In November and December, more than 70 children from 10 Riga educational institutions participated in workshops on sustainable, resilient, circular and inclusive cities organized by the Riga City Municipality City Development Department and the Education, Culture and Sports Department!
The workshops took place within the framework of the MC-YOU project. Working in groups and discussing together, children, as well as teachers, learned about various topics relevant to better urban development – who and why plans cities, what is sustainability, resilience (adaptability), circularity, and “cities for people”, why the involvement of residents and children is important, what gamification and 15-minute cities are, etc.
All the topics covered are related to the priorities set in the MC-YOU project and will be useful for the children themselves, as they envision different places in Riga on the Minecraft Education platform as part of the project. The children are already getting to know these publicly accessible places, studying their history and meeting in the above-mentioned workshops to better prepare for the production of their vision. In January and February, each team will also meet with various representatives of the municipality, residents and professionals in “agoras” or public consultations-discussions, thus getting to know even better what Riga residents would like to see in these places; also what, for example, is restricted by various construction guidelines.
By the end of March, each of the 16 teams will have to submit their original vision for these places in Riga, taking into account everything that has been heard and discussed previously. Then, in April, each vision will be anonymously evaluated by both the jury and residents that will be able to vote for them.
“Within this project, we want to cement the feeling that we are interested in children’s ideas and needs,” says Mārtiņš Eņģelis, a project expert from Riga City Development Department. “In such projects, children are most often remote consultants, and their participation is limited to recreating ordinary places on the Minecraft Education platform or creating impractical visions. Within the framework of MC-YOU, we want to teach children from the very beginning that they have the right to be participants in the development of places in Riga, but it should be noted that this partnership is also based on various external conditions, for example, listening to local needs, taking into account the principles of sustainable cities (better materials, more environmentally friendly and climate-resilient solutions, etc.) or following urban development guidelines (for example, UNESCO regulations or underground communications). As a result, children are ready to offer visions that are more difficult for municipalities to refuse, and children can “get their foot in the door” for the urban development they want.”
The project lasts two years – from November 2023 to November 2025. The total cost of the project in Riga is 48,675 euros (Riga City Municipality co-financing 10%). The lead partner of the project is the European network Out of the Box International (Poland). Other project partners are the Municipality of Faro (Portugal), the Municipality of Sandanski (Bulgaria), the organization INA EUROPE (France); the non-governmental organization CESIE Palermo (Italy), the Union of Baltic Cities (UBC) and SIA LINK DMT SRL, Modena (Italy).
Municipality of Riga