Posts Tagged ‘Call for proposals’

Do you know URBACT National Dissemination Points ?

Friday, December 9th, 2011

The main role of the National Dissemination Points (NDP) is to present information about the URBACT program and projects in national languages and thereby to make available to non- English speaking audience, information about integrated urban development. It thereby reaches a larger scale of urban practitioners around Europe.

The National Dissemination Points have not been created by URBACT, they are existing websites dedicated to urban affairs in their countries. They make space available on their website for URBACT news and content.

NDPs provide a chance to further disseminate experiences of European cities of urban sustainable development and to involve more people than the ones directly connected to the project to share this knowledge and ideas.

The monthly newsbulletin presents detailed information on results of URBACT projects for instance, as well as information important for cities in each country, such as the dates and places of the Information Days during which cities will have a change to get more information on the next possibilities to join the project. You can access last newsbulletin in Spanish here or in German here for instance.

The NDPs also present the work developed by the cities in their countries inside URBACT under a variety of formats:

It therefore offers a great opportunity for cities participating in URBACT projects to make known to the residents of their cities and countries the results of their projects.

NDPs have also sent regular updates and information on urban development in their cities, to be found on this blog or on the URBACT website.

You can find for instance the description of a project involving young people in Utrecht in the Netherlands, on promoting digital culture for older people in Cornellà de Llobregat in Spain or on Parliament Palace in Bucharest, Romania.

There are currently NDPs in 21 European countries:

Austria (OEROK), Bulgaria (National Association of Municipal Clerks in Bulgaria), Belgium (SPP – Service Politique des Grandes Villes), Czech Republic (Ministry for Regional Development of the Czech Republic ), Denmark( www.urbact.dk), France (Ministère de la Ville), Greece (Ministry of Economy, Competitiveness & Shipping), Germany (Deutscher Verband ), Hungary (VATI), Italy (UNICH), Latvia ( Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments), Lithuania (Association of Local Authorities in Lithuania), Luxembourg (Cellule Nationale d’information pour la politique urbaine ), The Netherlands (NICIS), Norway (www.interreg.no), Poland (www.urbact.pl), Portugal (Ministério do Ambiente e do Ordenamento do Território, Direcção-Geral do Ordenamento do Território e Desenvolvimento Urbano ), Romania (Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism / Infocooperare ), Slovenia ( TRAJEKT), Sweden (City of Malmo), Spain (Ecosistema Urbano)

URBACT wants the presentations in national languages to improve in the next two years, that’s why it proposes to the NDPs new types of activities and roles, to reach a more dynamic presentation of URBACT and websites updated more often!

Currently new websites can apply to become NDPs as you can see in the Open Call. Applications can be received until the 16th of December at noon. So if you are interested, follow the steps indicated in the tender rules.

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URBACT projects: Building on past experiences

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

1photoville1URBACT enables European cities to work together in projects to share and capitalise on experience.

It enables the development of solutions to urban challenges that other cities can then adapt to their own context. It also has the role of analysing and capitalising on learning.

And when we speak of learning, it is both the actual knowledge developed by cities on integrated urban development, but also experience developed by cities while developing URBACT Projects!

Here you can read on a few ‘learning points’ that cities can pass to each other before new projects start next year!

The perfect time to pass on experience

URBACT, as many European Programmes has a limited timeframe. During its lifetime URBACT has already organised two calls for proposals (in 2008 and in 2010), as a result of which 37 projects have so far been selected.

The first wave of URBACT projects have now concluded their exchanges and delivered their final results, the second wave of projects run their implementation stage and new projects (the third wave) will be selected soon.

In the perspective of the new call for proposals for URBACT projects ( the 3rd call for tender planned for the period December 2011 to March 2012) and in order to make sure the experience of past projects benefits to new projects, two assessment days have been organised recently: one with the Lead Partners and Lead Experts of the completed projects (28-29 September 2011) and one with the projects in course (19th of October 2011).

‘The objective of the meetings is clearly to learn from the 3 years experience of finished projects in management and knowledge production. We are going to draw with them lessons and conclusions in order to improve the way project function in the future and to create a better environment for the 3rd call projects’, says Jean Loup Drubigny, Director of URBACT Secretariat

Some key learning points for ongoing and new projects

As they run their projects many cities develop extensive experience in organising transnational exchanges, supporting their partners and producing knowledge useful for urban practitioners all around Europe.

During the debriefing meetings,  Lead Partners and Lead Experts of projects had the possibility to give input and exchange on the following matters: organisation of transnational meetings, URBACT Local support groups, communication around their projects, Local Action Plans and interim outputs and results.

Relating to transnational exchange, some cities have encountered difficulties to find the balance between transnational exchange and local activities. Some key practices, such as involving systematically members of the URBACT Local Support Groups (ULSG) in transnational meetings or planning simultaneous translation may help.

In what concerns outreach and impact of the project, together with a well functioning communication strategy, the involvement of the political representatives may prove useful. Political commitment of the elected representatives of the cities is not always there at the beginning! However, ensuring it from start and maintaining it as the project goes along helps increasing the impact of the URBACT project in the city.  Of course, political changes may happen, but involving more systematically political representatives to key meetings may help face the impact of such changes.

As regards to the URBACT Local Support Groups (LSG), a way of improving them would be to brief the coordinators at the beginning of their action, so that they know how to manage the Local Support Group and what type of Local Action Plan they may be expected to deliver.

Of course, there are many other key points: on how to lead a successful communication and dissemination strategy for the project, how to deliver quality final publications, how to better relate to the Managing Authority of the project and involve them in delivering an efficient support to the project…but listing them all here would be too tedious.

I would prefer to let project partners, leaders and experts express key successes and learning point themselves on the web if they wish! Yes this is a clear request for comments!

Ségolène Pruvot, urbactwebpartners (@) gmail.com

Read more:

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