Cities Of Change

In this second segment of the Cities of Change Funders Collaborative, the focus is the interdependence between culture and municipalism. The European Cultural Challenge in May 2018 in Amsterdam, organized by the European Cultural Foundation in collaboration with the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation, brought together people from municipalist political platforms, civil society organisations, social movements, cultural creators and funders from across Europe. The aim was to develop strategies and thinking on how culture is relevant in building democracy in our cities.

In this section, we propose to explore the interconnection between culture and municipalism, through compelling articles, interviews, and videos. We are thankful to CommonsPolis for having coordinated this stream of work that resulted in the following outputs.

Firstly, artist and writer Igor Stokfisiewski from Poland further explores in his article how Culture and Municipalism are together shaping a new reality, and how we can better understand, and fully realise the powerful potential of this confluence for the transformation of both politics and culture on a local level.

New democracies depend on a vibrant civil society which engages citizens to challenge and change their community. It is therefore necessary to know the tactics and strategies groups, campaigners, activists and organisers can work with to raise awareness, move people, change their views, and get them engaged. The past decade has witnessed a surge in cultural and artistic activism. Cultural change agents  Shelagh Wright and Peter Jenkinson  from the UK provoke us by stating that a creative approach is more successful than a conventional activist one – at least in the way it has a qualitative impact on how people think and feel. With four case studies of movement making, new culture of politics, new cultural policies, and new citizenship, they demonstrate how creative forms of activism make people curious and more affected and can – productively – disturb and unsettle.

Lastly, a visual narrative has been made by the Sevillian based cultural mediation collective ZEMOS98, showing us how culture, active participation and critical thinking can change mindsets for longer-term shifts towards newly imagined democracy.

If you are a funder and would like to be part of this collaborative group, contact Martina for more information

This third edition of Cities of Change Funders Collaborative arrives this month with a bit of delay due to the intense electoral period in some of the most paradigmatic municipalities of Europe. For this reason, in this newsletter we have tried to use some of these examples to take the temperature of the Municipalism movement around the world, as an exercise of taking a step back, collect lessons and identify further challenges and improvements.

Römy Kramer, Executive Director of Guerrilla Foundation, one of the initial promoters of this group and resident in Barcelona, explores in her article how in spite of the great effervescence of Fearless Cities Movement in the last two years, the last municipal elections have been a blow for great exponents of Spanish municipal platforms such as Más Madrid or La Marea Atlántica. However, this has actually been responded with more democracy and new participatory tools to build strong and brave political options, as it has been the case of Barcelona En Comú. Although in the opposition, there is no doubt: the municipalism has become a political option in most of the country.

Nicolas Krausz, from the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation builds on the conceptualisation of Municipalism in Europe to then focus on the French political climate where localisation of politics could (and should?) be presented as a counter-measure for systemic crises of which the “gilet-jaunes” are no more than a symptom.

Nevertheless, in other latitudes municipalism practices have been put in place as an opportunity in more unstable political contexts. Developed in the article by Donka Atanassova, Bulgarian-Colombian activist, member of the “Red de Innovación Política en América Latina” with the support of Fundación Avina, the case of Colombia is a very good example of it. Colombian local elections of next October are not a random example, as municipalities are facing the first elections after the Peace Agreement between the FARC and the Government. Can be the localisation of politics the way forward to the real implementation of the peace process? Can local governments create the conditions for women leaderships in a country where the male-led conflict put the women at the centre of local communities? 

Finally, Jérémie Chomette from Fondation France Libertés brings us the inspiring experience of communalism and municipalism in Rojava, North of Syria. Local democracy, ecology and gender equality are rooting the reconstruction after the conflict thanks to democratic conferederalism.

We hope the wait has been worthy and the shared context will trigger the expected analysis. Also, we keep joining forces to reinforce and support all these great change processes!  

What has been happening in the Cities of Change space in the last months? In this edition of the Cities of Change funders update, we will take you from Belgrade, Serbia to Richmond, California (via Barcelona) to update you on what’s new in the radical municipalism space.

Belgrade Fearless Cities meeting

In June, Belgrade, Serbia hosted a regional Fearless Cities gathering for South-East Europe that brought together activists from the most relevant municipalist initiatives in the region with a couple of other European municipal activists. The three thematic streams of the gathering reflect the core activities and needs of municipal activists: Saving Democracy – bringing citizens back in politics through participatory democratic practices’, ‘Commons and Municipalism’ & ‘Organising for Change’.

For more information, see the write-up by the Guerrilla Foundation that also offers a glimpse into the history of the Belgrade radical municipalist movement.

Launch of a knowledge observatory on municipalism – Minim

Meanwhile, in Barcelona, the minim community has launched a crowdsourced online platform with a collection of resources on municipalism. Please support their launch by visiting the site and promoting it in your networks (@Minim_municipal #municipalism #FearlessCities).

The platform will be a growing, living resource for the municipalist movement and everyone (like yourselves) interested in following the developments in the municipalist space. So we hope you use it and refer others to it when they come with requests and questions. Get in touch directly to submit an article and suggest other resources that are not yet in the database. The Minim-makers can be contacted under contact@minim-municipalism.org.

You can read an interview with the founders here.

Just transition in Richmond

A Just Transition in Richmond

Chorus Foundation released a new video about the Just Transition in Richmond, CA. Following a major incident at a Chevron refinery, the community mobilised to turn the city from one that ‘people just wanna get out of’ to a city that puts people at the centre and is fueled by a vibrant alternative economy. It is a great case study of the importance of resourcing frontline community organising to not just fight the old but provide an inspiring vision by building the new.

Videos from Our Common City conference in Budapest

Another regional convening of municipalists from Central and Eastern Europe took place in Budapest in February this year. For two days, more than three hundred attendees got inspired by representatives of politically successful urban movements who shared their experiences and opinions in roundtable discussions and workshops. The goal of the conference was mainly to show Hungarian municipal activists what is possible, provide tools and inspiration for them to take action during this fall’s municipalist elections.

Several of the sessions were recorded. The Roundtable on From movements to city hall covers the demand for better access to housing, community spaces and public services as a key driver of citizen movements and their entrance into local politics across Europe (with representatives from Barcelona, Berlin and Lisbon). Also, a series of short video interviews are now available, produced at the gathering by some of the participants from other European countries.

What Else is Happening 

Two open leads might be interesting to follow up on for this group of funders:

• A recent conference in the US was organised by Symbiosis that apparently aims to build an alliance of municipal movements in North America. It would be interesting to hear from any of the US member organisations receiving this newsletter about the potential that they see emerging from this activity and how it connects to the more European focused activities above?
• Finally, Iceland also saw its very own gathering on Democratic Confederalism and it could be interesting for the members of this group to explore the connections and differences between radical municipalism and democratic confederalism.