CircularCityChallenge Workshop at Maastricht

One of the organized co-creation workshops was held online by Maastricht University. The workshop was conducted with three stakeholders who are members of a sustainability working group from a foundation in NL, who give guest lectures to young people. The participants were able to give some fruitful inputs on how the contest should be designed, among them were their most important topics like pollution, mobility, housing, consumption, green infrastructure or waste.

As a motivational approach, participants mentioned the importance of connecting to real-life experts, who communicate in a teenager-friendly language and help young people to discover their own interests, opinions, and strengths. It was also mentioned that the materials on circularity, as well as the contest instructions, need to be age-appropriate, relatable to teenagers’ lives, flexible, collaborative, and interactive.

In regard to submission formats, the workshop participants proposed offering the freedom to choose flexibly whichever format is relevant for the content, e.g., videos or diaries of personally achieved challenges in daily life. The most restated obstacle is having adults leading the process of participation rather than young people in charge – not having ownership was therefore a key concern.

The given inputs made the consortium aware of some key issues not addressed before, which can now be addressed much better in regard to the contest next year.