New European Bauhaus: support to cities and citizens for local initiatives
Today, the Commission announced three new calls to make the New European Bauhaus (NEB) a reality on the ground. The support is intended specifically for citizens, cities and towns to take the New European Bauhaus project deep into their communities.
Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel,said: “Citizens are key drivers of the transition towards more sustainable, inclusive and beautiful places and lifestyles. The two calls published by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology are supporting their full engagement in development of innovative and collaborative models of local initiatives by offering tailor-made opportunities to them. The New European Bauhaus is made by and for each citizen.”
Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira, said: “Cohesion policy is ideally placed to support municipalities in small cities and towns of up to 100,000 people to develop local New European Bauhaus projects with their communities. With this first dedicated NEB call under cohesion policy, we offer the technical capacity needed for multidisciplinary, high-value projects bringing sustainability, aesthetics and inclusiveness to the local people, and hope it will inspire many more such projects in the future.”
Launched by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), the first and second calls focus on citizen engagement activities and co-creation of public spaces with citizens.
The EIT Community ‘Citizen Engagement Call’ invites citizens to identify relevant New European Bauhaus challenges for their cities and collaborate on co-designing solutions. The projects will help citizens take up more sustainable habits, develop new products, services or solutions and help community members become agents of change.
The call for ‘Co-Creation of Public Space’ will support projects that find innovative solutions in New European Bauhaus themes. The projects invite local actors to be inspirational, beautiful and sustainable in their ideas to re-design public spaces in cities, urban and rural areas creating new solutions for transformation. The deadline for submissions for the two calls from EIT is 29 May 2022 at 23:59 CEST.
The third and last call, ‘Support to New European Bauhaus Local Initiatives’, provides technical assistance to small and medium-sized municipalities, which do not have the capacity or rich expertise needed to turn their NEB project ideas into reality. 20 place-based project concepts selected within the call will benefit from tailored support on the ground provided by a group of interdisciplinary experts to shape the concepts along the lines of the New European Bauhaus and the objectives of the Green Deal. Support from cohesion policy is thus intended to help introduce a place-based approach to NEB initiatives at the regional and local level, and to engage public authorities in the Member States to launch more New European Bauhaus projects nationally.
The knowledge and lessons learnt during this process will feed into a ‘toolbox’ aimed at other municipalities as well as the wider public interested in developing new or replicating existing New European Bauhaus projects on the ground. The European Regional Development Fund funds the technical assistance to municipalities. This can take the form of tailor-made methodological, technical, regulatory, financial and socio-economic expertise provided by the expert team on the ground that will support further development of project concepts by the municipalities, as well a toolbox for future project owners. The deadline for submissions is 23 May 2022 at 17:00 CEST.
Background
The New European Bauhaus is an environmental, economic and cultural project, aiming to combine design, sustainability, accessibility, affordability and investment in order to help deliver the European Green Deal.
Launched by President von der Leyen in her 2020 State of the Union address, the New European Bauhaus was co-designed together with thousands of people and organisations across Europe and further beyond.
For More Information
Citizen Engagement Activities – Call website
Co-creation of Public Space – Call website
Support to New European Bauhaus Local Initiatives Call website
