The Partispace newsletter will be sent out twice a year or on special occasions, and will contain news on the progress of the research, on publications and most recent and forthcoming events. This first issue is to introduce the project, its objectives and methodology and explain our overall approach to youth participation. It also gives some insights into current and upcoming working steps of the project.

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What is Partispace?

Partispace is a European research project financed for 3 years (2015-2018). It is part of the Horizon 2020 Strategy, which is the EU Research and Innovation Programme.

PARTISPACE stands for spaces and styles of participation: this means that we are inquiring formal, non-formal and informal possibilities where young people can have their say in different European cities.

The project partners

Partispace is gathering 10 partners in 8 European countries

The study is undertaken in cities which are at least regional centres without being the capital of the respective country: Frankfurt, DE (700,000 inhabitants), Bologna, IT (400,000), Gothenburg, SE (500,000), Manchester, UK (500,000), Plovdiv, BG (400,000), Rennes, FR (200,000), Eskisehir, TK (750,000), and Zurich, CH (400,000). This ensures a sufficient existence and diversity of participatory settings without being too close to representations of national government and umbrella structures.

Start from the start!

What is participation?

The PARTISPACE research question for styles and spaces of participation relies on a broad concept of participation starting from the perspective of the individual actor and connecting it with the dimension of public space. Read more on participation key concept.

The central research question of PARTISPACE is HOW and WHERE young people do participate differently across social milieus and youth cultural scenes and across eight European cities (framed by different national welfare, education and youth policies): What STYLES of participation do they prefer, develop and apply and in what SPACES does participation take place?

Where are we?

The PARTISPACE project has completed its first 6 months. For more information, click here.

Research teams also finalised the production of a glossary with key concepts aimed at providing a shared conceptual framework for the PARTISPACE project across national boundaries. The glossary is available online here.

Next steps

In October 2015, partners started the local case studies phase. In this framework, the first expert interviews were held by the research teams. In each city, policy makers (elected and civil servants), youth workers and key persons from youth organization and/or youth cultural scenes are interviewed in order to get an overview over actors and issues as well as access to scenes and spaces. Expert interviews consist in semi-structured interviews with persons having an exposed role with regard to the object and/or social context under research. These can be professional roles but also persons with key roles in a more informal way like leading figures of informal social movements.

Questionnaires for experts were also developed to collect comparable information on quantitative aspects of youth participation in the eight countries.

Additionally, the first focus groups with young people from different life conditions were initiated so as to discuss the current development and urgent issues regarding methodology of the qualitative case studies during the next consortium meeting.

Events

Partispace has held its kick-off meeting from 10th to 14th May 2015 in Frankfurt, read more...

To come soon !!!

The 2nd consortium meeting of the project will be held in Plovdiv from 10th to 14th November 2015 at the New Europe Center for Regional Studies in Bulgaria, read more...

This project receives funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649416. The views expressed in this newsletter are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission