If you want to take action but you don't know how, this toolkit was designed to help you. It provides a selection of co-creation tools to help you devise/create, organise, and deliver actions that can make a positive change, allowing you to go beyond planning, sensing, and awareness towards concrete action.
Think of this as a collection of helpful areas divided into 6 sections – Initiation, Implementation, Working with creatives, Reflection, and an Action Gallery, which you can explore in any order that suits your needs. You can use it by simply browsing through the different sections that interest you most, kind of like choosing what you need when you need it.
This toolkit sits at the intersection of creativity and community-driven initiatives, showing how collaborating with creatives adds value to your projects by bringing innovative and engaging approaches. It is built on an important set of values of being open, sharing and making sure everyone feels included, helping you feel empowered to make change, working together creatively to go beyond functionality, and aiming to improve our environment through regenerative making and design principles.
We’ve kept things simple and action-oriented. In this Toolkit, you will find:
A step-by-step process for planning and launching a community-led creative project
Real examples of how communities have worked with creatives to drive change
Tools & templates to help you get started right away
Tips on finding and collaborating with creatives—even if you've never worked with one before
By providing guidance on finding and involving creatives, particularly through connections like the Distributed Design Platform, this resource aims to nurture collaborations that enhance the impact and reach of your community-led actions. Those special tips for working with artists and other creative people will make your actions become more impactful.
This toolkit aims to empower you and your community to move beyond just awareness and planning towards concrete actions that lead to positive environmental change. Keeping this in mind, this toolkit also provides resources which can help to foster relationships between Citizen Observatories and other communities in the local context, especially creatives, artists, local (maker)spaces and the cultural communities in the areas where the Citizen Observatories are based. This is brought about by providing tools and facilitating these connections through the Distributed Design Platform.
You might be wondering, why this toolkit in the first place? Well, it was created for Citizen Observatories, groups of motivated individuals eager to protect their environment and enact positive change, who may lack the specific guidance and tools to translate their passion into effective action.
By using this toolkit, you gain access to methods and resources that can drive energy and enthusiasm within your group, help you narrow down ideas and define the scope of your action, and map the resources you need and have available. More importantly, it also provides guidance on how to collaborate with creatives, which can significantly amplify the reach and impact of your projects with innovative and engaging approaches.
Readers can use this toolkit freely by navigating through each section, without any particular predefined order. However, even if readers can jump into different sections as needed, the toolkit follows a logical sequence that progressively builds upon tools that can help navigate a generic community-led action co-creation process.
In each section, when possible, links to existing resources are provided. The overall toolkit is also meant to be iterative, and it provides reflection tools that can help better define future steps and reflect on the results achieved.
Conceptually, this toolkit is divided into the following parts:
Welcome!
Initiation
Working with Creatives
Planning for impact
Reflection
Need inspiration?
Initially, the (2) Initiation section aims to provide tools that help collaboratively shape the actions by the Citizen Observatory, focusing on the active role of communities within the CO. This is done by providing a curated selection of different co-creation tools, as well as resources from various projects and practitioners experience. A special section, (3) , is dedicated to the connection with —and involvement of— creatives in the co-creation process and implementation of the actions. The (4) Planning for Impact section is aimed at providing guidelines, based on previous experience and other tools, on how to plan, produce and deliver a community-led action.
(5) If you are planning a more complex citizen-led action, you want to continue it or seek more resources for the future, we recommend that you do an impact measurement that later supports the value of the action. If your action is smaller or one-off, it’s OK to skip this step.
Finally, the (6) provides a compilation of previous projects and examples that may inspire Citizen Observatories in their actions, linking with the previous sections when relevant.
Welcome to the CitiObs Community-led Action Toolkit! This resource is for citizen communities within Citizen Observatories who are motivated to take action in environmental protection. It's packed with easy-to-use tools to help your group come up with ideas, plan, and carry out your own projects – big or small – that can actually make a difference and lead to positive change.
Throughout this toolkit, you’ll see the terms “Citizen-led” and “Community-led” used interchangeably. This is intentional. We recognise that meaningful action can start in many ways, sometimes from a motivated individual, and other times from a collective effort. “Citizen-led” highlights personal initiative and responsibility, while “Community-led” emphasises collaboration and shared ownership. Both are valid pathways to impact, and this toolkit is designed to support both ends of that spectrum. From solo changemakers to organised community groups.
Want to get started? Keep reading!
Don’t know what Citizen Observatories are? Head to our Glossary
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor (CitiObs or any of their project partners) cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor (CitiObs or any of their project partners) endorses you or your use.
ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Below, we list a set of cross-cutting values which this toolkit aims to set as a baseline for a shared vision between the content and tools of the following sections. These values align with the New European Bauhaus values and those of the Distributed Design Platform.
While the toolkit presents the values in a general sense, it acknowledges that they may need to be further defined and contextualised based on the unique experiences and characteristics of each CO initiative. It encourages readers to tailor the implementation of the values to their specific local contexts, considering the needs and aspirations of their communities.
What are cross-cutting values? Just like the rules of a game that everyone agrees to follow, no matter what part of the game they’re playing. They help make sure the work stays true to its purpose, no matter what stage you're in or who is involved.
Openness
Openness refers to the mentality and approach to share and make processes transparent, replicable, and accessible. It enables the iterative and replicable nature of actions. This openness extends to various strategic priorities, including open design, open science, open technology and data, and being open to the world, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange.
Inclusivity
Encouraging a dialogue across cultures, disciplines, genders, and ages is essential for fostering inclusivity, diversity, and a comprehensive understanding of complex issues. By promoting cross-cultural exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and inclusivity in all aspects, we create an environment where diverse perspectives and experiences can enrich discussions, inspire innovative solutions, and facilitate collective learning.
Empowerment and changemaking
Empowerment involves taking control and the increased responsibility for yourself and your environment. Fostered through collaborative approaches and openness, empowerment ultimately aims to improve quality of life through changemaking. Our focus on these values goes beyond technological solutions, seeking transformation in individuals, communities, institutions, and cultures by shifting thinking, attitudes, values, and consciousness. We embrace community-led change as a powerful force for creating meaningful impact.
Co-creation and participatory practices
Co-creation is a collaborative approach that involves individuals working together on equal footing to develop projects using various methods and tools. It emphasises the use of diverse resources and ideas to create new actions. This process fosters meaningful participation and agency among communities, enabling them to actively contribute to the design process while promoting inclusive and diverse solutions.
Beautiful
Being inspired by art and culture, and going beyond mere functionality, allows for the exploration of creative and imaginative solutions that respond to deeper human needs and aspirations. By integrating artistic and cultural elements into design and innovation processes, we can tap into the emotional and aesthetic dimensions that resonate with individuals and communities, creating meaningful and transformative experiences.
Regenerative
Regenerative making and design principles aspire to renew and restore the systems that we are part of, rather than just replacing or devaluing them. This involves creating reciprocal relationships and embedding a regenerative design culture from the beginning, with a focus on net positive benefits for both the environment and society.
We really appreciate the feedback, specially if you can add some additional context for us to improve:
So that the feedback is clear, we would like to ask to follow the following guidelines (contributing guidelines):
I'm submitting a …
This is the category of your feedback. You need to choose whether you are reporting a problem you found or requesting that new content be added. This helps the team understand the fundamental nature of your submission right away.
problem report
You found something that isn't working correctly, is confusing, or seems wrong.
new content request
You think something is missing or could be added to make the toolkit better.
What is the current behavior?
This is where you describe the situation as it is now.
If you are submitting a problem report, you should explain what you are currently seeing or experiencing that is incorrect or problematic.
If the current behaviour is a problem, please provide the details of where you found it (which page and section). This is crucial for problem reports as it helps the team locate the exact part of the toolkit you are referring to.
What would you improve?
This is where you propose your solution or suggestion. You explain what you think should be changed or added.
What is the motivation / use case for changing the behavior?
This explains why your suggestion is important or how it would be used. This provides context for your feedback and helps the team understand the benefit of implementing your proposed change or adding the new content.
Other information
This is a space for any additional details that might be relevant but don't fit neatly into the categories above.
In essence, this template provides a structured way for users – whether they are scientists using the methodological sections or creatives engaging with the collaboration guidance – to clearly communicate issues or suggest improvements to the CitiObs Community-led Action Toolkit. It ensures that all necessary information is provided for the feedback to be effectively reviewed and potentially incorporated into future versions of the toolkit.
The easiest way to contribute is via a GitHub issue and, if you can, a Pull request. This process can be scary at first, but it's the way it's done in the open source community.
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.
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:
by providing tailored guidance for engaging with creatives and facilitating the connections with the creative sector in general
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.
