Description

The municipality of Santa Coloma de Gramanet, located in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, has a population of about 120,000 inhabitants in an area of 7 km2, which implies a densely populated urban area.

The Pompeu Lab Centre is a laboratory of citizen ideas, driven by the proactive action of the citizens themselves. Each citizen has a valid contribution to make from his or her field, from his or her competencies and from his or her willingness to pool personal and collective talent for the benefit of all citizens.

For this reason, the centre was created with the aim of becoming a space for coexistence, sharing through innovation and using new techniques and technologies to empower citizens. The idea was also to promote the values of teamwork, solidarity and the idiosyncrasy by fostering a sense of belonging and positive values.

Up to now, they have been working on:

• The establishment of a community through spaces for co-creation and citizen reflection. Example: diagnosis of the citizen brigades for the elimination of architectural barriers).
• The empowerment of citizens through new methodologies in the use of the word, the formulation of proposals and the exchange of experiences.
• The opening of participatory channels to the sectors that are furthest away from the day-to-day running of the city's policies.
• The socialisation with entities, foundations, institutes, etc. of the instruments of creation from the promotion of teamwork and the management of synergies.
• Contributing to the debate on the day-to-day issues of city life with the vocation of a collective search for solutions and improvements.

The centre has a municipal management and staff qualified in gamification, participation and process dynamisation. However, there are constant calls for the participation of people from the "Lab" community when an issue comes to the centre for participation. On the other hand, there are collaboration agreements with entities in the city and sporadic collaborations that occur for specific participatory topics.

Concentrating or promoting citizen participation from a specific space is a model that can be exported to any municipality. The use of social innovation techniques requires easily accessible training, as different universities are beginning to promote postgraduate courses in this area.

In addition, creating a "participation house" can serve to:

• de-bureaucratise processes
• increase the criteria of proximity to citizenship 
• promote, as in the case of the Pompeu Lab, a space for coexistence and community meetings aimed at the continuous issuing of proposals and citizen initiatives on a co-creation basis and in a more "de-institutionalised" manner, or, in other words, closer to citizens.

All participatory processes developed in the centre are subject to feedback. In other words, it is mandatory to share the results of the work with the citizens and to publish all the conclusions or working documents created to be submitted to the citizens for amendment. On the other hand, the processes are accompanied by the appointment of a Commission of Guarantees made up of members of the public, which meets to guarantee the legality of the processes and to evaluate them.

With regard to participatory activity outside the structured processes, there are mechanisms, such as satisfaction surveys, where participants evaluate the participatory practices. These results are extrapolated with the aim of measuring parameters (age, sex, origin, etc.), collecting comments and, with all this, elaborating the participatory offer. 

The most innovative aspect is the application of social innovation and gamification techniques. Within the new participatory model, organised participation and traditional working groups are still used, but these are always accompanied by forums and participatory activity adapted to people of all conditions, ages, areas and cultural diversity. In this way, it can be said that participation is obtained in two ways:

1. a more "qualitative" one (coming from the participation of experts, organised entities and other personalities who usually have an impact on city issues), and 
2. a more "quantitative" participation (really useful for the prioritisation of municipal policies or for taking the measure of concrete municipal proposals, and even for the collection of new proposals for plans and programmes).

Both ways are considered legitimate in the Pompeu Lab Centre. The "experts on the city" contributed with their vision. Organised participation makes possible the considerations of the population's feelings. Although participation processes are not binding by law, the more opinions collected, the greater citizen involvement and legitimacy of a plan or programme submitted for participation by the city council.

Through the introduction of techniques such as gamification, manual thinking or immersion, it has also been possible to attract individual citizens to become involved in city issues, as in the case of the preparation of the Mandate Plan. 

The centre consists of 4 main spaces for participatory action:

1. The Thinking Lab: or citizen ideas laboratory in which participatory processes and citizen participation are carried out through innovative brainstorming techniques. Example: diagnostic and proactive "citizen brigades".
2. The Making Lab: participatory space with fab lab technology for the creation of "citizen patents" for the benefit of the city. Example: creation of pictograms for autistic children for subsequent installation on public roads.
3. The participative computer classroom: a space whose main objective is to overcome the digital divide. Examples: computer tutorials for the elderly, empowerment in the use of ICTs to access participatory and municipal channels, empowerment to exercise the right to transparency.
4. Enjoying Santako: a space in which work is carried out with citizens through gamification for the evaluation, reflection and proposal on the city.

Sources (in spanish) : 

Santa Coloma de Gramenet City Council 

Pompeu Lab website (in catalan)

Application Form