Wpis opublikowany 05.05.2025r.
An inspiring meeting in Kielce, where a conference on the city’s youth policy was held, is behind us. The discussion focused on how to effectively involve young people in social life and local development – not just in the form of consultations, but in real co-determination about the future of the city.
The conference was attended by, among others, the mayor of the city Agata Wojda, the director of the Department of Social Dialogue Kamil Stanos, the secretary (and current vice-president) of the city Tomasz Porębski, the director of the Castle Hill Ewa Chabielska-Tyndyk, as well as the representative of the Youth City Council Jędrzej Kleszcz, and with him a group of young Kielce women and men. The IRMIR was represented by Sandra Skalmierska, the City of Kielce’s content supervisor for the “Urban Lab – City for the Young” project.
Headed by the mayor of Kielce, they all unanimously stressed that the priority is not only to keep young people in Kielce, but also to encourage them to co-determine the directions of the city’s development. The first step is to diagnose the needs of young people – and not only through surveys, but above all in direct conversations, workshops and meetings with various groups: pupils, students, teachers or representatives of institutions. Then comes the most interesting stage – the joint generation of ideas, which will later be turned into a concrete action strategy. The whole process is to be based on cooperation and involvement – not just the token participation of young people.
There was also the topic of international projects – Kielce is planning to cooperate with partners from various European countries within the framework of the “Cities for YOUth – Next Generation”, “YES Volunteer” and “YouthLAB” programmes. This is a great opportunity for young people to learn about good practices from abroad, to transfer them to the local area, and to share their own experiences.
An extremely important highlight of the conference was the presentation of the forthcoming plans of Urban Lab Kielce – activities ranging from creative workshops to community consultations to meetings in the Urban Café series are already attracting great interest. And this is just the beginning… 😉 …
We, on the other hand, talked about the nationwide network UrbanLab.net – a space for cooperation, exchange of experiences and good practices of city co-creation – and presented the real benefits of creating an Urban Lab in a city. From our perspective, it was particularly important to show that places like Urban Lab can be a real tool for strengthening public participation.
It was a meeting that showed that there are concrete people, good ideas and a desire for authentic dialogue behind the youth strategy and activities in the “Urban Lab – City for Youth” project. We are glad to have been part of this event and look forward to the next joint activities.
Check out Urban Lab Kielce’s social media to keep up to date with their activities:
👉https://www.instagram.com/urbanlab.kielce/
👉https://www.facebook.com/urbanlab.kielce
The project ‘Urban Lab – City for the Young’ is co-financed by the European Funds Technical Assistance 2021-2027 programme.