Participation of young people in urban planning and co-managing public spaces

Main goal:
We are looking for partners for a KA2 cross-sectoral partnership in the field of youth and education. In preparation of this of project we would like to organize a preparatory visit (KA1) to meet, plan and finetune the scope and conditions of the KA2-proposal.

The main project will focus on participation of young people in projects of city renewal, urban planning, design and co-management of public space. We want to use this as gangway to promote active citizenship of young people, non-formal learning and building bridges between youth work, employment and education/learning.

Ghent wants to involve youngsters from beginning to end in the process of urban planning. The project of urban planning in Ghent contains the transformation of former harbor docks into a new public space. The link between the old harbor and the area that will be redeveloped, will be kept by placing maritime objects within the framework/concept of a boat. Ghent wants to involve young people in the process of planning, designing and managing maritime objects, starting from the stage of gathering ideas and choosing the objects, continued by refurbishing and placing, to finally managing and promoting them.

The added value to young people is giving them the opportunity to have their say on and work in the public space, which is otherwise mostly and exclusively reserved for designers / architects / city-builders In doing so, they develop social and technical competences and these will be acknowledged through competence-instruments.

We are looking for partner cities that also have an urban renewal project where they want to involve young people.

Dates proposed for Exchange from 26st till the 30th of January 2015 (negiotiable until the first half of Feb.)

Main objective of the visit:
- to get to know each other personally and professionally;
- to build trust and partnership among participating cities and different types of organizations involved in education, training, youth, work, policy making or other relevant fields;
- creating a shared vision and methodology on:
• participation of youngsters in urban renewal projects
• ownership and co-management by young people (responsibility)
• innovative methods of promoting non-formal learning, learning paths and building AND acknowledging competences of young people

We want to implement several activities in the visit such as presentations of partners, workshops (about participation methods), study visits, discussion groups, round tables and open sessions in preparation and implementation of the future KA2-project.

The visit can be in Ghent or in your city.

We are looking for at least 2 partners from 2 different countries coming from a similar city as Ghent, (a medium-sized city between 150.000-500.000 people). Delegations can be up to 5 people: they can be professionals in the field of youth work, city development, policy making, education or building competences. Previous experiences in other exchanges will be appreciated.

For the interested organizations please give confirmation before the 22th of September by mail. Could you also mention in the mail if your organizations has a pic-code. As soon as a partner will be selected, the details of the project will be sent.