Consolidating community building in "public living rooms"

By implementing the project, we wanted to contribute to the establishment and sustainability of “public living rooms”, as local self managed spaces, where community building, empowerment and infor...

By implementing the project, we wanted to contribute to the establishment and sustainability of “public living rooms”, as local self managed spaces, where community building, empowerment and informal learning takes place. We had three main overall objectives. We wanted to ..: A) .. make knowledge on the functioning of public living rooms accessible B) .. improve the quality of adult education in public living rooms C) .. assure continuity in the organizational process of public living rooms

We have worked on a grassroots toolbox called “ich bin Clara” that the Germans have developed. We looked how it could be applied in other countries. For this we studied and translated “the nine dimensions of the public living room". The five partners each adopted two of these dimensions and lead the conversation about them. These content discussions took place in work meetings in four of the five partner countries.The nine dimensions and their division over the work meetings and partners were: NL – “Learning space” – activity 1 (+project management) SK – “Community” and “Food & Drink – activity 3 CZ – “Care” and “Space – activity 4 HU – “Self-care” and “Participation – activity 6 DE – “Diversity” and “Connectedness – activity 8 We also organised three coaching tours in three countries. Here the method of working with the dimensions was tested in cooperation with different local community groups. Finally all partners organised dissemination activities. We did 9 activities in total: 1) Start off work meeting 2) Coaching tour Slovakia 3) Work meeting Slovakia 4) Midterm Work meeting in Prague 5) Coaching tour Hungary 6) Work meeting Hungary 7) Coaching tour Germany 8) End meeting in Stuttgart, Germany 9) Dissemination

Our 3 objectives translated into the following results: A) We have analyzed the 9 aspects of how community organizing in a public living room functions. As a concrete output of this, we now have the summarised agreed definition of the 9 dimensions available in six translations in addition to German, notably in Czech, Dutch, English, Hungarian, Slovak and Ukrainian B) We have studied, tested, and discussed the evaluation questions on each of the 9 dimensions. As a concrete output of this we have the 9 sets of questions translated in the six languages mentioned above. In some instances we adapted questions of the original set of German questions. C) We have thought out ways to assure that public living room organizers can pass on their wisdom and we have a better cooperation and networking between our organizations. As a concrete output of this, we have formulated a follow up project, because we realised that there is much more we can do with the materials we created in this project (The follow up project is “Understanding the 9 dimensions of a public living room” number 2024-2-NL01-KA210-ADU-000292939)