Learning from Context
Building social competence from local knowledge
22-23 September 2017
Berlin, Aquarium
Skalitzer Str. 6, 10999 Berlin
Berlin DE
The Learning from Context conference is part of the EULER Erasmus Plus project coordinating training programs in the cities of Antwerp, Barcelona, London and Berlin. It aimed at presenting the participatory toolsets developed by the local laboratories in the four cities, enhancing reflection, sharing and dissemination of the produced knowledge in a profitable confrontation with similar approaches. The conference has set in constructive dialogue different experiences of urban education, knowledge exchange and capacity building, paying special attention to:
- the valorisation of knowledge produced in informal, bottom-up initiatives to improve employment and neighbourhood-based welfare;
- the learning process and skills developed in voluntary engagement within local communities and their recognition, measurement, acknowledgement;
- tools and techniques to improve the capacity of communities to understand their contexts and to better devise appropriate solutions to local challenges;
- how new forms of co-productive city making lead to the development of skills that are complementary to the urban planning profession or practice;
- how collaborative economic paradigms can improve the resilience of neighbourhoods in crisis;
- how artistic and communication skills can be employed to fight exclusion and counteract stigmatisation and gentrification.
The conference had a practice-oriented multidisciplinary approach, favouring presentations introducing concrete experiences and tools rather than theoretical papers. We encouraged non-strictly academic formats and interactive presentations.