The European Commission outlines next steps for the New European Bauhaus initiative, which include a wave of new pilot projects.
The European Commission’s (EC) Communication on the New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative (cf. SwissCore article) provides new impetus and structure for the approach, which aims at bringing a cultural and creative dimension to the European Green Deal. The initiative connects the Green Deal to the living spaces. After EC President Ursula von der Leyen announced the New European Bauhaus initiative in her State of the Union speech in October 2020, there existed a deliberate lack of clarity about the nature and objectives of the initiative. Thus, the first step included the gathering of ideas in a bottom-up approach. Now, one year later, the EC has awarded the first 20 New European Bauhaus Prizes on 16 September 2021, and pointed out, how Europe can build its green environment without compromising on aesthetics. The award ceremony removed all ambiguity concerning the initiative. Furthermore, the prizes give visibility to good practices, examples, and concepts that highlight the three core values of the initiative: sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusion.
In between 2021 to 2022, a total budget of €85 million is allocated to the NEB initiative. The funding comes from EU programmes such as Horizon Europe, the Digital Europe Programme, the LIFE programme for the environment and climate action, and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Furthermore, the EC calls on the Member States to include the core values of the initiative in their strategies for territorial and socio-economic development, and to mobilise the relevant parts of their national recovery and resilience plans and cohesion policy instruments. Besides the existing measures, the EC plans to mobilise the Horizon Europe programme further, to support the Bauhaus initiative with research and innovation actions. In this context, the Commission plans a high-level workshop on “Research and innovation for the New European Bauhaus”. The workshop will bring together leading experts to provide a future-oriented research and innovation agenda supporting the initiative and feed into the co-creation process of the upcoming Horizon Europe workprogramme 2023-2024. Details about the workshop still have to be determined. In connection with the digital Europe programme, the European Digital Innovation Hubs will be mobilised to develop real and virtual environments involving AI, High Performance computing and big data to support the NEB in the relevant sectors. Finally, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and the European Innovation Council (EIC) contribute to the NEB by launching a first set of calls, in summer 2021, for proposals to address the key innovation challenges that emerge from the projects.
The EC announced in the NEB Communication to combine relevant EU initiatives and propose a set of new actions and funding possibilities. As reaction to the information and feedbacks, which were collected during the co-designing phase (see SwissCore article) of the NEB, the “New European Bauhaus Festival” will take place for the first time in spring 2022 in Brussels, organised and funded by the EC. The festival opens a forum that enables debates to shape projects. It will gather thinkers, practitioners and policy-makers from different fields in an international conversation. It provides a fair to display projects, prototypes and outputs contributing to the initiative and awards the Bauhaus prizes annually to highlight different dimensions of the Bauhaus initiative every year. Lastly, the festival will include a cultural programme combining physical and virtual performances, exhibitions and art works.
In order to support the implementation, the second phase of the NEB, the establishment of a “New European Bauhaus Lab” is planned. The Lab includes a “think and do tank” to co-create, prototype and test new tools, solutions and policy recommendations. The Lab aims to continue the initiative’s collaborative spirit to bring together different lifestyles and reaches out to politics, society and industry to connect people and find new ways of creating together. Furthermore, the Commission will propose to include under Erasmus+ a dedicated priority on the New European Bauhaus in the 2022 call for Alliances for innovation. In connection to Erasmus+, the eTwinning 2022 annual theme will focus on topics related to the NEB.
The third phase of the NEB initiative rollout, the dissemination phase, will be launched in January 2022. It consists of networking and knowledge sharing across Europe and beyond, in cooperation with the European External Action Service, European Union Delegations as well as the interested international organisations and networks. This helps to identify open, replicable methods, solutions and prototypes, and make them accessible for stakeholders. The main focus in the third phase will be on amplifying the ideas that emerged and reaching a Europe-wide audience. The dissemination phase is closely linked to the mobilisation and support of various instruments from Horizon Europe. Beyond 2022 the NEB approach will be pursued through synergies with the activities launched under the Horizon Europe Missions.