Place Out! European Dialogue-Building for increasing youth protagonism in non-urban areas
Place Out! European Dialogue-Building for increasing youth protagonism in non-urban areas aims at implementing generative Youth-led place-based policies for a sustainable regeneration of non-urban territories, by activating dialogue between young people and institutions at local and European level. Place Out! acts on local and European levels by addressing Youth Grassroots Organisations, Local Institutions and the Citizenship of non urban project territories in Spain, Greece, Italy and Bulgaria.
Cross-border/international
Italy
Spain
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Greece
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Bulgaria
Place Out! directly involves 4 territories and local partners composed of 4 Local Coordinators (Civic Society Organisations with a strong connection with the territory and the ability to work directly with young people and institutions), and 3 Local Public Institutions (public authorities involved in the project’s Consortium. Their scope is to orient the overall territorial development for all the resident citizens; they are particularly involved in the project because they recognize and identify the activation of youth as a powerful lever for territorial regeneration, social inclusion, and participation in democratic life).
1) Province of Badajoz, in Extremadura (Spain): Wazo Sociedad Cooperativa (Local Coordinator - LC); CONSEJERÍA DE IGUALDAD Y COOPERACIÓN PARA EL
DESARROLLO. JUNTA DE EXTREMADURA (Local Public Insititution - LPI).
2) Region of Chalkidiki, in the province of Thessaloniki (Greece): ACTIONAID HELLAS ASTIKI MI KERDOSKOPIKI ETAIRIA (LC)
3) The Mugello valley, in the province of Florence (Italy): ASSOCIAZIONE DI PROMOZIONE SOCIALE BEE.COM (LC); Unione Montana Comuni del Mugello (LPI)
4) The Gabrovo Province, in the Gabrovo region (Bulgaria): Ecosystem Europe Association (LC) ; MUNICIPALITY OF GABROVO (LPI)
And 3 partners acting at transnational level: LAMA SOCIETA COOPERATIVA; IMPRESASOCIALETHE DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY AISBL; IMPACT HUB GMBH
Mainly rural
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
ERASMUS
Acronym: PLACE OUT!
Title: Place Out! European Dialogue-Building for increasing youth protagonism in non-urban areas
TOPIC: ERASMUS-YOUTH-2022-YOUTH-TOG-LOT2
Call: ERASMUS-YOUTH-2022-YOUTH-TOG
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): LAMA Società Cooperativa - Impresa Sociale Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Francesca Last name of representative: Mazzocchi Gender: Female Nationality: Italy Function: President and Legal Representative Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: via Panciatichi 10-14 Town: Firenze Postal code: 50141 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 334 644 7806 E-mail:francesca.mazzocchi@agenzialama.eu Website:https://agenzialama.eu/
URL:https://www.instagram.com/agenzialama/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #innovation #regeneration #research #socialimpact #communication
The central idea is to apply the conceptual framework of Urban Regeneration – widely discussed and used as a tool in cities and urban contexts – to abandoned, underused or ‘forgotten’ places in European non-urban territories. The creation of conditions for the rise of new economic, social or public activities within these spaces is an excellent tool for the implementation of policies that positively could increase youth protagonism and leadership in territories.
During the project, relevant information necessary to enable the implementation of regeneration actions will be mapped: context analyses needs assessments and mapping of spaces with high regeneration potential will be carried out in order to create knowledge made accessible to all through the digital tools of the project.
Two parallel capacity-building processes - both for youth organisations and local institutions - will then be implemented in each of the four territories interested in the project, with the aim of increasing the competencies of the territories’ key targets from several points of view, such as associative strengthening, ability to apply co-design processes, to involve young people in the realisation of their activities or in the implementation of policies, and to apply and design spaces for regeneration.
The final part consists of a round table between youth organisations and local institutions and a trans-European deliberative process for the creation of a European Charter for youth-led territorial regeneration, enabling them to engage in dialogue with institutions in the context of concrete problem-solving of the youth condition at European level.
Youth protagonism
Internal rural areas
Civic engagement
Dialogue building
Charter of principles
To reach a sustainable positive impact, Place Out! aims at building common and shared knowledge and improving the competencies of youth org. as the public administrations, which is the backbone for a fruitful dialogue; addressing territorial needs in terms of requalification of abandoned and unused spaces.
From this background, this community-driven urban regeneration process represents a formidable tool for implementing
place-based youth policies in Europe that want to positively increase youth protagonism and leadership, and that have great potential to be translated as good practice in non-urban contexts. Regarding this participatory approach to regeneration processes, two key elements must be highlighted as crucial for the sustainability of the intervention: firstly, the regeneration of abandoned or unused spaces represents a vector for the activation of generative dynamics through which young people gain space for action. Public-Private Partnerships leading and orchestrating regeneration processes can directly include youth organisations, start a path of involvement and co-planning with groups of young people active in the area, assuming the role of platforms capable of enabling empowerment processes aimed at strengthening skills, and networks and ultimately generate new forms of organisation and business - with particular attention to youth entrepreneurship - and new opportunities for democratic participation in community life - also leading to an increase of youth leadership in local political life. Secondly, the focus on territorial context is inherent to these processes of regeneration. The effectiveness and long-lasting sustainability of regeneration practices are tied to the material feature of the space (hardware component) that is in the process of the regeneration: the regenerated spaces and the context in which they are located influence each other.
Place Out! concretely realises a unique and relevant action to improve people's sense of belonging (especially young people) to places they are living. Therefore, the way Place Out! addresses aesthetics is by promoting a new perspective of care, based on the identification of people with places. Abandoned and unused places must no longer be buildings and spaces excluded from daily people’s life, but rather they have to be conceived as new possibilities for a common imagination: spaces to be redesigned and functionalised. Moreover, as much as young people and grassroots organisations are involved in defining the new aesthetic and function of those spaces, more will increase their ownership over them. Rural and internal areas dramatically need a new wave of collective (civil society + public institutions) civic imagination to counteract the depopulation and ageing and, on the contrary, support a new awareness of belonging to these areas.
Place Out! is thus working to create a fruitful dialogue between youth people and grassroots organisations with public administrations. The aim is to improve youth people's capacity to affect the policy-making process by expressing their needs and intentions in the public space. On the other side, public administrations are working toward an improved capacity to gather young people’s needs. The expected output is therefore the stimulation of a new set of policies able to allow the co-design and co-management of abandoned spaces and unused public spaces (see also temporary uses).
The empowerment action carried out by Place Out! wants to act primarily on increasing social inclusion at the European level. In particular, Place Out! starts from the assumption that territorial differences can be an advantage and element on which it is possible to build unity at the European level. Promoting knowledge of these differences, and at the same time using them to improve people's lives through action on the territory, helps to foster acceptance of social diversity and differences. Furthermore, through its territorial empowerment action, Place Out! aims to improve the capacity of young people and institutions with respect to the decisions taken in their territories, improving the outcomes of these choices and reducing inequalities. As European Union Inclusion and Diversity Strategy recall, geographical barriers exist and prevent young people from taking part in the cultural, social and political life of the European Union: those barriers can be removed thanks to more far-sighted political choices, which in turn are possible thanks to a greater knowledge of the territory, the ability of young people to carry out their own needs, the ability of the institutions to involve young people in decision-making processes and the ability to speak among themselves and at a European level. Furthermore, these geographical barriers are deeply interconnected with economic and social barriers, also recalled by the European Strategy and these can be overcome too, thanks to an action that aims at the one hand, to improve policies, and on the other to the recognition of social diversity.
Place Out! treasures a rich partnership composed also by 4 organisations from civil society working with and for the young people's engagement; their scope for the project is therefore to reach grassroots and informal youth organisations and actively involve them in Place Out! capacity building activities. Also, public administrations are crucial for the further exploitation of the initiative, spreading the action towards other territorial layers. In this context, we already have a great number of direct beneficiaries (participants) and also an even bigger number of indirect beneficiaries that will benefit from the lasting effects of the project’s action.
In complementarity with the civil society involvement, a number of stakeholders (grassroots organisations, universities and schools, SMEs, non-profit organisations, public agencies, etc…) have already been involved and will be further included in the Place Out! network too. The final project’s signature of the “European Charter for the youth-led territorial regeneration” will be the most crucial moment and output to gather a great number of local, national and European stakeholders to share a common vision of the youth-led territorial regeneration process. Moreover, the project has been designed on the basis of a number of previous local, national and transnational projects and interventions implemented mainly by the project’s partners, for instance: EUREKA is an ongoing Erasmus plus Knowledge Alliance project, aiming at formalizing the Urban Regenerator profile - as a professional able to use social innovation tools to develop urban regeneration processes - and promoting it for the public and private sector through the creation of a multidisciplinary curriculum, designed by universities, enterprises, PA cooperating jointly. BORGO PROSSIMA is a project financed by the municipality of Borgo San Lorenzo (Florence) and by the Regional authority for the guarantee and promotion of participation. Starting from a mapping of the spaces to be regenerated in the municipality - built also on the basis of the participatory process in view of the new town-planning regulations - the project has involved local young people who have ideas to revive these spaces, or who want to take action to be part of the change process. DESOPAEX is an ongoing Programme for the Sustainable Development of Extremadura's Heritage which aims to achieve the social valorisation of the heritage of the rural environment to meet the needs of the youth population of Extremadura and reduce the inequalities through activities that promote research, dissemination, training and mapping.
Place Out! Has been designed by a multidisciplinary team of experts from the several involved partners; their different fields of knowledge have brought diversity, reliability and richness to the overall project’s structure. Therefore the understanding of how to lever Place Out! on a multidisciplinary approach comes from a) the partnership composition; b) the knowledge field of the project’s activities. The project has been designed by a team expert in systemic design, project management, local and territorial management, international cooperation, economics, geography and spatial management. Simultaneously, the activities’ knowledge range from participatory processes management, sustainable territorial development, policy-making for social inclusion, architecture and tactical urbanism, geography and sociology.
As Erasmus+ project, Place Out! is composed of a solid work plan structure that reflects the above-mentioned knowledge fields: Work Package 1: Coordination and Management; Work Package 2: Exploring and mapping territorial opportunities; Work Package 3: Capacity Building For Youth Grassroots Organization; Work Package 4: Capacity Building For Local Institution; Work Package 5: Dialogue Building; Work Package 6: Impact, communication and dissemination.
The innovative character of Place Out! is the methodology and the process that connect two key features and support the construction of an EU-framed and territorial-rooted multi-level governance structure that will allow a policy-oriented dialogue between the local and European level and which is able to mobilise and activate stakeholders at both levels. The two features are: the first is the already mentioned focus on the territorial dimension, derived from the idea that social and physical geography actually counts in historical processes, as well as in being an obstacle or incentive for the success of a specific policy - including youth policies. The typology of natural resources, the nature of the economic activities present, demography, processes of abandonment/regeneration, and distance from cities, services, or cultural centres: those and other elements are key features for decision-makers to design policy intervention. This is even more important from the perspective of sustainable development, in which the local dimension becomes increasingly important to activate sustainable economic and social processes. The second feature is a focus on knowledge. Place-based policies recognize that the knowledge necessary to define objectives and to implement policies is not owned by specific centres of competence but is distributed over a large number of different subjects: from the international institution to the individual inhabitants of the territory. Implementing a place-based policy means being able to gather the knowledge necessary for a specific policy, both from the very local level (inhabitants of the territories) to the national and international one (central government or international organisation).
The place-based approach described and implemented by Place Out! states that EU Youth strategies and policies on different territories must be based on multilevel governance, which goes from the local to the supranational and is structured following the logic of competencies and knowledge, recognizing the differences between places and using them to improve the quality of the life of Young People living them. Place Out! concretely applies this approach from a European perspective. The project uses best practices carried out by individual partners within European strategies and actions by territorialising them and exporting them, through a participatory approach that allows identifying strengths and weaknesses of those strategies and actions in relation to those territories.
This method is replicable and exportable in two different ways:
- On the one hand, the actions carried out and the project results can be replicated in other EU territories that have
similar characteristics to those addressed.
- On the other hand, the approach used can be replicated in all EU territories from a transnational perspective, with a view to the territorialisation of Youth Policies.
Place Out! aims at the realisation of a territorial capacity-building process aimed at increasing the leadership and access to the European dimension for young people in the territories where the project takes place.
The project uses three main methodologies for design and implementation:
- Place-based approach: the project is designed to act on a local and European dimension, applying the same multilevel
governance that will be transmitted in the target territories.
- Co-Design: the project was co-designed with the project partners, who in turn use co-design methodologies and
participatory engagement with their targets and stakeholders.
- Incremental logic: the activities are linked together through a linear and consequential logic. Each activity lays the
foundation for the next one or is complementary to it: all activities concur with the achievement of project objectives.
The application of these methodologies starts from the choice of the intervention areas, which took place through a process of co-design with partners and stakeholders.
The project is built with reference to the European youth strategy 2019 - 2027, to which the Erasmus plus program refers. Place Out! can in fact be described using all three words around which the strategy is built: engage - through the direct involvement of young people and dialogue activities - connect - through sharing experience, dialoguing on shared necessities and mobility activities finalised to build shared solutions, and empower - through territorial capacity building activities. Place Out! project develops according to the New European Bauhaus principles and to the European Green Deal, in particular regarding the attention towards our living spaces and environments to be sustainable, inclusive and beautiful, both urban and rural. The New European Bauhaus initiative promotes participation at all levels, including youth participation in democratic and civic life, and supports specific issues enhanced by Place Out! too, such as digital challenges to improve people's quality of life, co-creation and participatory practices as a means to address social problems, sense of belonging and “sense of place”, as well as projects about “physical transformation and regeneration of territories, including small villages, rural areas, shrinking cities”, inspired also by the “Prioritising the places and people that need it the most” category of the NEB Prizes 2022 and 2023. Moreover, NEB is part of the European Green Deal strategy which focuses on the “no person and no place left behind” ideal too. In this context, youth are considered as main actors to drive changes and innovative policies, through their participation in environmental, climate and political initiatives about the future of Europe, but at the same time the “no place left behind” ideal recalls the focus of Place Out! project on territorial regeneration of rural, inner areas in Europe.
Place Out! is now starting the implementation of the project’s activities and the project’s kick-off is going to take place in the Mugello region (Italy) at the end of February 2023. Nevertheless, the partnership is already working, especially by strengthening the methodological setting for the activities implementation. Direct and indirect beneficiaries are already benefitting from the activities: the Local Public Authorities partner of the project has already started the promotion of the project’s action by also identifying an adequate and reliable team to be involved, also from diverse directions and units from the institution itself (direct beneficiaries), in order to guarantee the needed competences and get their interested engagement. Also, the project’s Local Coordinators (local organisations working with and for young people) are already working with the young people in their region by also identifying those individuals, informal groups, and associations that may be significant and coherent to be mapped and then involved in the capacity building programme as participants. Moreover, both the Public Authorities, the Local Coordinators and the Transnational Partners too (DEMSOC, LAMA, Impact Hub Network) are jointly identifying and building up a reliable project stakeholder network.
Place Out! directly contributes to developing new competencies in the context of the European competence framework on sustainability. The capacity-building process carried out by Place Out! is conceived to improve the competencies of young people and institutions with respect to the implementation of place-based processes for the sustainable regeneration of spaces. Therefore, the project addresses each competency through diverse and various activities. EMBODYING SUSTAINABILITY VALUES: the focus on non-urban territories and rural areas aims at supporting a fair society: each citizen, with a particular focus on young people, has to rely on equal opportunities in terms of education and learning but also in terms of “space ownership”; public space needs to be redesigned in order to open new opportunities for entrepreneurship, civic engagement, sport, cultural production etc… Moreover, rural and remote territories need to be recognized as leaders and guides in promoting the value of Nature, also for people, as part of a complex ecosystem. The ecosystemic perspective necessarily brings to EMBRACING COMPLEXITY IN SUSTAINABILITY, by leveraging systems thinking and critical thinking. The willingness to address the policy reforming by working on competencies, culture and behaviours well expresses how the project embraces the two approaches of thinking. Also, the two-level dimension (local and European) of the project’s activities has been designed to address a valuable problem framing for Europe and on territories too. The ACTION FOR SUSTAINABILITY is really the competence we are aiming to promote the most by improving the partnership capacity to act as a political agency, involving territories and networks on a collective action composed also of a series of individual initiatives. The capacity of ENVISIONING SUSTAINABLE FUTURES is the lasting legacy Place Out! aims to deliver: design futures literacy, working for adaptability keeping place-based exploratory thinking.
