The ‘Novi Sad 2021’ Foundation organised another meeting in order to raise capacities, which is one of the main tasks of the Hope programme bridge that is being implemented in the year one of the Novi Sad 2021 project. The meeting in the City Assembly was held with representatives of local communities of Novi Sad.

Nemanja Milenković, CEO of the Foundation, Lazar Jovanov, PhD, Head of the Department for Participation, Milica Rašković, Senior Associate for Participative Projects, as well as Višnja Baćanović, Sociology Graduate, presented the most important details of the European Capital of Culture project to representatives of local communities. The focus was on presenting some of the ways to involve citizens in the project. They indicated potentials that lead to transformation of society by encouraging culture, and stressed the importance of the dialogue with citizens in this process.

This was a good opportunity to, once again, present the projects such as Cultural Stations, Satellites, and Urban Pockets, whose goals are to move culture and social events from the city centre, to form new places where citizens could meet, and to encourage communication through creative and socially aware engagement. The series of open discussion entitled Let’s Talk will be initiated in order to involve as many citizens as possible in these projects.

Representative of Novi Sad local communities were addressed by Christian Potiron, Expert Associate and Advisor, who stressed the importance of pushing forward participation and chance for decentralisation of culture through engagement of large number of local communities, which proved to be a successful recipe in implementing projects in Košice and Plzeň, which were European Capitals of Culture in 2013 and 2015 respectfully.

The first in the series of these meetings ended, as planned, with the exchange of opinions and ideas between representatives of the Foundation and local communities.