Imagine Your City

Project Imagine Your City will engage local citizens of Kosice and war refugees from Ukraine in co-creation of site-specific interventions in public space around the temporary refugee shelter in Jedlikova dormitory.

The jointly developed and realized interventions will be then upscaled by local creative businesses during an intense hackathon to become replicable prototypes for use by the city administrations across Europe when dealing with future refugee crises (due to wars, climate change and/or energy and economic crises).

More than 100,000 refugees passed through Kosice since Russian invasion of Ukraine. Around 6% of them decided to stay, which makes 2,6% of the total population of Kosice. The city has provided temporary accommodation, basic services, supportive job application processes and limited psychological support. Most of the solutions were result of improvisation.

While the solidarity with the Ukrainian refugees is still strong, the feeling is challenged by the populist political agendas, upcoming economic crises and worsening social opportunities for the locals. The city’s social cohesion is under threat, as contacts among locals and refugees are scarce.

To avoid a creation of perfect storm for social discontent, community disintegration and further deterioration of public realm, our project offers template action to pilot solutions for inclusive, sustainable, resilient, democratic and joint future of various communities in Kosice, that will be replicable across Europe.

• Connect local citizens with war refugees to build more resilient community through use of participative process of co-designing public space.
• Connect artists, businesses, and the city to work together with citizens in finding sustainable, aesthetic and democratic solutions for public spaces.
• Inform local residents on future challenges due to climate change and green transition, and concept of active citizenships.
• Provide the city administration with data, tested methodologies, piloted solutions and policy recommendations to understand better needs of their citizens, make more informed decisions and prepare for future integration challenges.
• Co-develop and test solutions scalable and replicable across the Europe.

The project will take place in Jedlikova dormitory of Technical University of Kosice.

1: Mapping of communities that use the area. Data will be gathered on structure (gender, age, social background), patterns of space usage and communities’ needs.

2: Project partners will develop plan and program for workshops for citizens and refugees based on co-creation, gamification, and peer-to-peer sharing.

3:  4 one-day facilitated workshops for local residents, refugees, students, external local artists will take place. During intensive co-creation process, the needs will be elaborated into space-intervention ideas, developed into prototypes and structured as public presentations.

4: Four most supported community interventions will be defined as urban challenges and developed into business-ready prototypes during one-day hackathon. The prototyped solutions will be presented to the city administration and local community, that will vote for the winner, to be provided with Prize finance.

5: Series of 4 meetups in the area of dormitory will be held, informing the community about values and principles of New European Bauhaus.

6: Policy recommendations for a participatory city policy that uses urban planning for integration of excluded communities will be published. Together with the methodology introduced, the study will represent a guideline for a replicable model across Europe.

The New European Bauhaus is a creative and interdisciplinary initiative of EU President Ursula von der Leyen that is a practical tool for implementation of European Green Deal, a EU framework for overcoming climate change and environmental degradation.

The New European Bauhaus initiative calls on all of us to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future, based on practices, places and experiences that are:

• Enriching, inspired by art and culture, responding to needs beyond functionality.
• Sustainable, in harmony with nature, the environment, and our planet.
• Inclusive, encouraging a dialogue across cultures, disciplines, genders and ages.

Our project builds on core NEB principles and values:

• Together: site-specific interventions are co-designed by the community that uses the space the most
• Beautiful: project re-designs the space to be functional, and relevant
• Sustainable: project re-design the space to meet environmental standards
• Multilevel: project engages various stakeholders (citizens, artists, University, businesses, city)
• Transdisciplinary: project fosters cross-sectoral cooperation
• Participatory: project uses as methodology co-creation, peer-to-peer sharing and action learning

• Technická univerzita Košice
• Východné pobrežie n.o.

• Site-specific interventions aimed at re-designing devasted public space.
• Replicable business prototypes for broader city challenges.
• Meetups with local residences.
• Policy recommendations for the city administration.
• Series of 4 short inspirational videos capturing project activities, at the same time promoting the values and core principles of NEB.

EIT Community New European Bauhaus Imagine Your City project is supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union