Design Session: Exclusion & Racism in Rotterdam

In Rotterdam the UNIC team organized the first CityLab which was hosted by the top civil servant Marcel de La Haye and was mainly about exploring how to understand issues of exclusion and racism in Rotterdam. A related topic that has been discussed extensively is low trust in city government and the possible effect on election turnout. It was a coproduction and knowledge exchange on how to ‘translate’ issues of exclusion and racism in Rotterdam. During this session we concluded that we missed a certain group /generation of citizens. We decided to expand our network with the help of the city marine and his local contacts and elaborated on this dialogue in the second pop-up lab organized in june. During the City Lab Festival in Liege we shared our findings, which more focused and the how than the what of setting up a city lab with local parties and citizens: • How to collecting and generating ideas and knowledge • how to create a physical dialogue setting that is inclusive • How to benefit from the network of your contacts