The project "How I met my city - Future stories about today's cities" will equip our students to tackle recent questions of urban planning and city development and to come up with ideas of how to change their urban neighbourhoods for the better. External partners of various professions will help our students to turn these ideas into reality. Our project puts future perspectives and possible developments of our neighbourhoods and cities in today's world of global challenges and various local conflicts into the centre of attention. In order to guarantee a high quality level during our work we have planned strategic partnerships with local and regional organisations in the fields of city planning and democratic pedagogy. In doing so, we pick up main ideas of "Horizon 2020", in which the EU described guidelined of youth education throughout Europe. To meet with these standards, participating students from six European countries search for signs of a changing world and choose individual topics they will then work on. During the project they will develop ideas to change their neighbourhoods for the better. As outlined in "Horizon 2020", they use innovative methods combining school education with methods of vocational training. Therefore, several city planners will accompany the students to the various meetings in our schools and cities. Their aim is to teach our students scientific methods they can make use of in dealing with the vast field of urban development and city planning. The students' work in the cities will be framed and guidelined by specific topics (e.g. integration of refugees, recycling, installment of youth clubs...). After the students will have returned to their home cities, they will then check the assignability of the work results in their own neighbourhoods and communities. At the same time we would like to enable our students to work in multi-national, heterogenous groups. Therefore, we will co-operate with organisations and trainers, that will also travel with us. Another integral part of our project will be the development possibilities of how to present the results of their work (e.g. internet tutorials or presentations) and how to negotiate with local and regional decision-makers in our cities.
The project "How I met my city - Future stories about today's cities" has equipped student (aged 16-19) from Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy and Spain s to tackle recent questions of urban planning and city development and to come up with ideas of how to change their urban neighbourhoods for the better. External partners of various professions helped our students to turn these ideas into reality. In order to guarantee a high quality level during our work we managed to create strategic partnerships with local and regional organisations in the fields of city planning and democratic pedagogy. The main organisation we have worked with is JAS e.V. (Kaiser Friedrich Ufer 9, 20253 Hamburg) namely Jenny Ohlenschlager. Therefore, city planners accompanied the students during their process of working in our schools and cities. Their aim was to teach our students scientific methods they can make use of in dealing with the vast field of urban development and city planning. The students' work in the cities was framed and guidelined by specific topics: The Italian students have chosen the polluted river Sacco as their work of interest. The Bulgarian and German students have chosen "vandalism" as a main topic for their work. The French students enabled blind people to participate in Metz' art life and the Spanish students are interested in improving their way to come to school for cyclists and pedestrians. The Danish students planned more social events for young people in their hometown. At the same time our students worked in multi-national, heterogenous group and this is how they improved their basic hard skillls as well as soft skills. Another integral part of our project was the development possibilities of how to present the results of their work (e.g. internet tutorials or presentations) and how to negotiate with local and regional decision-makers in our cities. Our students took part in municipality council meetings (Germany, Denmark), in expert conferences (Italy and France) and had enounters with majors in their hometown and abroad. Our students created in accordance with our project title "future stories" about their cities and the "how" is put into pictures and words in internet tutorials for young people who would like to act the same.