Funding Program: Obra social de la Fundació Bancària La Caixa
Duration: 2016-2019
Main researchers:
- Santiago Eizaguirre Anglada
Researchers:
- Juan-Luis Klein (host institution)
- Marisol Garcia (supervisor)
Partners:
Summary:
The role of initiatives of social innovation in the development of democratic governance, solidarity economy and urban educational environments. Case analysis in Barcelona and Montreal.
This project aims to analyse how socially innovative initiatives may be decisive in the promotion of solidarity-based economies and democratic governance, as well as in the development of learning environments. To do that the research departs on identifying how is the participation in public policies of a set of organised citizenship groups oriented to the treatment and overcoming of social exclusion dynamics. The main hypothesis is that the provisor role of public policies, as well as an active role of local welfare systems, are positively incident in the capacity of socially innovative initiatives to offer inclusive, creative, and scalable solutions in public policies, promoting democratic governance, solidarity-based economies and learning or educative environments. Departing from this suspicion, the research makes attention to the link between citizenship practices aimed at social transformation and public policies developed by public Administrations in a multi-level governance framework. In particular, the research is framed around a sample of socially innovative initiatives in three main fields: (1) the creation of learning and labour opportunities for socially excluded groups; (2) networks fostering ethical finances and communitarian economies; and (3) the development of sociocultural dynamization in socially vulnerable environments.