Bringing Communities Together Across the Mediterranean

Across the Mediterranean, community organizations are experimenting, adapting, and finding new ways to activate civic life. Over the past months, through different activities, workshops, and exchanges, each happening in its own timeline,  We Love Kairouan (WLK), Collective Onda, uncovered a surprising truth:
Even when the work happens in different places and moments, the learnings often echo one another.

Parallel Paths, Shared Challenges

From Kairouan to creative collectives across North Africa and Southern Europe, teams and attendees were often asking similar questions:

• How do we bring people into public life in meaningful ways?

• How do we design inclusive spaces that feel safe and open?

• How do we build participation that lasts beyond a single event?

These questions surfaced across different sessions and activities, not in one shared moment, but as recurring themes in each journey.

Common Learnings Across Different Experiences

Even though the experiences weren’t linear or simultaneous, the insights aligned:

• Listening comes first. Whether in neighbourhood visits, artistic interventions, or community walks, beginning with people’s stories proved essential.

• Make participation easy. Simple, low-barrier formats consistently worked best, from street activations to open circles to hybrid setups.

• Creativity opens doors. Art, storytelling, and cultural expression repeatedly showed their power to build trust and spark engagement.

Building Collective Knowledge Over Time

Because these learnings came from different activities, they started forming a kind of “shared knowledge base” — not documented in one place, but visible in patterns that kept emerging: Capturing reflections and observations helped teams understand what worked, clear, simple facilitation structures improved collaboration and sharing stories publicly strengthened visibility and community ownership
Each activity added a layer, contributing to a broader regional understanding of what community-building can look like.

A Growing Mediterranean Connection

What connects WLK, Onda, and our other community actors isn’t a single project but a continuous cycle of learning, experimenting, and exchanging.

Together, they are shaping an informal Mediterranean network, one strengthened by aligned values, shared methods, and the belief that the participatory approach can transform public life.

As this work continues, the next steps will build on the patterns already emerging:
more exchanges, more co-created moments, more shared practices carried across cities and contexts.