In Vilnius, a team of public officials and volunteers call everyday hundreds of elderly people confined alone to their homes. Nantes is increasing the number of food distribution centres to help the most vulnerable. Krakow provides free psychological consultations by phone. Cluj-Napoca organises its Municipal Council’s sessions on an online platform open to citizens. In Belgium, distilleries have stopped their alcohol production in order to supply pharmacies that make their own hydroalcoholic gel…
All these initiatives, and many more listed in Eurocities’ blog Live updates COVID-19 testify, in contrast to the on-going drama, to our responsiveness to everything…
For us, these examples are important signs in view of the paradox in which the current crisis is pushing the Maison Collaborative City project: the outbursts of solidarity don’t go beyond the required one and a half meter, mutual aid instincts are kept at a distance, our natural empathy cannot make us gather… How can we reinvent living together when we have to stay apart? How can we continue to collaborate in this forced individualism caricature? How can we co-produce a collaborative city isolated in our homes?
This is one of the questions we want to explore with the Collaborative City community. For over a year now, you have brought us POC full of collaborations, cooperation processes, projects leading to making together… Today everything is on hold, frozen, immobilised… But like the examples listed above by the partner cities of the Eurocities network, the POC that you lead will not fail to respond: how will mutual aid projects come up with new forms of solidarity? Will the education-related POC get inspired by the current resourcefulness to pursue home schooling? Is there a way to make third places in confined mode?
Send us your ideas, things you have noticed, that inspire you, we will not fail to relay it…