Capacity Building

Capacity-Building is one of the three strands of activities carried out by the URBACT III Programme, along with Exchange & Learning and Capitalisation & Dissemination.

Objectives, Values & Principles

In particular, URBACT III Capacity-Building activities aim to improve the capacity of cities as actors of change. The Programme develops Capacity-Building activities that can be accessed by city stakeholders with different needs, knowledge and experience, with different backgrounds and wishes to make useful and successful tools accessible online to a wide range of city partners throughout Europe.

As a learning Programme specialised in urban issues, our Capacity-Building objective is to improve city practitioners’ skills. Therefore, the values underlying the Capacity-Building activities are:

• Learning by doing
• Learning how to learn and how to find information
• Peer learning (sharing solutions between beneficiaries to policy challenges)
• Developing tailored, pertinent solutions to local issues

If you want to know more, read the Capacity-Building Strategy developed by the Programme.

Beneficiaries

URBACT Capacity-Building activities target all urban players from the 30 URBACT Member and Partner States, primarily urban professionals and decision-makers, but also stakeholders such as residents, NGOs, businesses and end-users. More specific actions are carried out towards targeted audiences such as potential applicants, Lead Partners of networks, First Level Controllers, National URBACT Points, experts and trainers.

Urban practitioners are considered as change agents: it is expected that through the development of their individual skills and knowledge, both enhancement of organisational/institutional capacity and better policies will be achieved.

Capacity-Building activities at Programme level

URBACT as a programme has developed a specific way of working in cities bringing together a number of key principles:

• Integrated Approach
• Participatory Action-Planning
• Project Management and Delivery
• Sustainable urban development and policies

This URBACT Method is a central pillar to the Capacity-Building provided to city practitioners.

Capacity-Building activities include:

• URBACT National Seminars (Campus) – These events provide tools and methods to enhance capacities of  local group members of partner  cities at  national level, in national languages. They offer an interesting opportunity to foster dialogue  between  national  and  local  players  on  urban  policies  and  allow  project partners to better understand the national context in which they are operating.

      In   2019,  the  Programme  is,   for  instance, 
      holding  a  series  of  15 URBACT Campuses
      all   over   Europe.  This   year,   the   national 
      trainings    are    dedicated    to   partners   of  
      Transfer Networks  and  aim  at  developing
      participants’ knowledge  on  integrated  and 
      participatory   approaches,   exchanging   on
      challenges faced  when  transferring a  good
      practice from another city and learning with
      and  from national peers.

Read from URBACT national seminars’ participants:

"Excellent seminar. I am hugely satisfied. I was really pleased to network with new European colleagues" (URBACT II, Liz, Glasgow City Council)
“Excellent practical session - I feel way more upskilled.” (URBACT Campus in the UK, participant)
“Excellent campus session. Facilitation was excellent and adapted to the needs of groups as they arose. I was delighted to attend and to participate” (URBACT Campus in the UK, participant
“I learned quite a lot; learning by doing!” (URBACT Campus in Czech Republic, participant)
“I will communicate on the Campus with passion & energy. We learned a lot and got inspiration from others.” (URBACT Campus in Czech Republic, participant)

You can check on the latest news on this year’s URBACT campuses on Twitter with the hashtag #URBACTcampus

• URBACT Universities – These events  are  large transnational  trainings,  with  around 450 participants, usually organised over 3 days aiming to provide URBACT partners and their local stakeholders with tools and  methods  to  develop  integrated and participatory approaches for the design and implementation of urban policies.

URBACT Universities proved highly successful under URBACT II (Krakow 2011 and Dublin 2013) and URBACT III (Rotterdam 2016). The next session will take place in 2020.

The USU 2016 participants learning kit is available here.

• Other ad hoc Capacity-Building actions – Based  on  an  established  need, these events may also  be developed  for specific  stakeholder  groups  involved in  the design and  implementation  of  sustainable
  urban policies (e.g. elected representatives, managing authorities of operational programmes, national authorities, etc.). These actions can be either physical meetings or online sessions.

For example, in November 2018 the URBACT Secretariat launched a Pilot action in Rome for Italian cities, to provide them with concrete tools and skills to start implementing their action plans.

For further information, please contact:

Clémentine GRAVIER
Capacity-Building Officer,
c.gravier@urbact.eu
tel: 33 (0)1 85 58 62 39