Actors of Urban Dialog Uzbekistan // Study Tour in Germany

CGE Culture Goes Europe – Soziokulturelle Initiative Erfurt e.V. (Эрфурт, Германия)

cge-erfurt.org

Yuksak salohiyat (Ташкент, Узбекистан)
 yuksak.uz

Taraqqiyot NGO – Совместное решение инфраструктурных проблем в селах (Фергана, Узбекистан)
 taraqqiyotngo.uz

Khorezm Rural Advisory Support Service (Ургенч, Узбекистан)
 krass.uz

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Study Tour in Germany

The study tours play a central role in the methodology of this project. Through directly engaging with grassroots examples of best practices, after a year of capacity building strengthen the knowledge and skills of active citizens of Uzbekistan. Thus, we expect the following goals to be achieved in this Study visit activity:

– to raise citizen awareness of active (young) people in Uzbekistan about the regions and towns they live in, – and to transform this awareness into a wish to change their lives to live better and actual activities aimed at this goal; – to build network between active citizens within Uzbekistan towns and regions in order to encourage further cross-city/regional collaboration and regional/country-scale joint projects based on the grass-root and bottom-up approach;

– to learn the cutting-edge of horizontal and grass-root activism experiences and expertise in German towns and regions. The participants are learning from grass-roots activism and networking in German region(s); discussing possibilities and exact formats of horizontal collaboration within their regions & towns.

Program of the Study Tour:

Day One // 25th November // Weimar 

Following arrival in Weimar, Erfurt, a city renowned for urban planning and architectural education and home to the Bauhaus University, participants engaged in an orientation talk and dialogue, with the aim of fully contextualising the role of the study tour in the AUD project and preparing participants to engage as meaningfully and impactfully as possible in the upcoming week and within their local project implementations.

An arrival tour around Weimar was followed by a study visit to EJBW, Europäische Jugendbildungs- und Jugendbegegnungsstätte Weimar, ‘European Youth Education and Youth Meeting Center Weimar’, as a best practice of both a non-formal educational space and an institution engaging in urban-community focused actions (such as the project ‘Strengthening the role of youth work in Shrinking Cities’ that aims at contributing to creating new strategies of social inclusion and civic engagement for the youth residing in Europe’s “shrinking cities”). Through its use of space, networks and expertise, the center enables its guests to deal with central socio-political issues, to learn from each other and gain unique educational experiences.

Day Two // 26th November // Erfurt

The day started with an interactive presentation of Saline 34, a participatory urban regeneration project coordinated by Plattform e.V. that reclaimed an abandoned building and repurposed it into a collaborative, community-driven space for artists, NGOs, and community organisations. 

This was followed by a meeting with Klanggerüst e.V., a community-driven NGO that has been involved in the Erfurt cultural scene since 2007, that provides space for concerts, artists, theatre, and community events. 

The study tour then visited Erfurt Nord and Frau Korte, two more urban regeneration projects where artists and communities reclaimed abandoned public buildings and created community-driven spaces for public use. This tour was led by the Erfurt Nord ‘Stadteilbüro’, the local office coordinating community supports. 

A tour of Erfurt city, with a growing arts and activism scene, saw the participants engaging with many cultural spaces across the city before the group headed back to Weimar to prepare for the third day of study visits. 

Day Three // 27th November // Weimar

Alte Feuerwache Weimar e.V.

The day started with a visit to a Weimar urban regeneration project, active since 2017, the Alte Feuerwache Weimar e.V. (Old Fire Station). The association currently has 18 members between the ages of 25 and 65: students, employees, the self-employed and people of retirement age, all sharing the desire to live independently and actively shape our own residential district. With diverse professional backgrounds, the association has extensive experience in project management, finance, architectural and construction planning, design, public relations as well as social work and urban planning. As such, this visit was a positive example of pooling capacities and expertise considering how communities benefit enormously from this swarm intelligence. Following this visit, the participants returned to EJBW for a group reflection session, in order to ground and explore the learning so far within the study tour.

• Radio Lotte e.V. is the citizen radio for Weimar. The station receives significant funding through crowdsourcing donations from listeners, who are then actively engaged in the shaping of content and focus of the programs and organisation of the station. This ensures the station is community-driven and in turn community-focused.