Designing fruitful cooperation for shaping the New European Bauhaus

This seminar brought together various actors interested in the New European Bauhaus from the Hauts-de-France Region, as well as actors from other European regions and cities, such as the Free State of Thuringia (GER), the Silesian Voivodeship (PL), the Flanders Region (BE), the Wallonia Region (BE), the Brussels-Capital Region (BE) and Helsinki (FI).

During two half a days the aim was to better inform our colleagues and partners about the New European Bauhaus and to encourage potential partnerships and projects between the different partner regions and metropoles.

This first half-day focused on the initiative and its opportunities, as well as on the presentation of concrete cases of New European Bauhaus projects. A keynote speaker of the European commission explained the context of New European Bauhaus. Two round tables discussion followed:

• A first one about “the integration of New European Bauhaus in the development of public policies at the national and European level” with presentations by the JRC of the European Commission Vera Winthagen, DG REGIO with Sylwia Borkowska and Alain Van Raek, the High level round table on the New European Bauhaus with Francesca Bria, the NEB National contact point for the Netherlands Joram Snijders and the President of BEDA Isabelle Vérilhac
• and a second one about the “New European Bauhaus as an inspiring movement to accelerate the European Green Deal in cities and regions” which was the occasion to showcase various strategies, projects, methodologies and tools from Barcelona (Xavi Matilla), Brussels (Sven de Bruycke) , Lille Metropole (Silvere Mercier) and  the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (Prof Jasper CEPL).

The second half a day, six parallel workshops brought the participants with similar interests and issues together, in order to foster synergy and future cooperation. The following topics which all have strong links with the four axis of the New European Bauhaus were retained for the workshops:

1. Renovation of old degraded neighbourhoods
2. Circular construction and renovation
3. Nature based solutions for water issues
4. Micromobilities, multimodality and public spaces
5. How to train in the new European Bauhaus philosophy ?
6. Design as tool for social changes

The workshops aimed to identify problems, or even solutions to work together between European cities and regions and their local operators, in order to build tomorrow projects capable of capturing EU funding and/or participating together in NEB dynamics. Xavier Troussard, head of unit NEB at the JRC, concluded the seminar announcing new paths for future partnerships on the NEB for cities and regions.

The objective was indeed to launch through this seminar a potential durable cooperation between these partners around the new European Bauhaus dynamic. New events will be planned to which also other partners can join, to explore more in details or concretise some first project ideas identified during the event.

The New European Bauhaus festival in June and the European Week of Regions and Cities in October can be interesting opportunities to meet again and to cooperate with our partners.