The Academy for Citizens or quite more fitting, the Urban Forum, is a place for citizens, a collective place and kind of Greek agora. A central space where arguments of common interest are analyzed, clarified and discussed. Slovenian public infrastructures do not have such a space, that we believe is essential for any functioning democracy and especially for societies where democracy is still young and democrats not used to be democrats, like it is in Slovenia or other post-socialist environments.
This forum, a collective place, is one of two pillars of the Koroška demokratična postaja, – our pilot project, that aims to provide non-formal political education, to generate active and informed citizens
Obviously, a space like this has to be vivid and has constantly to provide illuminating, for the city or region relevant, information. Although there are things of interest, not an easy task these days, to reach an audience.
For the time being, we had to switch, due to COVID-19, everything to virtual, which did take considerably more effort and requested the ability to conceive anew. We managed well and we soon started working also concerned about common issues, in parts suggested due to the leaflet with the survey we produced and sent out at the start of the project and the arguments we did gather as feedback.
As our region is quite innocent regarding the acknowledgement and acceptance of the NGO sector, it will be also a big role of the Urbani Forum, to proliferate information about the various NGO’s existing in our region and on how to get involved.
In difference to the second pillar of the project, the citizens empowerment office, where individual incidents are taken care of, here we refer to groups of people and work on collective arguments, like general local policies, like common proposals, ideas or opportunities.
On this page you will find all major events, that evolved in the Urban Forum, an activity we did take care of within our program “Kultura Informiranje“, that possibly tomorrow will become, as it is within the project a second pillar of an institution, that would be very welcome in many Slovenian realities.
We were lucky to get funded by the Active Citizens Fund Slovenia, managed by CNVOS and by having marvelous partners PUM-o, MOCIS, Gimnazija Slovenj Gradec and MC Dravograd, that make us our work quite simple. Thanks to all!!