as intended in URBACT.
The first aspect is the vertical integration (the cooperation between all levels of government and local players’ among municipal sectors), a salient feature of this Siracusa case. The cooperation among the municipal administration and local associations, sharing ideas and objectives for the House od Associations and Volunteers is an important milestone considering that this form of cooperation was not experimented before. Through ACTive NGOs the local associations started to get to know each other, imagining new possible synergies while changing their position towards the local administration: from bodies mostly depending and benefitting from the public budget towards active subjects proposing, sharing visions and collaborating for better service provision. This reduced dependency from the public administration, the sharing of responsibilities by NGOs in the project is also a promise towards the self-sustainability of this practice.
The second is the territorial integration: the three NGO houses centers’ locations represent the decision of creating a spatial ecosystem that could cover the whole city.
The third is the combination of soft and hard measures by investing in refurbishing and ameliorating existing structures, combined with the investment on socio-cultural and inclusive activities.
Participatory approach
From the earliest stages of the project, participation has been essential. Looking at the experience of Lead Partner Riga, in 2019 an ad-hoc multi stakeholder URBACT Local Group (ULG) was created made up of municipality representatives and 27 associations active in the city. The ULG intensively worked with more than 15 meetings. This process of exchange led to a co-designed and co-written Protocol of Understanding to manage what is now in Sicuracusa called new Houses of Associations and Volunteers (Casa delle associazioni e dei volontari), signed by ULG members. The Protocol “defines the places, responsibilities and governance of a system made of the three Houses of Associations and Volunteers,” explained Caterina Timpanaro, an expert who supported Siracusa in the process. After signing the protocol, the associations elected their governing bodies and began to operate autonomously.
With this the municipality is learning the new role of supervisor, dedicating exclusive structures to associations, while listening to the needs to various stakeholders incorporating them into public programs and activities.
What difference has it made
The ACTive NGOs Network has given the opportunity to experiment a mode of cooperation of public and private sector creating new and effective synergy between the municipality and NGOs. The creation of a Protocol of Understanding is the tangible results establishing this collaboration to which local actors will refer to beyond the lifetime of the URBACT ACTive NGOs network:
The immediate next step for the municipality and local associations is to plan an innovative grand opening with residents, pending appropriate Covid-19-related arrangements.
In the longer term, Siracusa’s challenge will be to establish more structured cooperation between institutions and NGOs to change the nature of local services, based on a systematic involvement of citizens and associations.
Transferring the practice
Transferring Riga’s good practice meant to adapt the city’s trajectory to Siracusa’s particular history, driving forces and inertia in public-civic cooperation: in contrast with Riga’s fully municipality-financed and managed NGO House, in Siracusa the municipality provided the three civic spaces and then decided to step back and collaborate with local associations to co-develop and manage their spaces. The associations in fact elected their own governing bodies and began to operate autonomously from the municipality.
As an ACTive NGOs partner city, benefited from sharing methodologies, tools and knowledge from the other network cities. As examples Siracusa learnt the value of stakeholder “mapping” as an effective tool in the short and long term, helping improve and expand the knowledge from Santa Pola (ES) and has been inspired with new ideas for recreational activities (morning coffee, football matches, etc.) fundamental both for the ULG's commitment and for the activities with the residents from Brighton (UK). Dubrovnik (HR) proved that public administrations can use physical resources to create strategic locations and channel various funds, which Siracusa found “very inspirational”.
