The implementation of URBEX II achieved three main objectives: Firstly, to promote the active participation and engagement of five local groups of youths by providing them with non-formal learning opportunities of exploration and appreciation of the urban space. The learning opportunities offered a combination of analogue methods and digital learning and were also low-threshold designed to engage youths at risk of exclusion in particular. Secondly, to develop a creative educational model based on the neighbourhood as a learning space and use it to train youth workers, teachers and professionals from the social and educational sectors. Thirdly, to create an international network of youth organisations, schools, educational and social organizations interested in using urban exploration as an educational strategy. The network ensured the dissemination and long-term use of the UrbEX project results and still ensures a continuous exchange of knowledge between the actors. Thanks to the UrbEX approach, 30 professionals from the five participating countries and 60 young people at risk of social exclusion, were supported to develop and test urban exploration methods and tools in order to engage young people in new and effective ways.
We applied for UrbEX II because the exploration of urban space is an innovative and powerful tool to promote engagement, to foster inclusion and to develop a participatory culture, notably among the target group of youths. With UrbEX we created and experimented with new tools of youth engagement which focused on concrete experiences centered on their local environment and on the urban public space. Young people, by interacting with the main elements composing an urban district, learned to face new urban challenges, to valorize their own living space and to come up with creative ideas to improve their cities and their local environment. The participatory urban exploration implemented through the Urbex approach was in this framework a low-threshold, non-formal learning process. It promoted the empowerment of youths as it boosted skills such as attention to detail, social and digital competences, civic and intercultural awareness, critical thinking, capacity to express their vision for society and their own future. Empowering them through UrbEX provided positive instruments to face the local challenges with the right key in understanding and experimenting new forms of participation and civic actions.