“With a view to twinning 
educational institutions and 
cultural facilities, the “Art to 
Grow” programme of the City 
Council of Paris proposes a 
number of cultural access 
projects for youngsters. ”
experience 
“Art to Grow”, a cultural education 
proposal from the City of Paris
editorial
Nearly 3000 local and regional leaders, 
gathered in Mexico City from the 17th to the 
20th of November for the 3rd World Congress 
of United Cities and Local Governments 
(UCLG), to exchange ideas and debate on how 
to build more inclusive cities, that would enable 
there to be a better future for everyone, once 
more reclaiming strong presence and a role in 
the new global governance. 
The attendees’ voice was heard through the 
manifesto “The City of 2030”, which brought 
together 25 recommendations to build a 
better urban world. The recommendations, 
which emphasise everybody’s “right to the 
city”, are set out under the following headings: 
• A democratic, self governing city.
• An inclusive city of participation.
• A city with a vision for its future.
• A liveable city.
• A creative city, a city of culture.
• A secure city, a city of peace.
• A mobile city.
• A city fit for work.
• A city with pride in its public services.
• A city without slums.
2010
11
Paris City Council is very aware that 
providing an extensive cultural offer 
is not enough to achieve true cultural 
democratisation, so in 2009 it began 
this programme, the aim of which is to 
bring culture to children and young people 
through art education, awareness and 
creation projects. 
from the Family Allowances Fund (CAF), in 
2008 20.6 % of Parisian families were living 
below the minimum pay threshold, most of 
the poorest families being concentrated in the 
18th and 19th districts.
In order to meet the challenge of bringing 
culture to all children and young people, while 
prioritising those from the least privileged 
neighbourhoods, the “Art to Grow” programme 
was begun. With a view to twinning, an 
educational centre (school or high school) 
or a recreational centre establishes a close 
relationship with a cultural institution in order 
to work together on an educational project to 
be developed over one or a number of years, 
in and out of school hours.
There are currently eleven twinning projects 
enabling children and young people to come 
into contact with contemporary art, theatre, 
photography, cinema, music and so on. They 
all share the same premises: regular visits 
to a cultural institution, continued contact 
with various cultural agents and exhibition of 
children’s creations in a cultural establishment. 
Some of the ongoing projects are:
(continued on page 2) (continued on page 3) 
Paris has a population of nearly 2.2 million. 
Although the average family socioeconomic 
situation is favourable, the city is a place of 
huge contrasts. According to information 
© Claire Pignol
• “In the Country of Museums”: a recreational 
centre is twinned with a museum, which invites 
children to find out about the collections and 
to make their own creations, to be shown later 
in the museum itself and at the Petit Palais. 
• “Audience School”: the City Theatre, in 
collaboration with schools and recreational 
centres, introduces children to drama games 
and how to put on a play.
• “Orchestra at School” and “Musical Tale”: 
the Municipal Conservatories collaborate with 
schools in the musical education of children 
while the youngest ones discover the history 
of music and instruments through a musical 
tale.
• “Group Photos, Class Photos”: guided by 
professional photographers, children from 
primary schools and recreational centres take 
photos which are then exhibited at the Artistic 
Creation Centre CentQuattre and the Arles 
Photography Festival. 
• “Parisian Festival of School and Extramural 
Films”: the festival is organised by the Cahiers 
et Cinéma Association, the City Council and 
Academy of Paris, and consists of putting on 
films made by children in pre-school, primary 
and secondary education or from recreational 
centres, with the help of a teacher and/or an 
external professional.
An indication of the success of “Art to Grow” 
programme is the high number of institutions 
that have joined it during its first year of 
activity: 244 schools, 36 high schools, 130 
recreational centres, 10 municipal museums, 
the Municipal Contemporary Art Foundation, 
one theatre, 2 music groups, 3 district 
municipal conservatories, 18 cinemas and 5 
associations. This success has led the Paris 
City Council to work on enlarging the municipal 
cultural offer, keeping young people’s needs 
and interests in mind.
  
You can find more detailed information about this 
experience at the website: www.edcities.org 
presentation: Paris City Council,
Culture Department and School affairs Department
02 Educating Cities
experience
“Art to Grow”, a cultural education 
proposal from the City of Paris
cities networks
contact: Jeanne Bot 
e-mail: Jeanne.bot@paris.fr
© Claire Pignol © Claire Pignol
    Registration Open for the X Meeting of 
the Spanish Network 
The period for registration and call for 
proposals for the X Meeting of the Spanish 
Network is open. The meeting will take place 
in Alcalá de Guadaíra on the 30th and 31st 
of March and the 1st of April 2011, under the 
slogan: “Education and City, an indispensable 
complicity”. For further information, visit: 
http://ciudadeseducadoras.ciudadalcala.org   
 III National Congress of the Mexican Network
The III National Congress of the Mexican 
Network was held on the 23rd and 24th of 
November in Ciudad Victoria (Mexico) under 
the slogan “History and Identity with the City: 
people, characters, places and institutions of 
the city”. 
 Brazilian Network Seminar
Organised by the Brazil ian network in 
collaboration with the Mercocities Thematic 
Unit of Education, the seminar “City, Education 
and Civic Behaviour” was held on the 30th of 
November in Belo Horizonte as part of the XV 
Mercocities Summit.
 Central-Europe Delegation Seminar
The Polish city of Katowice, headquarters of 
the IAEC Central European Delegation, was the 
venue on the 5th of November for the seminar 
“Educating Societies – Societies of the Future” 
in which 75 representatives from ten cities in 
three countries took part. The presentations 
given centred around the theme of education 
through art.
 II Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Network
More than 200 representatives from Asian 
cities took part in the II Meeting of the Asia-
Pacific Network, which took place last October 
25th in Gunsan City (Republic of Korea). At 
the meeting, agreement was reached, among 
other matters, on the action plan for 2010-
2012, and on the creation of a Secretariat to 
support the territorial network. 
More information: www.edcities.org  
interview
• A cleaner, greener, more compact city.
• The city of 2030 – a shared responsibility of 
governance.
The IAEC, an associate member of UCLG since 
2005, joins the Manifesto. Main questions 
in this document are the object of specific 
principles of the Charter of Educating 
Cities, to which over 425 cities across the 
world are committed. Issues such as: equal 
opportunity promotion, social cohesion and 
justice; education in democratic values, peace 
and international cooperation; encouraging 
citizen participation; the right to a healthy 
environment, work and public transport; the 
need for urban planning that takes account 
the development of all individuals, to name 
some, coincide completely with the guidelines 
of this Declaration. These are issues to which 
all Educating Cities are committed.
We encourage all the IAEC local governments 
to continue working rigorously and creatively 
in the coming year to meet the challenges and 
make progress in this shared endeavour of 
creating more educating cities.
“The City of 2030” Manifesto can be read on: 
www.cities-localgovernments.org
 
The Secretariat of the IAEC
c/ Avinyó 15, 4th floor
08002 Barcelona (Spain)
Ph. + 34 93 342 77 20
Fax. +34 93 342 77 29
E-mail: bidce@bcn.cat
What methods of communication does the 
municipal government use to promote civic 
participation?  
The Municipal Council is open to the citizens. 
In order to make participative management 
a reality, which is the true goal of the council 
team, citizen involvement is encouraged in 
the production and implementation of local 
development programmes. Civic participation 
is channelled through structures close to 
the citizens such as neighbourhood counsels, 
youth associations, women’s groups and so on.
Could you explain what the ‘Information and 
Communication Caravan’ consisted of, and 
what effect it has had?
Dakar’s Information and Communication 
Caravan was a response as much to my own 
wishes to build a new city with the citizens’ 
help, as to the whole municipal team’s 
promotion of participative urban management.
The main aim of the Caravan was to provide 
information about the city of Dakar’s 
services, programmes and projects, so as to 
get commitment and participation from the 
citizens.
The results have been very satisfactory. 
The population has responded well to the 
municipal authorities’ initiative. Firstly, the 
citizens were able to benefit from free medical 
visits, meaning that those who need it can get 
monitored at health centres. Secondly, the 
population has had the chance to contact the 
people in charge of various municipal services, 
to get information about council programmes 
and projects and about how to get information 
on matters that affect them personally. 
What does the Dakar City Volunteers’ 
project consist of?
Following deliberation by the Municipal Council 
of March 29th, 2010, this new project by the 
council team was put into action. The aim is to 
increase capacity for prevention, intervention 
and management of the municipal government 
in the areas of health, road safety, hygiene, 
the environment, beaches and markets. The 
volunteer body, divided into a large number of 
brigades, is under the technical, institutional 
and operational charge of the Municipal Police.
Dakar has participated in and put on the 
exhibition “Educating Cities: Local Actions, 
Global Values” What impact has this had?
The travelling exhibition was the source of a 
large number of exchanges and contributed 
to raising awareness of the local values that 
council action is based on. What is more, it has 
made it possible for the population of Dakar 
to get to know the city’s educational potential 
and, above all, to learn what has been achieved 
in other Educating Cities. For two weeks, the 
exhibition was the meeting point for a wide 
variety of social and professional groups 
(students, workers, cultural and associative 
movements), letting the population know that 
Dakar is a true Educating City. 
Awareness raising activities must continue to 
create a new citizen who is aware of the many 
challenges that the city faces and, particularly, 
who is prepared to stand alongside the 
municipal government in its daily activities. All 
this shows the importance of the mission of an 
Educating City.
More information at www.edcities.org
03 Educating Cities
editorial
Exhibition’s Opening at Dakar
Khalifa Ababacar Sall
Mayor of Dakar, Senegal
Young people see the urban space as a space 
for living together and for social identity. 
“Open Works” is a Barcelona City Council 
initiative, run by the Education Institute 
and the Urban Planning Department, 
the idea of which is to lead young people 
towards an understanding of how the urban 
space is built, from both a material and a 
social point of view. 
Barcelona, capital of Catalonia, is a port city 
on the Mediterranean coast, with a population 
of 1,638,103 and covering 101 km2, divided 
into 10 districts and 73 neighbourhoods. With 
an economy based on the service sector, 
Barcelona has built a strong image and opened 
itself up to the world. A clear illustration of this 
is the “Barcelona – posa’t guapa” (Barcelona, 
get beautiful) campaign, through which more 
than 22,000 building restoration operations 
have been carried out since 1986. 
Exploring the architectural space is a 
prerequisite to any understanding of the 
urban environment, and to encouraging an 
attitude of respect for its maintenance. With 
this objective in mind, the “Open Works“ 
project presents a learning area for pupils in 
compulsory secondary education about how 
urban-planning projects come into being, how 
they are documented, how the land is prepared, 
what machinery is used and the complexity of 
the underground installations for electricity, 
gas, phone lines and so on. It also offers the 
chance to see some major works in situ, as they 
are being carried out in the city. 
Visits programmed by “Open Works” include: 
the Hub Design Barcelona; the urbanisation of 
part of the harbour where the marine zoo is to 
be built; the rebuilding of the old Born market 
where a 17th and 18th Century archaeological 
find has been uncovered, which includes the 
building of a Cultural Centre dealing with the 
city and its urban history; and the urbanisation 
of the Guinardó road, a work aimed at 
improving mobility and connections with this 
city neighbourhood.  
Preparation of the visits is a key part of getting 
across the complexity of the constructions. 
This is why “Open Works” provides teachers 
with educational material through which 
they can approach the construction process 
and the basic terminology as well as possible 
problems that may arise during construction 
work. Similarly, there are activities to do during 
the visit, so the pupils come into contact with 
different professionals involved in the work. 
When the visit has finished, it is recommended 
that the pupils continue to think about the 
project, looking, for example, at the function 
or use of the work they have visited.   
In this way, the works become comprehensible 
for the young people, and they also get to 
come into contact with architectural spaces 
that are important to the city, reinforcing their 
feeling of belonging, and appealing to their 
civic involvement.
experience 
“Barcelona Open Works”: bringing young 
people closer to town planning
 The next IAEC Ordinary General Assembly 
is to be held in Barcelona on the 18th of March 
2011.
 The IAEC took part in the 3rd World 
Congress of United Cities and Local 
Governments (Mexico City, 17th-20th of 
November), co-organising the parallel session 
“Living in the City”.  
 The Travelling Exhibition Educating Cities: 
Local Actions, Global Values has a new 
website. You can visit it at: 
http://www.edcities-expo.org 
 From the 1st to the 10th of October, 
L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Spain) showed 
the exhibition “Local Actions, Global Values” 
as part of “Educating City Week”.
1. Through the Street is a festival supported 
by the City Council of Chacao (Venezuela) 
and the PlátanoVerde Foundation, the aim of 
which is to promote public space as a place for 
citizens to meet and participate, by putting on 
local and international artists. 
2. The City Council of Gwangju (Republic 
of Korea), in order to support healthy aging, 
has set up the Bitgoeul Senior Citizen Health 
Centre, where senior citizens can do leisure, 
cultural and sports activities.
3. In order to get to know the architectural, 
cultural and natural heritage of Évora 
(Portugal), the City Council is promoting 
Environmental Routes, which form a network 
of over 100 km built on old railways, public 
roads and the length of the aqueduct. 
did you 
know that... the voices of the cities
“Through the “Open Works“ 
project, the Barcelona City 
Council is trying to train 
young citizens to understand 
their city more fully, and to 
participate in it. To achieve 
this, it organises visits to major 
works going on in the city.”
presented by: Barcelona City Council,
Municipal Education Institute and Urban 
Planning Department
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contact: Ms. Júlia Quintela / Ms. Elena Sierra                        
e-mail: jquintela@bcn.cat / esierra@bcn.cat
web: www.bcn.cat/obraoberta (soon available)                         
04 Educating Cities
Guided Tour to the Born Market