Placemaking Western Balkans

🎉 Last evening Europe witnessed a great, well-deserved victory of Students List in Serbia's national elections, toppling down 14 long years of dictatorship, neglect and corruption. Far too long the degradation and misuse of #publicspace and public domain in cities, towns and villages in Serbia has been the trade mark of the ruling party politics. For example, a small park opposite of the National Parliament in Belgrade (known as the "Pioneers Park") has been cut-off from the public use for 2 years, for so-called "safety reasons", and made into a gated bastion of fear, hate and shame. Last night the fences around the park have been lifted by citizens celebrating the victory of the Students List. Everything was cleaned from the devastated grass fields. This morning, the people were back on the benches, reading books, and enjoying the sun. Better days and better places are coming, let's celebrate that! Team Placemaking Western Balkans  #placemaking #civicpride #change photos (C) Nova, Blic, FB

🎉 Last evening we saw a great , well-deserved victory of Students List in Serbia's national elections, toppling down 14 long years of dictatorship, neglect and corruption. Far too long the degradation and misuse of #publicspaces and public domain in the cities, towns and villages in Serbia has been the trade mark of the ruling party politics. The small park opposite of the National Parliament in Belgrade (known as the "Pioneers Park") has been cut-off from the public use for 2 years, for so-called "safety reasons", and made into a gated bastion of fear, hate and shame. Last night the fences around the park have been lifted by citizens celebrating the victory of the Students List. Everything was cleaned from the devastated grass fields. This morning, the people were back on the benches, reading books, and enjoying the sun. Better days and better places are coming, let's celebrate that! Team Placemaking Western Balkans #placemaking #civicpride #change photos (C) Nova, Blic, FB

🌍 Rethinking Public Spaces: Young People, New Ideas, Real Change! Placemaking Western Balkans is excited to take part in the upcoming Space Project conference “Rethinking Public Spaces: Young People, New Ideas, Real Change,” taking place in Prishtina, Kosovo, in the second half of November 2026. 🎬 We’ll showcase a film highlighting the SPACE Project’s activities in Padinska Skela, Serbia, where young people and local communities came together to reimagine and transform their public spaces through #placemaking workshops and hands-on community actions. 🤝 Alongside the film screening, PWB will join SPACE partner meetings to exchange experiences and explore new opportunities to put young people at the heart of urban change. #SPACEProject #Placemaking #YouthParticipation #PublicSpaces #PlacemakingWesternBalkans #UrbanTransformation

Wow, can't believe it's already been a week! This year #PlacemakingWeekEurope felt so special and personal- more than once the conversations moved from session rooms to picnics and lunch tables, and many of them sparked a real sense of community and belonging. 🫰 We met so many amazing people, exchanged opinions about topics that truly resonate with us and also shared the work underway on the PlaceCRAFT Rural Placemaking Knowledge Hub, including the first stage of the Catalogue of Best Transformative Practices in Rural Placemaking during our “Revitalising Rural and Smaller Communities” session. We were so lucky to co-create this session with colleagues from across Europe Ewa Szymczyk, Cornelis Uittenbogaard, Roosmarie Stavenuiter, Iris Perouliou-Sergaki, Ruby van den Munckhof and Arianna Rivolta, and are also so grateful for the perspectives and questions that were brought into the room by everyone who attended! There’s no neat way to sum up every memorable encounter, every conversation that made a familiar challenge feel shared, or every sharp talk that sent us off thinking. We’re still replaying bits of the week (and suspect we will be for a while yet): Thank you, Wrocław; you were amazing! 🇵🇱 #PlacemakingWeekEurope #PlaceCRAFT #RuralPlacemaking #Placemaking #DanubeRegion

One of our favourite parts of #PlacemakingWeekEurope was meeting the people behind regional placemaking networks! 🌍 Taking the time to discuss challenges placemaking shares across borders and contexts, and the very local questions each network is trying to untangle was so amazing- We could have talked for hours, but these micro-conversations already feel like the start of a much bigger exchange. We are looking forward to continuing them! A big thank you to Charlot Schans, Rosaria Battista, Ethan Kent and Paul Augarde for doing a great job in facilitating these conversations - it was really a pleasure! ✨ Placemaking France · Placemaking Poland · Placemaking CEE · Placemaking Norway · Place Collective UK · PlacemakingX · Placemaking Europe

On 12th and 13th of September, Placemaking Western Balkans conducted a SPACE project multiplier event in Padinska Skela, together with our local partners “Volim Padinjak” association. Throughout the different Space Project phases, we have worked with youth in Padinska on different #placemaking ideas how to transform the public spaces in their peri-urban neighbourhood, on the edge of Belgrade. At the event we have materialised some of those ideas : we have placed a “straw” amphitheatre, made new “forest wayfinding” boards, supported local youth race along the Vizelj kanal, and made a temporary picknick place. Joint lunch was delicious, and a great way to present the SPACE online course on placemaking for youth in rural , informal and peri/urban areas. Being part of the wider neighbourhood festival has helped us make this event a success. The closing celebration on Sunday evening was full of music and laughs! Multipliler event was made in collaboration with Volim Padinjak citizens association, and supported by our Placemaking Western Balkans experts and cinematographers Sara Nikolić and @Srdjan Mančev. #youth #transformation #publicspace #rural #periurban #Erasmus+ European Commission

Very happy to be returning to Placemaking Week Europe- this time in Wrocław! Save the date and join us for Revitalizing Rural and Smaller Communities on Wednesday, 23 September, at 4:15 pm! As part of the session, we’ll share where we currently are in building The rural placemaking Knowledge Hub for the Danube Region through the PlaceCRAFT project- a process Placemaking Western Balkans is co-leading together with the KÉK-Kortárs Építészeti Központ / Contemporary Architecture Centre team. How do we curate the knowledge that already exists- and how do we know whether a good practice can actually travel from one rural context to another? We’ll explore these questions through two short, hands-on roundtable rounds: looking at what can be transferred, what needs to be adapted, and what only works because of the specific place it came from. The session is designed to be dynamic, so you can (and- by all means- should!) move between tables, meet different placemakers and explore more than one rural story and perspective. We’d love to see you there! #PlacemakingWeekEurope2026 #Wrocław #RuralPlacemaking #PlaceCRAFT #Placemaking

Join us this weekend (12th and 13th of September)for the final event of @SPACE project in Padinska Skela near Belgrade: #placemaking education for youth, local creative festival, food & drinks! 👉 Event page: https://lnkd.in/d37MAvCy Watch here the trailer about Padinska Skela, full feature comes by the end of October!

What would you like to see happen in your village- and how could we make it happen together? At our PlaceCRAFT workshop in Belo Blato, we explored that question with local participants, moving from examples of rural placemaking to ideas for our own microregion. Participants put their proposals on paper: what they wanted to do, where it could happen, and what knowledge, skills or practical support they could contribute. These ideas give us plenty to work with as we develop the pilot activities together. A big thankyou to our partners at Regional Agency for Socio-Economic Development -Banat for the collaboration, and to everyone who took the time to join, share their ideas and think through the possibilities with us. We’re looking forward to continuing the work together. 🌿 #PlaceCRAFT #Placemaking #RuralDevelopment

🖼️ Meet Radmila Toškov, one of the most recognisable local hosts in the village of Belo Blato in Serbian part of Banat. Through her "Lujza Homestead", Radmila has created a warm rural setting where everyday life on the Banat plain is felt first-hand. Radmila is a true #rural #placemaking pioneer, and we @Placemaking Western Balkans are delighted to have her as one of our stakeholders in the PlaceCraft Interreg Danube Region Programme project! 🎤 Full feature of Radmila's work here: https://lnkd.in/eXZPSttF #publicspace #heritage #renewal #foodculture #tourism