The 10^th of October the 3 Belgian EPALE support services, in cooperation with the National Coordinator for the European Agenda for Adult Learning in Flanders organize a live event about ‘innovative learning places’. The event is organized in the slipstream of the yearly 3-day online international EPALE Community Conference which will get streamed on 10 October from the event venue ‘LaVallée’ in Brussels.

The overarching theme of the international EPALE online conference on 10, 11 and 12 October is 'Bloom! Skills for the Future. In the context of the European Year of Skills, the EPALE-colleagues from all over Europe will highlight how lifelong learning empowers people to acquire important skills for the future. Because we need these skills, not only to find our way in the rapidly changing labour market, but also to grow as engaged citizens in a democratic and inclusive society.

To join the event on the 10th of October please subscribe here.

What’s in a name?

Recently all over the world, citizen-led projects have been springing up and thriving at the local, grass-roots level. They may operate under different names, but all of these initiatives are united by their ambition to bring people together in pursuit of collective goals. They could be called co-working spaces, art occupations, fablabs, experimental farms, shared gardens, upcycling centres, hackerspaces, local distribution networks, etcetera.

On 10 October 2023, the 3 Belgian EPALE support services will investigate these ‘innovative learning places’ at a live event in LaVallée, itself a so-called ‘third place’, a notion the American sociologist Ray Oldenburg* developed In the 1980s. He described a third place as a space for informal, free social action, essential to democracy. The concept has gained unexpected popularity over the years. In Oldenburg’s 1989 book The Great Good Place, he defined a third place as “not home and not work, but one of the physical settings that have throughout history encouraged a sense of warmth, conviviality, and that special kind of human sustenance we call community”. As such these settings also can include coffee shops, cafés, libraries and hair salons, where people from different walks of life gather to hang out in an informal atmosphere. 

Ray Oldenburg’s admirers around the world found inspiration in his book and started promoting social cohesion by designing physical spaces that evoke a sense of community. The concept reminds us that human connections need nurturing and that community depends on such simple things as a few tables, a friendly host and a willingness to see what happens when people get together face-to-face; a watering hole of some sort where conversation is the main activity.” Some of the third places have become even more vital to our wellbeing now than ‘first places’ (home) and ‘second places’ (the workplace). For many people all these places are now merging into one.

What makes a place a ‘third place’?

The need for community can hardly be said to have disappeared. During the pandemic we asked ourselves whether third places would ever come back. Now we know that Zoom meetings and online happy hours will never replace face-to-face interaction. But which identifying factors make a third place survive and thrive? According to Oldenburg a third place

• is on neutral ground;  you don’t need an invitation, and anyone can enter.
• is unstructured; you can come and go as you please.
• is not expensive.
• is a place to talk; conversation is the main activity, though playing games is also common.
• is near your home or work place, ideally, you can walk to your third place.
• has regulars, but strangers aren’t out of place.
• has chatter, joking and teasing as an integral part.

Examples of third places or innovative learning spaces in France

In France many innovative learning spaces all became part of a vibrant web of third places, united by a bottom-up philosophy with a heavy emphasis on cooperation and a belief in the commons as the best way to handle the necessary transitions we face. In June 2023 Third Places for Europe (TP4EU) organized a conference, among others supported by local authorities and 4 ministries, to reinforce the cooperative relationships between the actors driving these projects, while also building stronger partnerships with local authorities.

Participated in the conference

• La Grange – Bouillon cube transformed an old stone farmhouse (La Grange) into a factory of rural territory. Today it develops all kinds of original activities: concerts, residences of artists, European exchanges, workshops for the youngest…
• La Distillerie is a third-place where creation and manufacturing have been working together since 2017. It hosts many workshops (wood/metal, earth/ceramics, body expression, bakeware/bakery, canteen, coworking, etcera). It’s a place of experimentation, training and sharing between artisans, artists, associations and individuals, while serving as a lever for the local economy. 

La Distillerie

• Le Spot, born in 2013, is a hybrid third-place of 500 m2 with economic and social-cultural actions. The venue was conceived from a historic festival that brought together thousands of local residents every year for the past 10 years. From the beginning, the team was driven by the desire to upgrade a disadvantaged and discredited neighbourhood by art and culture.. Today, Le Spot brings together a multitude of activities and uses: an art gallery, a concert hall, conferences, meetings, video-projection... as well as a bar.
• La Palanquée is a third place by a collective of inhabitants. The building of 800m2 includes a project incubator, a FabLab, a cafeteria, a coworking space. The third place aims to install an entrepreneurial dynamic that meets the challenges and opportunities of ecological transition, social innovation and solidarity in the territory. 
• Les Nouvelles Grisettes opened the first third place of fashion and responsible textile in Occitanie. It’s a real resource centre for professionals and an atypical and modern living space for consumers. The venue aims to develop the fashion and textile short circuit at the regional level, to promote responsible fashion and develop business opportunities for local stakeholders.
• Menuiserie Collaborative (MCo) is a third place dedicated to woodworking and crafts. Since its creation in 2017, the MCo has provided woodworkers with a workshop equipped with a state-of-the-art machine park and workshop spaces (metal, fabric, ceramic, bronze...). Also accessible to private individuals, training in craft techniques is provided to beginners as well as experts. Its manufacturing activity also welcomes people in social and professional integration. MCo is involved in various networks thus making woodworking accessible to all audiences and promotes local artisans through events and meetings. This approach also questions the current challenges of re-employment, the ecological impact, the relationship to work and consumption.
• La maison Gisèle Halimi installed in a completely converted wasteland the Espace Gisèle Halimi is a new public facility of 3000m² operating as a third place dedicated to solidarity for the inhabitants of the district, created as part of the local urban renewal program. It offers a wide range of support services to people and their projects (access to rights, digital inclusion, health prevention, economic development and innovation, fablab, urban transformation, etcetera). It encourages collective approaches carried out by associations and inhabitants. For example, the development of the forecourt was carried out through a participatory workshop, and a culinary third place will be carried out by women from the district through the creation of an activity incubator.

How about innovative learning spaces in Belgium?

How about third places and other innovative learning spaces in Belgium? On the 5^th of July 2023 the Erasmus+ project Places3T organised its final event in third place and creative hub LaVallée in Molenbeek/Brussels. Places3T aimed to develop and make sustainable places of the ‘third type’, meaning physical, virtual and/or hybrid collaborative spaces that enable social, cultural and entrepreneurial innovation. Belgian partners in the project were coordinator Smart, co-coordinator FREREF and the European think&do thank ‘Pour la Solidarité’. The final project event went under the title ‘The Place, the Work, the Unexpected – Creation, learning and Entrepreneurship towards Cooperative Social Transitions’.

Third places involved in the project are LaVallée in Brussels, a community of artists and entrepreneurs, a third place for social and professional inclusion Manu Village in France, entrepreneurial community Area071 in The Netherlands, the multidisciplinary and technological learning space Fablab in the Balearic Islands, and Hope in Us, a digital third space, a community of cultural actors.

According to the project partners “third places are remarkable, anchored in their context, their territorial environment, and their cultural history; but also open to radical innovations, willing to change the rules, to open new routes. At the start of the place, there is a challenge, a feeling that it is possible to do something new for oneself and with the others.Third places tend to enable and support people in developing new ways of learning, creating, making value, taking into account new criterions of ‘success’: trust – in yourself, in others, in the future-; respect –of people, resources and the planet-; valorisation of abilities – prior ones and those developed in the cooperation and collaboration ; valorisation of positive and flip thinking, etcetera. Third places enable to express desires, wishes, challenges to modify sustainably the relation with the future of work, sustain visions, that are more optimistic, more inclusive, more egalitarian, non-discriminating; and to imagine and create the ways to start this journey. What is innovative, is the way third places have to create themselves and to function, the relations between the people, the mixing between concerns; no separation between work, learning, creation, individual and collective, method and content, etc., but a permanent complementarity; the way they enable to identify, design and promote other ways towards knowledge, other kinds of productive work, other social and societal relations. Creativity is a central element, with the presence of creative cultural actors, artists and also by sustaining the creativity of the persons at large in the way they build their journey, their development, their project. Third places are places for creating economic value; they may end in the creation of professional activities, activity that will give opportunities of work to other actors; not only self-employment, but rather collective forms of organisations, cooperatives, social economy, or others forms still to be invented.”

Listen to the EPALE podcast with Liliane Esneux, engaged in the Erasmus+ project Places3T (FR).

European support for innovative learning spaces

European support can be found with the regular funding programmes: Creative Europe to support the culture and audiovisual sector, Horizon Europe, for research and innovation, Erasmus+, to support education, training, youth and sport, Digital Europe, a new EU funding programme focused on bringing technology to businesses, citizens and public administrations, InvestEU, to support sustainable investment, innovation and job creation in Europe,  EU structural and investment funds, to support SMEs, employment of millions of people and clean energy production.

Keynote speaker at the Places3T conference, Ms Barbara Stacher from the European Commission’s DG EAC, also introduced the conference audience to the European Creative Hubs Network (ECHN) because there are many similarities with third places and other innovative learning spaces. ECHN is one of the European networks that got support from Creative Europe. The ECHN is a peer-led network with a mission to enhance the creative, economic and social impact of creative hubs around Europe and neighbouring countries. As focal points for creative professionals and businesses, creative hubs use a part of its space for networking, organisational and business development to offer the most effective way to support the growth and development of cultural and creative industries. Creative hubs can include urban gardens, community farming, bee keeping, solar energy, recycling, DIY workshops, resource sharing, recycled materials for building, renovations, repair café, roof gardens, carpooling, paperless procedures, eco hackathons, cycling schemes, literacy programs for youth and unemployed, community breakfasts, thematic bars, yoga and mindfulness classes, dance classes and sport activities, games night, child care, activities with refugees, fundraising for social impact organisations, book fairs, art exhibitions, reaching out to local community and minorities, tree planting…

Ms Stacher also mentioned Culture moves Europe which is meant to support cultural mobility in Europe and beyond. ;

Here you can find a webtool and guidebook to find funding: the CulturEU webtool and guidebook.

New model for public libraries

Recently the European Commission also launched a new Work Plan for Culture 2023-2026 with a focus on 4 complementary priorities:

• artists and cultural professionals: empowering the cultural and creative sectors
• culture for the people: enhancing cultural participation and the role of culture in society
• culture for the planet: unleashing the power of culture
• culture for co-creative partnerships: strengthening the cultural dimension of the EU external relations

The plan foresees, for example the establishment of a new OMC group on public libraries to be launched in 2024. The group will discuss the future model of public libraries considering that libraries play a key role in Europe’s democratic, social, cultural, and educational landscape at all levels. They make a significant contribution to building democracy, citizen engagement and public participation activities across the EU, including in rural and remote areas, including the outermost regions. The group will start its work in January 2024.

De Krook, Moktamee, Kruitfabriek, Blikfabriek...

Third places are playing a growing role in cities as they function as meeting places for a variety of people, as spaces for cooperation, connection and inspiration. In Ghent, a vast third place opened in 2017: De Krook, Ghent’s landmark and cultural centre, a place to read, to learn, to live, and to simply be. De Krook is a large-scale urban renewal project, maybe best known for its new city library, but it also includes labs and offices of Ghent University and imec, a café, green zones and space for start-up and scale-up companies. De Krook is a member of the network of ECHN. This network is very large, with members in all European countries, including more than 15 in Belgium.

Other ECHN members in Flanders are e.g. Moktamee a creative hub in an abandoned school building in the center of Herentals, one of the centrally located cities in the wider region called ‘De Kempen’ in Flanders. Moktamee is a community and workplace for cultural and creative practitioners and entrepreneurs. In Vilvoorde, near Brussels, we find De Kruitfabriek, a place where everyone is welcome and where there is always something to experience. Artists find a studio, music groups a rehearsal space and individuals a (sometimes) quiet place. There are expos, lectures, concerts, parties, markets, etcetera.

Next to the ECHN members other interesting sites are Blikfabriek in Antwerp, an innovative center of 30,000 square meters for young enterprising people, a breeding ground full of creativity and a local nest with room for neighbourhood initiatives, culture and sport. OPEK in Leuven, a vibrant cultural site where various art disciplines meet in dance, theatre, visual arts, music, literature and photography.

Buurtpunten

The Flemish ‘Buurtpunten’ (neighbourhood places) are places where people can meet. There is a variety of Buurtpunten, all depending on the ‘couleur locale’ of the neighbourhood and its community. What exactly a Buurtpunt is, depends on the local needs. It can be a meeting center, a sales point for regional products, a shop, a library point, a second-hand market, a bus stop, a place for cultural events... the possibilities are endless. Goods or services are offered, often with an emphasis on short chain, sustainability and inclusion. A Buurtpunt brings new life to a village or neighbourhood. They offer places close to home where everyone is welcome and where there is room for spontaneous meetings. In some villages or neighbourhoods you can no longer meet at the bakery or butcher or at the bus stop. Buurtpunten provide opportunities for social contact, goods or services close to home, and without having to get into the car. Buurtpunten have a fixed location in the neighbourhood or village. It is often given a place in an existing facility or building, but also sometimes the vacant village café is renovated.

Learning ecosystems

“Learning is not a place, but a lifelong activity in the real world”, says OECD-director Andreas Schleicher in this EPALE interview. And also: “Learning does not stop behind a wall.” Learning ecosystems are put forward by OECD, among others, as levers to make citizens more eager to learn and continue to develop their talents. They also seem to be promising initiatives to introduce a new way of thinking about learning and education. Learning ecosystems contribute to a transition to a sustainable future where people can enjoy a good life and where young and old are given the opportunity to develop their talents in their own environment.

A learning ecosystem is developing from the Regina Mundi site in Genk (Flanders/Belgium)

In Flanders, Europa WSE (formerly ESF) launched a call for projects in 2021 among local authorities in the province of Limburg for the development of learning ecosystems to stimulate the learning appetite of their inhabitants. One of the selected projects operates from an old monastery of the Brigittines in Borgloon (for the South Limburg region). Another learning ecosystem is developing from the Regina Mundi site in Genk. In Beringen, the partners are building a learning ecosystem on the site of a former school, the Lutgart site.

* Ray Oldenburg
Professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, USA, and author of The Great Good Place. He passed away on 21 November 2022.

Used resources

Third places, true citizen spaces | The UNESCO Courier

https://www.tp4eu.org/en/index

https://agence-cohesion-territoires.gouv.fr/nouveaux-lieux-nouveaux-liens-56

http://eule-kierberg.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Third_place.pdf