Roots and potential connections

This toolkit highlights the importance of these actions being primarily citizen-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 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.

Interactive screen installed at the La Virreina Square in Gràcia © Manuela Reyes.

In addition, this toolkit acknowledges the diversity of Citizen Observatories, both in their variety of forms and processes, and, while keeping a focus on citizen 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 the citizens involved in the participatory processes taking place in the Citizen Observatories.

Keeping that above-mentioned strong citizen-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 citizen-led actions, and the potential enhancement, impact and broader outreach of the results. This is brought about at two levels: firstly, by providing tailored guidance for engaging with creatives and facilitating the connections with the creative sector in general, and secondly, by leveraging on existing networks such as the Distributed Design Platform[10] (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 Citizen-led Action Toolkit aims to make use of powerful and already existing resources to create opportunities for diverse forms of citizen-led actions, while providing a strong link with the New European Bauhaus, as the Distributed Design Platform is an official partner of the initiative[11] and its values are strongly aligned with those of the NEB[12].