Placemaking as Youth Activism

The needs identified were: 1. Lack of participation by citizens and especially university students in public life. We believe that students can be agents of positive change and wished to offer them the opportunity to express their ideas and contribute to the improvement of their cities, by making public spaces more participatory, functional, beautiful, sustainable and happy, in accordance with the principles of the New European Bauhaus. 2. Universities are still very much centred on models of unidirectional transmission of knowledge in segmented disciplinary areas, which results in a lack of opportunity for students to work on projects with effective social impact with contributions from different scientific areas. With PLAY/ACT we wanted to contribute to the development of the students' sense of critical thinking and civic responsibility using cross-disciplinary project-based learning approaches. 3. The public space has been losing importance as a place for socialising and expressing democratic life, due to the isolation of citizens in the digital world, the growing individualism of contemporary societies and the commodification of cities, which in many cases have become spaces for consumption rather than spaces for being.

With the implementation of the project, we intended to: 1. Test new forms of learning in higher education through the development of community and project-based learning methodologies focused on the cities where students live. We believe that the knowledge and skills acquired by the students during the project will be useful for their professional and personal future. 2. Promote the adoption of innovative and collaborative learning and knowledge transfer practices in Higher Education, by working in close cooperation with different stakeholders: regional and local administration, non-profit associations, educational institutions, small businesses, citizens. 3. Contribute to the civic participation and democratic spirit of university students by involving them in placemaking projects that might contribute to the regeneration of places with low social dynamism through the activation of relationships with communities. 4. Promote the exchange of ideas and good practices between the project partners and other European organisations working on placemaking, feeding the partner’s network of international contacts.

We describe the activities carried out in relation to the objectives described in the previous field: Objective 1. Testing new forms of learning in higher education: we have developed a transdisciplinary lifelong learning course in association between the University of Évora, the University of Extremadura (partners) and the University of Basilicata (associate partner). The course lasted three semesters with a total of 14 ECTS and its structure incorporated the main types of activities in an Erasmus+ KA2 project. As part of this course, we implemented 4 thematic Learning Training and Teaching Activities (LTTs), each associated with a different phase of the projects developed locally (LTT1: Mapping and Community Engagement; LTT2: Communication and Videonarratives; LTT3: Capacitation on Placemaking; LTT4: Experience Design and Prototyping). Some partners also carried out optional training in digital fabrication. In this way, the LTTs contributed to the acquisition of knowledge and skills by the students, which were then applied in practice in the development of local projects. Objective 2. The local projects mentioned before were developed through the establishment of partnerships with numerous local stakeholders like regional and local administration, non-profit associations, educational institutions, small businesses, citizens. These stakeholders were mapped by the students following the LTT1 Mapping and Engagement and during the Multiplier Events Objective 3. Contribute to the civic participation and democratic spirit of university students: in order to develop local placemaking projects, each team of students had to organise three local multiplier events which, as well as serving to disseminate the results of the project, were important opportunities for contact with the community to gather information about the places, identify community needs and co-design and test possible solutions for the place. In general, one local multiplier event was organised for each semester of the course in each city. Objective 4. Promote the exchange of ideas and good practices between the project partners and other European organisations: the last multiplier event was an international conference on placemaking. We received 30 communication proposals in response to an open call, from which 16 were selected for presentation. 61 people from outside the project attended the conference. The following activities were also carried out to evaluate the impact of the project: post-LTT questionnaires; interviews with key project gatekeepers; interviews with the staff; final project impact assessment questionnaire to all students.

The outputs of the project were: - A competence framework identifying the knowledge and skills that university students should acquire during the placemaking course - A communication and dissemination plan for the project - Creation of a project website (https://playact.eu/) and an social media accounts (IG: @playact.doit) - A visual identity manual - A project impact assessment plan - A curriculum plan for a lifelong learning course in placemaking entitled "Placemaking: transdisciplinary methodologies in community engagement" offered by University of Évora (Portugal), University of Extremadura (Spain) and University of Basilicata (Italy). The course has been structured in three semesters. It consisted of four compulsory curricular units and four optional curricular units, of which students must complete two to guarantee a total of 14 ECT. - Training plans for the four LTTs implemented - A training plan for digital fabrication training applied to placemaking processes - Organisation of 12 local multiplier events to disseminate the project's results and involve communities in the development of local projects - The organisation of the A Place to Be international conference, which included 16 communications and the participation of 61 people, in addition to the 32 members of the project teams - Publication of "A Place to Be - The PLAY/ACT Placemaking Handbook", a handbook summarising the main results of the project and containing a series of original scientific articles on placemaking. - Publication of "The PLAY/ACT Placemaking Toolkit", which contains a description of the main tools applied by the students during the development of the local projects - Development and testing of 4 placemaking projects in the cities of Évora, Mérida, Matera and Budapest with their own specific results that will be described in the next section.