When the city is a laboratory

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September saw urban exploration workshops with young people and organizations from different districts of Lisbon. First at the Marvila Library, then at the Associação Futebol de Rua (Bairro Padre Cruz) and finally with the European Intercultural Club (at the Casa da Cultura da Picheleira) we looked at the city around us.

These Local Labs are part of the Erasmus+ UrbEX Project, a partnership between organizations from Lisbon, Palermo (Italy), Seville (Spain), Toulouse (France) and Berlin (Germany), which seeks to engage young people between the ages of 16 and 25 through the exploration of their urban environment. In June, 4Change took its partner organizations working with young people to an intense training session organized by the UrbEX team in Palermo – where the methodology chosen by 4Change and local partners to work with young people from Lisbon was Game Design / RPG.

Through this approach of Gamification and Design Thinking – facilitated by Associação Elemento – these #urbexlocallabs combined theory with practice: thinking about the city through a playful eye, nurturing critical thinking and using urban exploration as a key resource for collaboration between communities.

Bringing together groups of young people from different parts of the city, 4Change, together with #anfrfutrua, the #clubinterculturaleuropeu and the young participants, returned to the Marvila Library on September 24: a day for sharing, to play the RPGs designed in the previous days and to understand the factors in the context of young people that make a difference to them. The results are clear to see.

To deepen knowledge on this subject, the URBEX manual will soon be launched, a free resource for educators, teachers, local activists, urban planners and workers in the social and education sector. An innovative publication that uses urban exploration as an educational model, with a specific focus on young people at risk of social exclusion.

Find out more here: urbex4youth.org

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