"<< Background >>The architectural community is faced with multiple challenges of a democratic (how to involve the inhabitants in space making), economic (how to respond to austerity) and ecological nature (how to build responsibly). The professional identity of architects is changing too with the emergence of original practices. Other actors, like local communities developing new common spaces, find their place in spatial planning projects. Some rural areas are pioneering new forms of commons that mix work, culture, offer collective services, often in some form replacing public services, historically handled by institutions, promoting collaborative and horizontal ways to manage them. Even if they can be a convincing response in an economic context of withdrawal of public means and the rise of civil society initiatives, they are often limited by technical obstacles like: management of building construction, rehabilitation or transformation and economic sustainability.These social and professional changes start to have some repercussions on formal training in architecture schools. But the lack of pedagogical situations that allow the implementation of both experiential and cooperative pedagogy, in order to co-design and co-build projects lead by local communities, is concerning. It is time to imagine new modes of territory planning based on the synergy between all the actors of the project.We have therefore chosen to work in 3 ""common places"" with a set of similar characteristics highlighting the need to rebalance the inequality: reduction of public services, depopulation of the area nearby, ageing inhabitants, and vacant built heritage, in France, Italy and Greece. Through intensive workshops, gathering all stakeholders, we plan to highlight the emergence of a professional diversification in action in the field of architecture and improve the existing commons to re-evaluate the shared wealth of these public spaces.<< Objectives >>""School of Commons"" aims to multiply bridges between architecture students, teaching staff, professionals and local communities in the co-construction of common places and systematize the presence of experiential and collaborative pedagogies in architecture schools curricula. Our objectives are : - to build bonds between formal, non-formal and informal education through the development of alternative pedagogical methods,- to promote collective place-based project experience in architecture school pedagogy, including the rehabilitation or creation of common places, and develop students active citizenship,- to support local communities involved by helping them think, dream, manage and build their spaces with inclusive methods,- to question the diversification of the profession of architect and its evolution. - to strengthen a European network of actors involved in the recognition and development of the commons in Europe, especially in rural areas.<< Implementation >>The activities developed in the SCHOOL OF COMMONS project are divided into three areas: the partnership itself, learning, teaching and training (LTT) activities and the dissemination of the results and outputs.The transnational partners meetings will be important and regular moments to strengthen the links between the organisations and the partnership itself. The horizontal governance, a dynamic governance, that the partnership wishes to establish will ensure horizontal decision making and remove any possible ownership issues of ideas by working openly with all the actors and with open creative commons licences. We will dedicate specific times in the beginning and at the end of each LTT activity, to ensure that the partners achieve the highest level of mutual understanding and efficiency with regard to the administrative management, objectives and results of the project. All partners will collaborate in these learning, teaching and training activities carried out through INTENSIVE WORKSHOPS as they will be opportunities to build bridges between architectural schools and specific situated projects, led by a local community, dealing with contemporary societal issues. The LTT activities will contribute to bring students abroad in Europe, in the case-study model approach developed in this project. Students will discover new territories and new cultures, linked to local communities and as future professionals, they can learn how to think, create and transform problems into projects, from the needs of situated issues. The LTT intensive workshops will allow students to participate in transnational activities and cooperate with young architects, teachers, other students from different European countries and local communities from different cultural backgrounds. The activities will also provide direct support to the local community. One of the main challenges of this project is to enhance the value of projects carried out by local communities, and to enable them to evolve and develop. These different activities will bring new energies that will create a driving effect for each project, as well as establishing a dynamic governance of the commons.Ultimately, professors, students, architects and local communities from all three countries will build and strengthen a european society by meeting in different countries, towards the goal of developing a common culture of projects tarting from the material and immaterial resources of the territories and its communities.The third area of activity is related to the dissemination strategy of the results and outputs. This strategy is based on a singular digital platform gathering two types of contents (narrative and academic) and a range of multiplier events during which these results will be presented, discussed, put into perspective. The platform will be designed in such a way that similar projects could be hosted on the same website, becoming a portal for narratives of a network of non-formal approaches to architecture education and for the redevelopment and reactivation of marginal areas in the EUThe dissemination plan will be deployed on 3 scales : local, national and international.At the local level we wish to give back to the territory the results of our common experiments and reach a wide audience on the territory. Social events will ensure the participation and dissemination by all the local partners.At regional and national level we target higher education institutions and universities, inside and outside the partnership in order to spread to teaching staff and students.At an European and international scale the project will contribute to strengthen the existing informal network, on a broader large scale which concerns professionals of local development, urban planning, architecture and more broadly all the actors interested in the ""commons"". The online narration and multimedia documentation of the project will ensure that the international community's awareness is raised.<< Results >>In the higher education system, we wish to generate pedagogical tools and teaching methods that are reviewed , implemented and systematized in an original educational program in Europe, able to enhance contemporary professional practices and encourage teachers through creative, collective and in situ experimentations. We believe that these pedagogical changes will raise students' awareness of contemporary democratic and ecological issues, develop their skills and capabilities to face complex socio-economic structures and collaborative working environments and train them into ethics and practices of civic architecture. The final aim is to constitute a common project culture : pedagogical sheets on our digital platform will let other architecture teachers adapt the approach, disseminate the methodology and the subjects, and ultimately to systematise this teaching curricula within the architecture schools in Europe. At the same time, the local communities that try to act on the development of their territories will be the first beneficiaries of the project actions. The in-situ experimentation will enable them to see first hand the improvement of their common places, and in an empowerment logic we aim to give them access to the approaches and tools of architecture and urban planning and enhancing their role in the project process.Architects' collectives that work on the margins of urban projects will see their collaborative alternative tools and action devices recognized at an institutional level, while highlighting the emergence of the new professional profile of the ""facilitator architect"".In recent years, the European project has lost its meaning for many of our citizens. Yet we are convinced that european people have a common future that is only waiting to be realised through real moments of sharing, and not just through regulation. This Erasmus+ program is a wonderful opportunity to rewrite a common narrative, with young people and future architects, local communities, and architects, based on ecological transition, cooperation, civic empowerment and inter-knowledge. The activities lead during the project, and the multiplier events, will be opportunities to consolidate a network of actors involved in the development of the commons on a European scale."
