Update on NEB
Yesterday (9 March 2021), Alberto, @giacomo.pinaffo, Aurora Prospero (FEBEA) and I had a very interesting meeting with Alessandro Rancati from JRC - the unit coordinating the New European Bauhaus initiative.
We presented the ER side and the projects that may be directly interested in a collaboration:
- The Reef social housing, Bruxelles – resonates on some frequencies with NEB
- Solarpunk esthetics – Art Deco and green
- Theory of change – things that mey be difficult while alone, become easy in a community setting
- Small prototype, but evolved in much greener sense through the years adopting and following personal initiatives of the members
- Blivande
- Project begun as a coworking space in the Stockholm port area
- Building a project in partnership with Nordisk Kulturfond and Transeuropean Halles, looking towards NEB
Our objective – access to NEB intellignece
Alessandro Rancati has described some of the details of the initiative.
After the initial push by VDL, EC created a small unit within JRC dedicated to provide examples and case studies that can render the European Green Deal less abstract, “a positive “touchable” experience”.
This first phase is best described as the listening phase of the Commission. A sensemaking phase will follow.
There is still no clear vision aside the “positive and proactive push” towards aesthetics, sustainability and inclusion. Because of that in this moment they work on collecting ideas, concrete examples, contributions and experienced insights.
In the spring, calls for proposals will be announced looking for already existing and functioning places with qualitative relationships and interactions with their surroundings.
The methods developed and used:
- theory of complexity
- not traditional science but design based approach
- hints and advices taken from objective conditions and not from the tradition
What is still missing:
- interaction with the big economic players – it will arrive eventually and i twill have its weight but that also depends on the ground set in this preliminary phase
- big contributions from the artistic world
The process is a series of open and dynamic discussions which admit the contradictory. Interesting points for example may be the Solarpunk aesthetics – a good example of “new visions” and a connection to non dystopic SF.
In conclusion:
We are invited to open one or more conversations between NEB and ER (& our network) to better present the things we work on, develop themes and proposals and in parallel start looking at the calls for proposals
In Alessandro’s opinion there is a “huge value seeing groups of themes growing around NEB able to participate and contribute. The more interventions with inclusive, participatory projects arrive in this phase, the better.”
What next ?
A good example is Eurocities project – it started with a meeting dedicated to their networks where one of the ideas was to work on new methods of citizen engagement. Some of the cities opened the citizen engagement sessions on aesthetical, socially inclusive spaces.
It implied practical things – how to organise a workshop, how to facilitate, how to present the contributions gathered on the platform – keywords collected (SSNA comes to mind) etc.
We should:
- define which advantages / benefits we see in this type of situation for ourselves and in general, aside the collaboration with NEB
- concentrate on spaces with Green Deal perspectives