Larissa's Tranfer Story - Promoting sustainability and citizen's engagement

Larissa, as a modern European city, faces challenges such as urbanization, population ageing, and adaptation to climate change but most of all improvement of the citizens’ living conditions. For this reason, it is a priority for the Municipality of Larissa to design and implement actions towards this direction and take advantage of national and EU funds in order to achieve its goals. Through these initiatives, communication and cooperation have been developed with institutions, agencies and other local organizations, as well as with European Union agencies and authorities, which have lead to local and transnational partnerships and cities’ networks, such as the UNESCO Learning City Network, Healthy Cities Network, and Covenant of Mayors etc. Among those partnerships also stands “The Playful Paradigm‘’ project, based on the Good Practice of the City of Udine and which is co-funded by  the URBACT III European Territorial Cooperation Program.

The participation in this Transfer Network was a challenge for the Municipality of Larissa from the very beginning. The city of Larissa is a well-structured, organized, extrovert city, while being a center of agricultural, industrial, economic and commercial activities. It has also significant cultural activity thanks to its museums, galleries, ancient theaters, libraries as well as local associations and NGOs. Annual events such as festivals (Pineios River Festival, L.A.Comics Festival), cultural events, exhibitions, conferences, workshops and sports activities are organized with high citizen involvement. In addition, the Municipality of Larissa, in its attempt to help and support all individuals to spend their leisure time, has created Cultural Clubs that are a vital part in the people’s daily activities since their aim is not only to entertain but also to educate the people involved in their actions, as a creative way out of the current social and economic problems and deadlocks.

All these favorable conditions have helped to improve the quality of life of Larissa’s citizens. In addition to than, and through the participation at ‘The Playful Paradigm’ project, the municipality intends to include a new and innovative tool, the games and the gamification activities in the everyday lives of citizens regardless of age, gender, social background, without any discrimination and exclusion. Its aim is not only to entertain people, but also to help them to collaborate, to coexist; to compete and to share ideas and views as it helps citizens take a short break from their anxious life and to escape from their various problems.

In the beginning of the project's implementation, the Municipality of Larissa faced a challenge; the identification and engagement of various local public and private stakeholders to support this effort, to help, to co-operate with the Municipality and simultaneously collaborate with each other. By organizing the first ULG, the organization saw the opportunity to reach many different stakeholders/organisations with many years of gamification activity of any kind (namely Municipal Departments of Social policy, culture, urban planning, environment, sports and life-long learning, the University of Thessaly, Adult education associations, Museums, NGOs, Local organizations, Local Associations, SMEs like bookstores and toyshops, Theaters etc.). They were informed of the aims of the project and discussed how to identify and gather their activities taking place in the city of Larissa during the year, setting as a goal of grouping all these actions under the umbrella of Playful Paradigm.

As a result of this action is the creation of a playful "map guide" for the city. The ultimate aim of this is to give the city of Larissa a separate identity, the identity of the Playful City at both national and European level.
Notable is the fact that in each ULG there are more and more stakeholders who share their work and wish to be informed and contribute to the implementation of the project. These discussions have leaded us to the decision of collecting actions/activities from the city's stakeholders, register them and integrate them into a "unique calendar of games and related/playful activities". As part of its creation, the Municipality of Larissa will make this calendar easy to use and accessible to every citizen/visitor, through a web application, which will be a calendar of activities/games for the citizen/ the visitor of the city and will help him select the most appropriate activity to participate, in a user-friendly and dynamic manner. The application user will be able to obtain an overview of all events and playful activities taking place in the city on a daily basis, since in addition to the municipality there will be the possibility for those organizers of actions who wish to upload relevant information/invitations for their events/activities.

This implementation will be created with specifications allowing it to be active and sustainable after the end of the project, as this is the main objective.
Another innovative challenge for the Municipality of Larissa is to create a Toy Library in collaboration with the Municipal Library in the city of Larissa, as a new meeting point for all. The city of Larissa decided to implement the Good Practice of the city of Udine (Italy) by operating/inaugurating the "Toy Library" which will enable young and elder people to spend their leisure time entertaining, regardless of age, economic and social background and other forms of discrimination and promote a healthier life, improve living standards, integrate social, vulnerable groups, immigrants and address/confront addictive behaviors. For this reason, a representative of the Municipality of Larissa participated in a Bilateral Meeting with Udine in order to learn how the Toy Library operates and visits the site. In addition to the Good Practice of Udine (Italy), the case of another partner, Klaipeda (Lithuania), could be mentioned. During the 3rd Transnational Meeting in the city, the partners of the project visited the Imanuel Kant Public Library, where and through the ‘’The Playful Paradigm’’ project, playful activities were added, creative activities with schools, art therapy, board games, quiz etc.

At the moment, the design and the configuration of the Toy Library of Larissa has started according to the manual of the Italian city but and due to a lack of financial resources, the Municipality of Larissa had requested the collaboration of local bookshops and toy shops, which donated board games, enriching the existing collection. 

Nevertheless, the implementation of the project has been hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in exceptional circumstances, in the last year, for all countries in the world. Countries have been affected and suffer because of the coronavirus, following measures in favor of public health to limit the spread of the pandemic. The project partners have all been affected as well as the "Playful Paradigm" project itself. However, the Municipality of Larissa continues to implement actions in accordance with the project timetable and the results of meetings between local authorities within the period of the restrictive measures. Additionally and in order to assist people during the lockdown, a website was created, titled ‘'Larissa Together ‘’ that contains performances, concerts, digital library, museum tours, entertainment and sports in the home, plus various useful information as well as medical guidance. Also, other entities, like the Doll's Museum, in collaboration with the puppet show "Tiritomba", have created for children a cycle of online performances featuring hand-made dolls called "Kouklokamomata’’.

In these episodes, there are short stories, small parts of performances, commentary, songs and many ideas about puppets, construction and puppet games. It’s worth mentioning that the Doll's Museum is a unique museum in Greece, as well as a world-renowned member of UNIMA, the World Puppet Theater Organization and UNESCO.

During this journey, the City of Larissa has had exceptional collaboration with the project partnership and lead expert as well as guidance and support from the URBACT Secretariat and its National Contact Point through webinars, educational activities run by URBACT Secretariat and URBACT Experts, as well as transnational meetings among partners. This has become more intense over the last period and due to lockdown measures, as online meetings and webinars have been organized constantly on the implementation of the project despite the exceptional difficult circumstances. These activities provide an opportunity for continued education and training of partners, exchange of views, and acquaintance with different cultures, knowledge exchange and local visits on the basis of the Good Practice of each partner city. 
Our organization knows very well that despite the effort so far, a lot more should be done as it constantly tries to engage more local stakeholders, learn about their activities and collaborate with them in order to integrate them under the umbrella of ‘’The Playful Paradigm’’. During the implementation of the project, the Municipality of Larissa promotes the philosophy of games and the gamification in even more activities, in which all people can be involved and will help citizens to be trained and entertained at the same time. This will have as a result the city of Larissa to become the first Greek "Playful City" and further to integrate into Europe's "Playful Cities" network, which highlights the fundamental principles, program philosophy and the "value of the game". 

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Vasilis Mitsios-ULG Coordinator
and Marilia Lelli-Municipality of Larissa member staff