The New European Bauhaus
The New European Bauhaus (NEB) is an interdisciplinary initiative launched by the European Commission in 2020. It aims to combine design, sustainability, accessibility, affordability and investment to help deliver the European Green Deal and connect it to our living spaces. It acts as a bridge between the world of science and technology and the world of art and culture and rethinks the opportunities green and digital challenges could bring to our lives. The NEB calls for a collective effort to imagine and build a future for our minds and souls which is sustainable, inclusive and based on a high quality of experience, to work together to develop urban/rural, economic and social regeneration.
Being built on values such as inclusiveness, solidarity and sustainability, the social economy is already strongly rooted in the NEB’s vision and can thus be a key actor to engage European communities in this ambitious project. Social economy enterprises can work in collaborative platforms, empower communities, connect rural and shrinking areas with urban renovation, and provide sustainable approaches.
Diesis is one of the main official social economy partner organisation. As such it contributes to the NEB Lab to work with its growing community to co-create, prototype and test the tools, solutions and policy actions that will facilitate the transformation on the ground.
As the first step in our engagement, at the beginning of 2021 we collected from our members examples of practices responding to EU Bauhaus criteria and presented some of them during the workshop organised during the Mannheim digital conference.
Moreover, we prepared a research paper, “Social and solidarity economy towards the new European Bauhaus: observations and good practices”, for the CIRIEC international conference held in September 2021. This paper analyses the existing literature and available information on the sector, and examines four good practices from Diesis Network members to show how the social economy works towards the New European Bauhaus objectives, and how they are interlinked with various deep connections.