Focus On: Poznan - how is the city building on its strengths?

With its rich history and modern dynamism – Poznan is in an excellent position to build upon its many strengths.  Examples of this include:

Creating a City Development Strategy for 2020+, with a key part of this being ‘City for People, Created by People’.  This shows a desire for people to be at the forefront of decision-making in the city.  The strategy aligns closely to the core principle of USE-IT! of bringing together the top-down and the bottom-up.  It has five themes or areas of activity being: (i) Smart Entrepreneurship; (ii) Green, Mobile City; (iii) Friendly Residential Estates; (iv) Strong Metropolis; (v) Community and Social Dialogue.

The Municipality of Poznan is in dialogue with different Anchor Institutions that are based in the city.  This includes: the local Estate Councils, large businesses such as Volkswagen, the 26 Higher Education Institutions with the city’s 8 Universities, the Police, and large service departments within the municipality.  

Started the process of developing an ‘Anchor Institution Network’ for Poznan.  This will bring together all the key public, commercial and social sector organisations as described above to deliver collectively upon the priorities of the new City Development Strategy and work in partnership on topics such as procurement.    

Initiatives aimed at helping unemployed people and also promoting specific jobs. 

• Poviat Labour Office has created programs which help young, mothers of kids under 6, people affected by the Covid-19 Pandemic, or people unemployed for a long time.
• The Poznań City Hall is also focusing on start-ups and SMEs by providing workshops and advisory services.
• There is a programme called “Zaułek Rzemiosła” (Alley of craftsmanship) which aims to get unemployed people back into the labour market.

The City of Poznan already has a strong culture and history of Social Enterprise (Social Economy) development and growth.

• Indeed, through the Pracownia (Studio) Project, which is funded through the European Social Fund and delivered by the Municipality of Poznan’s Health and Social Affairs Department (in collaboration with the Social Economy entities themselves), there is already a range of activity being undertaken which is designed to raise awareness of and promote Social Enterprises in Poznan. These activities include:
• Social Economy Contests.   Educational activities around Social Enterprise in schools, alongside study visits for officers, politicians and journalists to Social Enterprises and events.
• This network includes organisations such ESline, who provide services around document archiving, employing a workforce of Poznan residents with disabilities; and FURIA, who create a series of fashion and other products, employing Poznan residents with severe autism.
• The Pracownia (Studio) project, as described above brings together these two Social Enterprises and others through networking events, but there is scope to grow this further.

The Municipality of Poznan has already started to change its procurement processes to enable Social Enterprises the opportunity to bid for contracts and potentially win them.  On procurement opportunities below 130,000 PLN, city officers are obliged to invite tenders from 2 Social Enterprises and if they do not, to explain the reasoning why not. 

Since 2016, the Municipality of Poznan has been working in partnership with the Centre of Local Initiatives in 20 neighbourhoods across the city.  The individual Centre’s have an overarching goal to activate and engage residents of those neighbourhoods through analysing local needs, developing local partnerships and instigating a range of bottom-up initiatives.  

Development of the Centre of Local Initiatives came directly from the Mayor of Poznan and a desire to develop more effective relationships and partnerships with the community.  The development has many of the principles of Community Development planning in place.  However, there is scope to further develop more of a bottom-up approach in the evolution of the partnership and the identification of initiatives.  Also, to link these Centres, and other Social Economy organisations to the wider City Development Strategy.

There are already a range of community projects in place in Poznan which are similar to those implemented through the USE-IT initiative in Birmingham.  The Koszary Kultury aims to develop relationships with developers to provide space for temporary use by the community for cultural activities.  An example of this is Laba.Land; based on two hectares of land and seeks to provide activities around green fairs and health and well-being.  These projects are supported in some cases by grants from the Municipality of Poznan.  However, the Municipality is seeking to reduce dependency on grants through promoting more sustainable business models in the form of Cooperatives and Social Enterprises.

Iwona Matuszczak-Szulc,  USE-IT Project Coordinator for Poznan says:
 
"For the last few years, we have observed increasing engagement of citizens in different forms and topics of the life of the city.  Many people work in NGOs, others try to change their district with neighbours. This engagement and work for the community is priceless and constitutes a great basis for the development of our city.
 
We wanted to strengthen those grass root initiatives, so we decided to take part in the URBACT project, USE-IT.  Exchange of good practices is an interesting way of learning and cooperation for all – and it is for the common good of our cities."