The first months of 2019 we will be working on the pilots of the PAC (Prisoners Active Citizenship) project, In the Juvenile prison of Lelystad we have linked a group of young inmates to a group of retired people. An exciting combination that is working out very well.
The seniors and the youngsters share their interest and their knowledge. They are currently cooking, painting and making chess pieces together.
The Brixton prison, an old Victorian prison was the décor of 2nd the meeting of the PAC project partners in London. Our hosts took us on a tour to see the prison restaurant, the bakery and their radio project in the prison. Nice and inspiring projects, all of them.
The PAC project is developing really smooth. Everybody is reliable and we are following the original timeline of the project, so far no stress and realistic goals and ambitions in this project.
The second Citizens Lab meeting this year was in Toulouse. It was linked to a meeting of European cultural metropoles. A big spectacle “the Guardian of the temple” was taking place in Toulouse as part of the events. Suddenly we all were VIP’s we were invited to see the spectacle from the best places with the mayor, representatives of the French Government and other VIP’s, all of us as special guests of the city of Toulouse.
We were selected to be present at the kick -off meeting of the Civil Society Cluster of the Bosch Foundation in Berlin. The Bosch Foundation is one of the funders of projects we have been involved in in the past such as the Tandem project.
A small project in Brestovo, Bulgaria. We were invited by our Citizenlab partner Pavlina to participate in a small project “Stepping out of the box”.
In the communist era about 3000 people used to live in the village of Brestovo. After 1990 all young people went to the city. Now only about 90 elder people, most of them woman live in Brestovo. During three days two totally different worlds met, artists mostly from Western Europe and the local citizens. Together we cooked, danced and told each other stories.
In EYE film museum in Amsterdam on June 22 we had the final conference of the Real Life project. About 100 people from different countries were present. Among them people of the top of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and representatives of the Dutch Erasmus+ Agency who funded the project One of the participants called the event “the best conference that I ever visited”.
Later in June we were told that the Real Life project would be presented as a best practice at the Council of Europe.
Much time in the recent months has been spend on a project in the prison of Sittard in the south of the Netherlands. With inmates and prison staff we have been working on a documentary about their life in prison. Co-creation was an important element of this project. It was a very participatory process, everybody involved contributed to. The final result was presented this month during a meeting in Sittard.
A leaflet with photo’s that trigger augmented reality is also part of the result of the project.
Citizens Lab is a very diverse network of changemakers. Journalists, politicians, visual artists, dancers, architects, actors of civil society and others gather in this network to share their ideas and experiences and try to develop new ways of working together. CLab is very much about subjects such as co-creation, participatory leadership, new forms of democracy and culture as a vehicle for social change and cohesion.
As the name says it is a lab, CLab follows a lab approach, things can go wrong, if only lessons are learned. We develop prototypes in diverse Eu countries to work on new models for a different society.
Being part of CLab is a challenging experience the meetings are very motivating and inspiring.
Exodus is an organization that helps ex-offenders on their way back to society. This month we are testing the last games that we developed for the Real Life project, on serious gaming for prisoners. Not only the digital games but also the more traditional games such as a card game that we have developed.
The participants of the PAC workshop in JJI Lelystad have realized a cooking book together. This project is progressing really well, beyond expectations. Young offenders are not a very reliable group to work with, but all of the were present at almost every session, even though some session were early in the morning. (getting up early is not their strongest quality). Everybody was very proud on the final result of the workshop, a cooking book.
