Learning Together

As the state retracts further in the Netherlands, we see dramatic shifts in the arrangements of the social domain. Since there are enormous cuts in the welfare budgets; creative innovations are needed to cater for welfare and... [ view full abstract ]

As the state retracts further in the Netherlands, we see dramatic shifts in the arrangements of the social domain. Since there are enormous cuts in the welfare budgets; creative innovations are needed to cater for welfare and care arrangements.
One thing is clear: citizens are supposed to do more than before. ‘The strong citizen’ should develop initiatives or be activated to do so.

In the city of Amsterdam we engage in questions rising in neighbourhoods and other communities how to deal with the challenge of finding new ways of behaviour for professionals and citizens to co create plans/actions for the wellbeing of their community. Our research:

Together with field partners our university started 'field labs' in several Amsterdam neighbourhoods. In these field labs, together with citizens and in some cases with local government, we study ways to maintain or enhance the liveability through direct democracy in these neighbourhoods. Despite the risk of tokenism in this forms of civic participation we see sincere engagement by community members and professionals in creating partnerships. Also we find a widespread distrust about the intentions of local government.

Based on the questions of field partners we are researching and developing a method to enable social workers in co-creative processes with citizens, among them peer experts.

From the perspective of ‘the citizen in the lead’ we participate as research partners in ‘At Home’, a co creative project between elderly citizens and professionals. In 100 informal living room conversations the elderly share their thoughts about the way they would like to spend the evening of their life.

Some of our research methods are not exactly conventional; we construct them as we go along. We would like to present a symposium to share our findings, research methods and theoretical frameworks with a well informed public.