Client: La Friche, Marseille, France

2022-2026

Future DiverCities is a four year project funded by the European Commission (Creative Europe) implemented by 13 European organisations seeking to re-imagine culture-led regeneration of urban empty spaces in an ecological way. The project develops cultural approaches to enhance and preserve the ecological value of unused vacant spaces in 8 European Cities.

The project was designed by TheStream, from the development of the concept, the establishment of the partner consortium and securing the 2 Million euros funding from the European Commission. The Stream now steers the project implementation with expertise at the intersection of Culture and Ecology.

The project is deployed in Athens with Bios (GR), in Berlin with Public Art Lab (DE), in Marseille with La Friche and Seconde Nature (FR), in Kuopio with ANTI Festival (FI), in Timișoara with PLAI (RO), in Liepaja with the Cultural department (LV) in Zagreb with Kontejner (HR), Florence with LAMA (IT). There, the partners explore the positive facets of the void in city space: vacant spaces as commons for the local community, as impermanent spaces demanding temporary and fluid usages and as sanctuaries of biodiversity. They imagine how to regenerate and intervene in empty urban spaces, inventing new ways to create, to conceive cultural activities, to design participative interventions in unused and vacant urban spaces that can enhance and build its ecological value.

The project benefits from the expertise of Ashoka (Poland) in accelerating changemaking at city scale ; Krater (Slovenia) in eco-social practice and urban ecology ; Savonia University (Finland) in building the analytical framework to systematise ecosystemic and ecological strategies in cultural urban regeneration and the European Creative Hubs Network in amplifying the learnings of the experiments.

Credits photo: Amadeja Smrekar & Krater