SocialTech Lab has joined 16 organisations from across Europe to launch CareFabric, a new 42-month Horizon Europe project under the first New European Bauhaus (NEB) Facility exploring how culture, participation and collective care can help transform Europe’s neighbourhoods.
The CareFabric consortium came together in Umeå, Sweden, from 21–23 September for the project’s first in-person gathering, bringing together municipalities, universities, cultural organisations, civil society actors and European networks to establish a common direction for the next three and a half years.
Officially titled Cross-disciplinary Approach to Research European Neighbourhoods – Facilitating the Acceleration of NEB Principles for Resilience in Cities, CareFabric brings together 17 partners from across Europe to understand how cultural participation can strengthen social connection, civic engagement and neighbourhood resilience, while contributing to a fair and inclusive green transition.
Exploring a culture of care
At the centre of CareFabric is a deceptively simple question:
How can cultural participation transform the way people care for their cities, their neighbourhoods and one another?
The project will explore how this collective care can become a driver of wider social, environmental and spatial transformation.
Grounded in the New European Bauhaus principles of sustainability, inclusion and beauty, CareFabric introduces the concept of “CARE-IS-MORE”, bringing together culture, knowledge and environmental transition around a broader culture of care.
Its overall ambition is to strengthen the social fabric and civic engagement of European neighbourhoods while supporting a fair and inclusive green transition.
Four European city pilots will act as spaces for research, co-creation and experimentation, bringing together social, cultural and environmental perspectives to explore new ways of strengthening neighbourhoods across Europe.
Starting in the neighbourhood
Appropriately, the CareFabric kick-off did not begin solely around a conference table.
Hosted in Umeå, the programme took partners into the neighbourhood of Ålidhem, where the consortium met with community leaders and explored local approaches to social sustainability, community initiatives, public space and cultural participation.
A neighbourhood walking tour introduced partners to local mural and façade art, family and health initiatives, community activities, public spaces, the local school and library, and other projects shaping everyday life in Ålidhem.
The experience provided an important starting point for conversations about what a caring neighbourhood actually looks like in practice.
Partners also began unpacking some of the questions that will shape the project:
What does care mean in the context of a neighbourhood? How do communities build belonging and collective ownership? And how can culture become a catalyst for long-term social and environmental change?
These conversations helped build a shared understanding of the concept of care within CareFabric, alongside discussions on the different pilot neighbourhoods and the perspectives of municipalities, universities, civic organisations and other consortium members.
From individual work packages to one shared project
The second day moved further into the architecture of CareFabric itself.
Partners worked through the project’s Work Packages, their interconnections and the different ways organisations will collaborate during implementation.
As part of this process, SocialTech Lab, Trans Europe Halles and ICLEI Europe jointly led the session exploring Work Packages 2, 3 and 4, helping consortium members understand their respective purposes, how they flow into one another and how different partners will contribute across them.
For SocialTech Lab, this cross-disciplinary approach reflects an important aspect of the project: meaningful neighbourhood transformation cannot be approached from one discipline or sector alone.
CareFabric deliberately combines expertise from areas including sociology, anthropology, human geography, urban planning, political science and cultural studies, alongside municipalities, researchers, cultural actors and civil society organisations.
The consortium also held its first General Assembly, including a presentation from the New European Bauhaus Secretariat, established the project’s governance structures and continued the programme with collaborative workshops focused on neighbourhoods and the concept of care.
Looking ahead
Over the coming years, CareFabric will generate new evidence, methodologies and practical tools for understanding how culture and creative participation can influence belonging, collective engagement, participatory decision-making and neighbourhood-level green transition.
Among its planned results are comparative evidence from New European Bauhaus-aligned neighbourhoods and tools including a Participatory Mapping & Knowledge Co-Creation Toolkit, with the project designed so that approaches developed through its pilots can ultimately be adapted and replicated elsewhere in Europe.
For SocialTech Lab, CareFabric also creates an opportunity to connect our work in community building, participatory innovation and positive peace with a broader European conversation about the places in which people live and the relationships that make those places resilient.
The days in Umeå gave the consortium the opportunity to move from a proposal on paper to a community of organisations beginning to work together — establishing new connections, exploring ideas and developing a shared sense of direction for the years ahead.
We are grateful to our hosts at RISE, Umeå Municipality, Umeå University and Umeå School of Architecture, and Studiefrämjandet, as well as the many local organisations, community leaders and residents who introduced us to Ålidhem and helped create such a thoughtful and welcoming start to the collaboration.
And this was only the beginning.
SocialTech Lab looks forward to welcoming CareFabric to Cyprus in the near future and continuing this shared journey with partners across Europe.
CareFabric is funded by Horizon Europe through the New European Bauhaus Facility.
