InnoRenew CoE joined U-LEAD in the Rebuilding a Better Ukraine via the New European Bauhaus Academy (NEB Academy Hub Ukraine) project

The New European Bauhaus Academy is coming to Ukraine. Recently, InnoRenew CoE (Izola, Slovenia), host of the first New European Bauhaus Academy hub, has joined with U-LEAD to help start Academy hubs in Ukraine through the Rebuilding a better Ukraine via the New European Bauhaus Academy (NEB Academy Hub Ukraine) project.

The New European Bauhaus (NEB) is a European initiative to engage more stakeholders in co-creating the built environment with the goal to create more inclusive, sustainable, and beautiful places. NEB has three core values and three working principles, which should be reflected in NEB Academy hubs. The core values are:

• Sustainability – to reach aggressive climate targets, zero waste and zero pollution, to improve biodiversity and regenerate nature.
• Inclusion – to foster togetherness through diversity, equality, and accessibility.
• Aesthetics – to create value beyond function and improve the overall quality of the built environment.

The working principles complement these values and are:

• To ensure a participatory process where values, needs, and concerns can be shared.
• To foster multi-level engagement by working together with community members, designers, construction companies, civil servants, policymakers, etc.
• To work across disciplines by engaging artists, scientists, professionals, youth, older adults, and others in co-creation processes.

The NEB Academy is an educational initiative being developed to spread the necessary knowledge to transform our built environment. It is being established by the New European Bauhaus Academy Alliance – a project with 14 partners from 10 countries collaborating to establish the NEB Academy in Europe. Through the NEB Academy Hub Ukraine project, Ukraine will be able to work alongside this group and the growing community of NEB participants to create a better built environment.

In Ukraine, the NEB Academy Hub Ukraine project will engage local stakeholders and national experts to understand the needs of the rebuilding efforts and to develop a business model for local Academy hubs. As the NEB was built with a bottom-up approach, this project will follow suit and reach out to local community members, civil servants, construction professionals, architects, engineers, educators, policymakers and others to determine the core training needs an Academy hub should offer. Then, InnoRenew CoE will take a “train-the-trainers” approach, teaching local trainers about the topics and how to provide training on them. They will also co-create training materials to ensure the knowledge is relevant, understandable, and resonates with the intended groups of learners. The modern approach to building taught by the NEB Academy will aid the reconstruction effort while modernising the broader construction ecosystem in Ukraine.

By the end of this project, the foundation of the NEB Academy hub in Ukraine will be established and the initial trainers will be prepared and ready to spread knowledge about sustainable, inclusive, and beautiful construction. With the NEB Academy hubs operating in Ukraine, they will be able to work with others in Europe to generate and share training content, build a sustainable and long-term NEB Academy, and change our built environment, and our communities, for the better.

The launch event of the initiative will be held online on 26^th June at 9:30. You are kindly invited to register and attend.

U-LEAD with Europe: Local Empowerment, Accountability and Development Programme is a multi-donor action of the EU and its member states Germany, Poland, Denmark and Slovenia to support Ukraine on its path to strengthening local self-government. U-LEAD promotes transparent, accountable, resilient and responsive multi-level governance in Ukraine and empowers municipalities.