Our vision is to co-create new narratives for a more inclusive, accountable and diverse society.
Therefore, CitizensLab provides cross-sectoral spaces for being active in thematic labs, for generating translocal actions and prototypes, for peer-to-peer exchange of knowledge and for engaging in eye-to-eye dialogue with diverse stakeholdrs, with local and translocal ecosystems to deepen democracy and citizens’ participation in Europe.
CitizensLab (CLab) is a participatory European network of local actors of change from different sectors and contexts seeking to cultivate local and translocal spaces, and action-learning processes, for citizen´s co-creation as a new form of civic engagement, social inclusion, democratic and participatory political and societal change.
Initiated in 2016 as a project, coordinated by MitOst and funded by Stiftung Mercator, Robert Bosch Stiftung and the European Cultural Foundation, the CitizensLab in 2019 has become a self-organised initiative. In September 2020 we have started the process to register CLab as an NGO (e.V.) in Berlin, Germany.
During this 4 years of implementation, we have collectively developed a Citizen Co-Creation practice, we call it the CitizensLab Methodology. A practice that can be used to develop stronger local communities that self-organise and develop solutions collectively to their complex challenges. A practice that build citizen’s capacity to be democratic actors. The CitizensLab Methodology offers a coherent process, including a diverse range of methods (e.g. meaningful conversation, storytelling, gaming, art interventions, etc.) which enable strong containers of relationships between diverse stakeholders to be built, foster critical thinking, discover new collective intelligence and aim at creating systemic change
In the CitizensLab active citizens co-create cross-sectoral spaces to share experiences and knowledge, but also to together experiment and prototype in our local contexts. By connecting a wide variety of civil society actors CitizensLab can also become a new system of influence. Seeking eye-to-eye communication with diverse stakeholders and institutional ecosystems we foster a more inclusive political participation of citizens in shaping our societies.
