Urban Belonging project wins the European Union Prize for Citizen Science Diversity & Collaboration Award 2023

Diversity & Collaboration Award: Awarded for excellence in explorative collaboration, cultural diversity, gender diversity, stakeholder engagement, and social inclusivity.

Jury Statement
What makes you feel that you belong in a city? This is the question asked by the Diversity and Collaboration Prize winner, the Urban Belonging Project, which considers what social sustainability looks like and whose experience and voices count. Through conversations, participatory mapmaking, and photography, a diverse range of citizens were asked to document their relationship to the city of Copenhagen to develop a Lived Experience Catalogue. From LGBTQ+, homeless, and ethnically diverse groups, the project moved beyond inviting citizens to collect data to also frame the issues and interpret the data themselves. Throughout, an intersectional and feminist approach was taken, and the jury commend the particular attention to supporting communities whose stories are often not considered in urban planning through relevant partner organizations and the resultant sensitivity, creativity, and accessibility of the engagement approaches and the data visualization.

European Union Prize for Citizen Science Jury 2023 (Kat Austen, Lewis Hou, Pedro Russo, Andrea Sforzi, Stefanie Wuschitz).