From June 28 to July 01st, we held our workshop on Good Practices. Since we still had to rely on online meetings, we decided to go for a slightly different arrangement and had four short sessions, one hour each, on different topics, making it a “CityZen Good Practices Week”!
Each session focused on the transferability of our good practices to other regions. After a short presentation through prepared videos (you can find them all online here), the representatives and experts were there to answer questions and discuss relevant aspects with our participants.
Educational urban farming activities
We started on Monday with educational activities related to / through urban farming, where we learned about three inspiring, practical examples on a farm, in a school & city center:
- Educational farm RhineMain (GER)
- School garden Cristobal Colon (ES)
- Neighbourhood pocket park Svolou (GR)
Civil initiatives in urban farming
The second day offered three examples of community gardening, as important means to include and activate civil society and citizens in urban farming projects, and to enhance the positive effects on the ecological, economical and societal levels.
- Participatory & Solidarity City Gardens Sofia (BG)
- Community urban farming Beja (PT)
- Community garden KIPOS3 (GR)
Communication tools to promote urban farming activities
Since it is a group effort to increase, promote and spread urban farming projects, we also wanted to show three inspiring examples of how to communicate and join forces among urban farming activities, both on regional and international levels.
- Digital map of suitable terrains, Sofia (BG)
- Farm stations RhineMain (GER)
- Transfer network: Urban agriculture for resilient cities (GR)
Business
The final session on business activities related to urban farming had two examples of successful, low-barrier projects: a market for local urban farmers and a public food lab where entrepreneurs can learn how to use equipment to transform food:
- Market for urban farmers Santo Amaro (PT)
- Food lab for entrepreneurs (ES)
All discussions made it clear how important it is to spread good, working examples of projects to engage both authorities and citizens and initiate or scale up urban farming projects everywhere. We thank everyone for the lively and active participation and hope to stay in touch to further exchange useful tips and knowledge!
