The New European Bauhaus – innovation versus institutionalisation

I went to the final conference of Diesis’s SEA4NEB project, held in the wake of the New European Bauhaus Festival last week, and was pleasantly surprised.

I got to wondering how it is that good ideas get traction. NEB combines three values: beauty, sustainability and inclusion, and three principles: participation, multi-level engagement and transdisciplinarity. If you wonder why ‘beauty’ is among them take a train ride from Brussels to Amsterdam (as I often do) and compare function and form in the way the Belgian and Dutch use concrete. It reminds me of how Jean Claude Delfosse, presenter of Le Journal des Grand Travaux Inutiles, memorably celebrated “l’école belge du beton”.

Ursula Von der Leyen describes the NEB as “the soul of the European green Deal”. At the conference, Artur Cavalho of the NEB Unit described it as being about nothing less than “how we should live in the future”. It’s one of those cross-cutting ideas like social innovation that follow an interesting policy mainstreaming cycle: they start off as good ideas without a home or funding, but are adopted by a Commission President (Von der Leyen in this case, Manuel Barroso in the case of social innovation), and work their way step by step into funding programmes. This process is under way with the NEB, which new has an active community of 1,400 people and  is soon to be granted its own research funding – implementation is still dependent on other funding streams. 2025 should see the NEB Facility launched, with €120m a year of Horizon funding.

I haven’t made my mind up whether this is a good or a bad thing. A good idea like community-led local development grew up in the 80s and was taken up with gusto as a rural and coastal development tool, but has got bogged down in issues of financial management as other funds like the ERDF and ESF ask themselves whether delegating spending decisions to local people is really a good idea, and can it be controlled. At the moment the idealism of the NEB shines through. If it succeeds in mainstreaming itself, it risks losing its clarity.

The concept is only partially percolating through to the Structural Funds. It is mentioned in the partnership agreements of 24 member states, and in 225 operational programmes. The ERDF has no problem applying it to infrastructure, notably through the Urban Innovative Actions. However the ESF has been reluctant to address the inclusion dimension. This is where Diesis’s case studies can be enlightening.

Desire not need

In infrastructure terms, the NEB wants to buildings that promote diversity, accessibility and affordability. Diesis’s case studies go much deeper. For instance the MeSSinA Foundation in Sicily aims to provide not what rural areas ‘need’, but what they ‘desire’. Initially this distinction escaped me, but I now see that it makes a lot of sense: need is passive but desire is active. Territories are more than resources to be exploited.

Like the NEB, the social economy is a movement. It has struggled for official recognition, and over the last few years has won over the UN, the ILO, the EU and even the OECD. However in so doing, it has constantly to fend off pressure to water itself down, to drop the principles of democratic control and limited profit distribution, and to accommodate itself to capital. Some of us believe it should be more than an ambulance service for capitalism, a real alternative which is engaged in the issues that really matter, like climate change and inequality.

It is the NEB’s insistence on participation and inclusiveness that are key, and give the social economy a natural leading role – self-government is the highest level of participation the NEB strives for. The good practices DIESIS puts forward include community land trusts, community-led design, Territorial Social Responsibility, and innovative financing and business models. Read them here.