4️⃣Connections

Roots and potential connections

This toolkit highlights the importance of these actions being primarily community-led, and it provides tools for these initiatives to have an impact in their local context without having to rely on external processes normally led by other stakeholders in the Citizen Observatories (COs), such as scientific publications, or direct policy change.

This approach builds upon the Ground Truth 2.0 (GT2.0) co-design methodology, and the results from its Demonstration Cases.

Using the GT2.0 co-design approach as a starting point or basis for involving the community, incorporating lessons learned and experiences from the GT2.0 project's practical application.

Essentially, the toolkit applies the key understanding gained from GT2.0 that citizens are often motivated for direct environmental action, and is specifically tailored to help support these action-oriented efforts, regardless of whether they fit a traditional scientific data collection model.

Credits: Manuela Reyes Guerrero

More than giving support to engaged communities, this toolkit also acknowledges the diversity of Citizen Observatories, both in their variety of forms and processes, and, while keeping a focus on communities within those COs, it provides co-creation tools that can result in widely different actions, including artistic interventions and displays, protests, public forums and presentations, among many others. No matter the final shape and form of these actions, or whether they target change around space usage, increased environmental protection or visibility of a problem that concerns the community, this toolkit's main focus are communities involved in the participatory processes taking place in the Citizen Observatories.

Keeping that strong community-led focus in mind, this toolkit also provides resources which can help foster relationships between COs and other communities in their local context, especially creatives, artists, local (maker)spaces and the cultural communities in the areas where the COs are based.

The main goal is to promote the collaboration of these diverse communities in the co-creation and implementation of the community-led actions, and the potential enhancement, impact and broader outreach of the results.

This is brought about at two levels:

1. by providing tailored guidance for engaging with creatives and facilitating the connections with the creative sector in general

2. by leveraging on existing networks such as the Distributed Design Platform (led by Fab Lab Barcelona | IAAC)

The Distributed Design Platform acts as an exchange and networking hub that brings together a diverse member base from cultural and creative institutions, connecting makers, designers, and creatives. Through this network, the Community-led Action Toolkit aims to make use of powerful and already existing resources to create opportunities for diverse forms of community-led actions, while providing a strong link with the New European Bauhaus, as the Distributed Design Platform is an official partner of the initiative and its values are strongly aligned with those of the NEB.