2022 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

16th Edition

Phase 8 of 8

Award Ceremony at the IOPD Conference 06/12/2022 - 10/12/2022

Process phases

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For a city of children: Lyon develops children's participation and gives them a voice

Official proposal

07/06/2022 10:09

Accepted

The City of Lyon promotes a city that is child-friendly, considering that a city for children is also a city for everyone, and that it improves the quality of life for all. This ambition has led it to develop children's participation in a quantitative (offering different spaces for dialogue to reach more children) and qualitative way (offering different ways of participating and encouraging the power to act), according to 3 complementary axes:

1- to work with children on developments and policies that affect them : it is a question of doing with them and not only for them, by associating them:

the construction of the territorial educational project,
the greening of their schoolyards,
in the projects of calming the surroundings of the 39 "children's streets" schools, and in a systematic way for the 15 pedestrianizations carried out (questionnaires, models, drawings...),
the realization of artistic interventions to reappropriate these "children's streets" (co-construction and realization of frescos on the ground or on the walls of the school with the children),
to their food in the canteens (evaluation via a taste observatory, menu proposal force, ...) from September 2022.

2- to develop education for citizenship, commitment and emancipation through its territorial educational project : It is a question here of encouraging commitment to the service of the group, with the implementation of :

children's borough councils with the eventual creation of a children's municipal council,
experimentation with "children organizing" on the model of community organizing in schools.

3- give them a voice in the construction of public policies by developing specific participation tools for them (drawings, sensitive notebook for children on the redevelopment of a garden, paper cocottes for the participatory budget...), building little by little a "toolbox" adapted to this public.

700 children have been consulted by 23 structures to elaborate the territorial educational project, 128 children have been elected to the children's borough council, in 27 schools in 4 boroughs (not counting the work done by the elected officials to reach out to their peers). 600 primary school children have participated in "rue des enfants", and 600 children have taken part in workshops on vegetation for over a year.

This integrated and transversal participation approach, multiplying the spaces and formats, makes it possible to recognize children as full-fledged actors of the city. It is no longer a question of doing things for them, but rather of doing things with them, betting on the fact that this will allow for a more inclusive city, but also that an experience of democracy, whatever it may be, is transformative for children, the bearers of tomorrow's society.

This approach innovates by "systematizing" this target public in the City's participation processes and, more broadly, in its public policies: it thus develops a culture of participation within the City's departments, through flexible and capitalizable experiments, consistent with each other.

More information:

www.lyon.fr

https://www.lyon.fr/enfance-et-education/leducation/le-projet-educatif-de-lyon-2021-2026

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