NEB Lab: New European Bauhaus on the Danube

The New European Bauhaus on the Danube (NEBoD) is a think-and-do tank acting as an enabler for the green transition in the Danube region through establishing a functional cooperation of public authorities, civil society, and the private, investment and financial sectors with the aim to improve the capacities of cities and regions for triggering and implementing investments into more responsible land use practices as a basis for a new green and just economy.

To aid in this transformation, NEBoD provides a missing link between stakeholders and works on concrete sites where institutions, civil society, investors, and creatives practise co-productive transformation. Together they accumulate and spread knowledge about green and sustainable investment solutions that are proven to work on the ground.

Mainstreaming and further capacity building is done through the NEBoD Travelling Academy, offering place-based support to Danube cities and regions, while the investment community will be addressed through annual Danube Green Investment Forums.

Project milestones

• September 2021: founding workshop with experts from the Danube countries
• May 2022: panel-workshop at the 9th International Danube Conference on Culture, Ulm, Germany
• October 2022: Danube School Ulm 2022: "Old Bauhaus - New Bauhaus: How to deal with the common cultural heritage in the Danube region?", Ulm, Germany
• April 2023: workshop at the 10th International Danube Conference on Culture, Novi Sad, Serbia
• September 2024: 1^st Edition of NEBoD Travelling Academy, Ravne na Koroškem, Slovenia
• Autumn 2023 – Spring 2024: Series of events, workshops and placemaking interventions to demonstrate particular sites’ transformation potential in NEBoD partner countries
• Spring 2024: 1st International NEBoD High-Level Conference on the New European Bauhaus on the Danube, Ulm, Germany. It aims to strengthen the NEBoD ecosystem of local and regional authorities, the investment and finance sector, and urban practitioners as the basis for implementing projects on the ground.
• 2024: Start of concrete local activities on pilot long-term transformation sites in the Danube region
• 2024 and 2025: further editions of the NEBoD Travelling Academy
• 2025 and 2026: national investment forums, 1^st Danube International Green Investment Forum
• June 2026: Finalisation of 1^st round of pilot long-term transformation projects; Long-term cooperation plan of the NEBoD network

Participation in the project

The NEB community is very welcome to engage with the project and help strengthen its impact in various local and regional contexts.

NEB community members can take part by attending our events, workshops, and on-site activations, and by joining the NEBoD Travelling Academy as advisors and tutors. That way, they can disseminate their knowledge of NEB principles to new audiences in the region and apply them to solve local issues in order to help different places fulfil their potential.

NEB community members are especially encouraged to attend high-level conference in Ulm in Spring 2024. There, they can take part in intensive discussions with local actors, urban practitioners, and investors about projects to scale the green transformation in the region and co-develop the international Community of Practitioners and Investors to bring further concrete green transformation projects to life and present their project to the international investor community.

Project team coordination

Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Foundation,
NEB Partner

Iskriva, Institute for Development of Local Potentials,
NEB Partner

The Collective Foundation, NEB Partner, NEB Prize finalist

urbanes.land gGmbH, NEBoD co-founder

Contact

Alexander Wetzig, Hochschule für Gestaltung Foundation:
wetzighfg-ulm [dot] de (wetzig[at]hfg-ulm[dot]de)
Ute Meyer, urbanes.land: ute [dot] meyerurbanes [dot] land (ute[dot]meyer[at]urbanes[dot]land)
Mateja Softić, Institute Iskriva: mateja [dot] softiciskriva [dot] net (mateja[dot]softic[at]iskriva[dot]net)
Ani Kodjabasheva, The Collective Foundation anikolektiv [dot] bg (ani[at]kolektiv[dot]bg)