URBEX: Participatory Urban Exploration as Educational Tool

project “URBEX: Urban Exploration as Educational Tool” facilitated the participation and community engagement of 50 young participants and group leaders by exploitingthe partners’ experiences in the field of participatory urban exploration, sharing good practices and testing innovative exercises and tools in the cities of the partnerorganisations.The project partners are organisations from five different EU cities: Palermo (IT), Albacete (ES), Ljubljana (SL), London (UK) and Berlin (DE). Each partner organisation worksin a specific neighbourhood and had directly involved in the project implementation other youth organisations, local high-schools and the local community.URBEX directly involved:- 25 youth workers/educators as participants of the training and leaders of the local labs;- 45 young people (16-24 years old) and 5 young group leaders, most of them living in the neighbourhoods where the project partners are working and 5 adult accompanyingpersons.To achieve the project objectives the partners started by creating an educational toolkit including a list of good practices on urban exploration and a selection of tools andexercises developed by the partners. The toolkit also includes a step by step method on how to realise a youth urban exploration project. After the definition of the toolkit and ofthe learning programme the partners trained 25 youth workers and educators, most of them working with youth at risk of social exclusion, during the short-term joint stafftraining realised in January 2019. The training improved the observatory and exploratory skills of the participants and have been an opportunity to learn and test the educationaltools and exercises included in the toolkit. After the realisation of the first mobility the participants have been involved as group leaders and trainers in the Blended Mobility withthe participation of 45 youth at risk of social exclusion. The Blended Mobility foreseen the realisation of local labs (from February to July) to prepare the young participantsbefore and after the physical mobility and to introduce them to the topic of urban exploration. After the first round of local labs, in April 2019, the young participants with thegroup leaders and the accompanying persons joined a 7 days youth mobility in Palermo. During the meeting the young participants explored together the neighbourhoodCapo-Monte di Pietà of Palermo and actively joined an educational programme designed to their needs and skills. After the physical mobility the Blended Mobility continuedwith the realisation of other local labs inspired to what have been learned in Palermo.The main result obtained by URBEX has been the increasing participation and attention to the community showed by the young participants of the Blended Mobility. Thanks tothe innovative educational activities realised during the local labs and the physical mobility in Palermo the young participants learned how to observe their local environments,how to collect data and how to use them to reflect on new proposals and ideas to solve some of the local issues identified. These results have been exploited by thedisadvantaged background of most of the young participants for whom it was probably the most engaging learning experience realised so far.The project has also been a successful learning opportunity for the youth workers/educators involved in the training and in the local labs. They have acquired specificknowledge and developed skills on the use of the urban exploration in the youth field and explored together with an international team the possibilities offered for their work withyouth at risk of social exclusion. During the local labs and the Blended Mobility they had the opportunity to test most of the exercises learned in the training and to develop newones according to the needs of their target group of youth. They also directly contributed to the definition of the toolkit by including the exercises realised during the labs andpromoted it to their colleagues and local youth organisations.Beside the impact on the participants (both youth workers and youth) the realisation of URBEX had an impact also on the associated partners involved, especially other localyouth organisations and high schools. Thanks to their participation in the project activities they had the opportunity to become part of an international network of organisationsworking on partecipative methodologies and community development with youth at risk of social exclusion.