08/09/2026
Think. Move. Create. 🌼
Six days in Mannheim. Twenty of us, eight countries, one question that never quite closed: how do spaces come about where young people can build resilience, who are they open to, and who decides how they get shaped?
Who gets to decide. At the Umweltforum we saw what it looks like when seventeen associations speak to a city with one voice, and where participation actually has teeth instead of just a seat. The city's own youth work team showed us the other side of the desk. And in Heidelberg, a house on a former US hospital site where the residents simply run the place themselves . Turns out the top of the participation ladder is not a theory. People live there.
Who a space is actually for. The q***r centre took us through how you build something open on purpose: volunteers, space-making, a proper awareness concept. Not a room that happens to be unlocked. A room somebody made safe.
What a city says about itself. A mural tour, because Mannheim writes on its own walls. Out at Spinelli, former barracks where the ground is slowly coming back, read with people who know what is growing there. .mannheim
And the food. Spinach and potatoes. Pide and lentil soup. Half the week's real conversations happened over a plate.
Thank you to everyone who opened a door, cooked for us, and argued with us.
Stadtentwicklung YouthWork Mannheim proBiene
