19th 20th January 2006, the first meeting of the CTWG on the role of inhabitants in urban public management will take place in Malmø and focus on the topic: “Citizen Participation and Social Exclusion”. The aim of the meeting is to bring together knowledge and findings of relevant URBACT networks and jointly reflect on motivations and barriers of marginalised social groups in becoming involved in urban projects and policies. The main issues which will be addressed are :

- how to identify which groups are at risk (for a variety of reasons from age and gender to economic stress to cultural or ethnic backgrounds) of being excluded from local life;

- how to involve these groups in urban policies - with a particular emphasis on individuals and groups that experience severe social economic and cultural stress and have other priorities in their daily life;

- how to increase their capacities and willingness to take part in urban life and become actors of processes of improvement of their life conditions;

- how to enable different social groups to express their culture whilst at the same time develop respect and understanding for their neighbours cultures and needs;

- which methods and tools are emerging in European cities to address these issues.

Osman Farah, from WG 1, Laurece Vereecke from WG 2 and Macarena Ybarra as General CITIZ@MOVE coordinator will contribute to this first Urbact Cross Cutting Thematic Seminar.

2.1. MAIN SEMINARS AND EVENTS CELEBRATED UP TO DATE

10th - 13th June 2004	First General Assembly - Aarhus.
11th - 13th November 2004	Second working Group – WG 2 – Turin
11th - 14th November 2004	Second working group seminar – WG 3 – Graz
3rd- 5th March 2005	Second working group seminar – WG 1 – London
18th – 19th March 2005	Third working group seminar – WG 2 – Charleroi
26th – 29th May 2005	Second General Assembly Charleroi
26th September 2005	Project Leaders meeting in Paris
27th September 2005	Project Leaders Certification bodies meeting in Paris
28th September 2005	CITIZ@MOVE Expert's meeting in Belgium to prepare the capitalisation work with the attendance of Macarena Ybarra as CITIZ@MOVE coordinator.
13th - 15th October 2005	Fifth working group seminar - WG 2 - Valenciennes.
27th – 30th October 2005	Forth working group seminar - WG 3 - Cosenza.
14th – 15th November 2005	Urbact Cities Conference - Liverpool.
15th December 2005	Meeting between the General Coordinator and the General expert to discuss about the final CITIZ@MOVE product format - Louvain.
19th December 2005	CHARLEROI Working Group technical meeting - Brussels.

2.2. WORKING GROUP 1

Urbact Aarhus lokalworkshop conducts its 8th local workshop Wednesday 25th January 2006 from 16-18 in the large meeting room at Globus1, Gudrunsvej 3a, 8220 Brabrand.

So far Aarhus held 7 local workshop activities. Participants from authorities, projects, associations and ordinary citizens applied numerous methods in working with the theme of empowerment of ethnic minorities in the local communities, especially women, youth and elders.

At the same time, Aarhus local workshop was actively engaged in continues contact and experience exchanges with partner cities in WG1 and the wider CITIZ@MOVE network. This took place in connection with the extra WG1 seminar in Islington- London and latest in Charleroi, Belgium

The following workshop representatives from the local workshop either joined workshop activity or the CITIZ@MOVE 2nd General assembly

· Urban Project: youth and parent guidance
· Urban Project: The youth Magazine Point of View
· Urban Project: Time for the family
· Aarhus Municipality Employment Marked Network
· Urban Project: Public Information
· Municipality Family Centre West
· Gellerup Public Library
· Urban Project: Employment and Entrepreneurship Consultancy

In the upcoming WG1 seminar in Gera, Germany and the final CITIZ@MOVE general assembly in Sevilla, Spain, more local workshop participants from Aarhus will have an opportunity to engage in cross national international methods and experience exchanges.

The Agenda for the 8th Aarhus local workshop:

· Discussion of the empowerment of ethnic women and their participation and inclusion in the local community by Women initiative group (WIG). Maria Arianfar will together with the other leading members from WIG and together with the local workshop debate on WIG activities, experiences, results and future plans aimed at strengthening the position of women with minority background and their positive engagement and contribution to the local community.
· Thereafter we will discuss ideas on the formulation of the WG1 dossier. The aim of producing dossier is to share and disseminate practices and experiences of empowerment and inclusion and ethnic minorities
· Finally the workshop will discuss how to contribute to the major Aarhus Urban event that will take place on the 11 March 2006.

Further information on the Urbanprogramme, CITIZ@MOVE, and Urbact please visit following links: www.urbanbydel.dk og www.urbact.org

2.3. WORKING GROUP 2

The Working Group 2 met the 19th December 2005 in Charleroi to discuss deeply questions that were raised at the Valenciennes working group seminar in October.
The main point of the seminar concerned the link between the “city project” and citizen participation in a capitalization way of thinking in order to pinpointing concrete actions.
We outline the key questions discussed.

· The city must be considered as a development area according to the sustainability criteria decided in Goteborg and Lisbon. From this point of view, there are 10 years of declarations without any results.

· It is very important to focus on intercultural matters (suburbs crisis in France).

· The city project should come first to participation as it defines the main directions as social cohesion.

· The city project cannot be considered without sustainable development (SD). Therefore, we designed a system with SD in its centre interfering 4 poles : intercultural matters (relationship, education, training all the life), local and economic development, governance (with a coordination role) and social cohesion (fair economy, actions targeted on people with social problems, public services and leisure). Some of the participants consider governance as a transversal pole, not an isolated point

· Another system can be suggested : a triangle with 3 angles : social and cultural matters, economy, environment. Sustainable development would be in the centre of the triangle. We insist on the interactions between the poles.

· The city project is the everybody’s project , that means that political should impose some orientations…to avoid the insufficiencies of “spontaneous participations”.

· Transversality means a modernised and adapted vision concerning the communication management. It is important to allow the inhabitants appropriation of global projects in opposition with particular interests.

· To go forward to a public evaluation regarding indicators and preliminary rules.

· The fear regarding participation is linked with the feeling of lost of control and time (listening people, politicians, civil servants,...). It is also the idea : “participation is expensive”.

· Some people see participative democracy in opposition to representative democracy considering that legitimacy belongs to the elected people.

2.4. WORKING GROUP 3

A meeting between the Polytechnical University of Madrid (UPM) and Macarena Ybarra as CITIZ@MOVE project coordinator was organised in Madrid in order to determine the working plan regarding the drafting of the IT tool and the CD-rom.

1. IT TOOL:

1.1. CONTENT:

Various technical aspects of the tool were discussed having as a basis the Cosenza report where partners expressed their observations and difficulties when putting into operation the system. The following aspects will be studied by the UPM to adapt the system to the partner’s requirements:

· Users: The principal worry concerns the user’s true identity. To control this identity it was decided to create an access code. Each administration will decide how this code will be delivered, taking into account their way of working with citizens. The following ways of checking the real user’s identity were discussed:

i. The citizen picks up in the administration the access code.
ii. The administration sends a letter to the citizens providing the code.
iii. The citizen requests it and the administration send it by mail.

· Chat Condition: It is important to take into consideration the fact of the limitation of the chat rooms to receive all the citizens. These rooms will be limited in number of participants as the moderators will be unable to control what it is discussed. One of the solutions is to create a register previous to the day of the discussion in which the assistants are being registered. It is very important that the system explains clearly the conditions of access to this service to motivate the citizen who wants to enter to discuss a matter.

· Offer also the possibility of having physic spaces for the meetings requested.

1.2. WORKING PLAN

The UPM will deliver the Tool in several periods. Each delivery will replace the previous one.

On 20 January the UPM will deliver a document called `Recommended performance Regulations’ that will have as principal aim to guide the partners in the implementation of the system

2. CD-ROOM

2.1. CONTENT

The budget available to produce the materials was discussed. In theory, the following resources are offered:

· CD/Room for the partners.
· Page Web

Likewise, the need to have all project documents in a common format and with a common image was decided. The UPM will define the typeface and the way of presenting the documents.

2.2. WORKING PLAN

- The UPM will send for the end of November 2005, the CD structure in order to discuss it with Seville, Charleroi, Aarhus and the general expert. The final structure of the CD has to be established for 18 January 2005.
- At the beginning of December 2005, the regulations of style have been sent.
- The CD and the Web have to be prepared for the General Assembly of Seville.

2.5. FINAL CITI@MOVE PRODUCT

31st January will be the deadline to determine the CITIZ@MOVE final product format. We will inform you in the February Newsletter.

- The CITIZ@MOVE Forum is already operational at the Urbact web page aiming to exchange experiences among the three working groups. The topics introduced up to date are:

a) CITIZ@MOVE - Participative experiences in urban regeneration

b) CITIZ@MOVE - IT tool for the citizen participation

Partners should enter into the Urbact web page with their login and password, forward to the ‘private spaces’ and enter into Forum.

WE REQUIRE CITIZ@MOVE PARTNERS ACTIVE PARTICIPATION FROM NOW !!

- WEB PAGE: Aarhus as web masters of the CITIZ@MOVE project requires from CITIZ@MOVE partners the information requested by the project coordinator.

You can have direct access to the project web page http://www.urbact.org/citizmove.

4.1.CITIZ@MOVE PARTNERS PARTICIPATING IN OTHER CONFERENCES OR MEETING

· European Network of knowledge exchange (EUKN)

On Monday the 16th January 2006, Aarhus will participate in the opening conference of the new European Network of knowledge exchange. Aarhus will comment on the results of years of research on the theme of “Social mix, social exclusion in deprived neighbourhoods”.

4.2. MAIN COMING EVENTS

12TH JANUARY 2005

CHARLEROI working group will meet with Macarena Ybarra as General coordinator to foresee the new reprogramation

20th – 21ST JANUARY 2006

CTWG on the role of inhabitants in urban public management will focus on the topic: “Citizen Participation and Social Exclusion”. Malmø

25TH JANUARY 2006

AARHUS LOCALWORKSHOP. 8th local workshop . Gudrunsvej 3a, 8220 Brabrand.

31ST JANUARY 2006

Final deadline to submit the project reprogramation.

2ND– 4th FEBRUARY 2006

CHARLEROI Working group seminar - Brussels

24TH FEBRUARY 2006

Lead Partner Meeting- Paris

URBACT

http://www.urbact.org/citizmove

COSENZA CITA DEI RAGAZZI

 http://www.ragazzi.cosenza.org/

COSENZA LA CASA DELLA CULTURA

http://www.casadelleculture.it/

FIBRECULTURE

http://journal.fibreculture.org/

- URBACT Guidelines on Final Outputs document [ENG] [FR]

- Citta dei Ragazzi, A project undertaken by the City of Conseza [IT]

- Seville working group seminar report – Cosenza [ENG]

- Charleroi working group seminar report – Valencienne [FR]

- Successful communication – A toolkit for researchers and civil society organisations [ENG]

- Manual para la evaluación de los derechos de la Comunicación [ESP]

For subscription, and for any information you may require about the project, please send a mail to Macarena Ybarra to the following address: edpbruselas@skynet.be

We may introduce here NOTES, OBSERVATIONS And RELIABLE MAILS THAT PEOPLE SEND TO THE ACCOUNT.

Publisher

Francisco Javier PANDO SASTRE
Town planning Department,
Seville city council
fjps@urbanismo-sevilla.org

Sonja MIKKELSEN
The URBAN II secretariat
Programme Manager
sm@urban.aarhus.dk

Eric DOSIMONT
Centre Public d’Action Sociale de Charleroi
cpas.huysmanschantal@skynet.be

Coordinator

Macarena YBARRA
EDP
edpbruselas@skynet.be

 

Secretariat

Beatriz SALAS
Delegation of Public Participation
Seville City Council
jefser.pciudadana@sevilla.org

Francisco SIERRA CABALLERO
Latin American Centre of Digital Communication
Journalism Department I
University of Seville
fsierra@us.es