The Cooperative City in Quarantine webinars were launched by Cooperative city magazine and Eutropian in collaboration with numerous other partners. Broadcast weekly throughout the COVID lockdown, they proved to be highly popular. The purpose of the webionars was to share positive stories about social solidarity movements from across Europe, and they succeeded in communicating shared experiences and reactions to the COVID-19 crisis.
Each episode featured a unique topic and shed a light on the challenges facing social solidarity movements throughout Europe. You can view the full episodes here.
Episode #6: Urban commons
Featuring Urban commons as a theme, episode #6 played host to gE.CO partners, who discussed building solidarity in communities, mapping and supporting initiatives, creating an infrastructure to facilitate the sharing and networking process, the reaction(s) of initiatives and informal groups towards the COVID-19 crisis and the effect they were having in their neighborhoods and vicinities.
Alessandra Quarta, Associate Professor at the University of Turin and Project Coordinator of gE.CO, and Daniela Patti, co-director of Eutropian hosted the episode.
Cooperative City Magazine summarized the Key Learning Points for this episode in an article they published:
- Commons, in their broadest interpretation of solidarity and sharing community based practices, are proving to be essential in providing essential welfare services to the marginalised members of our communities;
- Even in “normal” times, commons need space to provide their services and support to marginalised communities, such as schools, education or leisure, but this is especially true under the current circumstances, in order to organise food distribution and many other activities.
- We need to ensure recognition through political and financial support to common spaces, to ensure these will survive even after the emergency, as a long term community support.
