Third Transnational Project Meeting was held in Tours, France on 1-2 December 2021.
We were hosted in Tours by Artefacts to talk about its structure as the Cooperative of Activities and Employment - a social economy structure, which supports entrepreneurs whose projects fall under the sector of creative industries. We had an unique opportunity to get to know the specific structure of social cooperative under the French law, its activities towards unemployed people and those who want to start a business, including educational activities of non-vocational nature to support employability.
The TPM was also dedicated to meeting Artefacts local partners in Tours. We had a chance to visit Espaces Passerelles, an association and a space open to anyone who wishes to carry out projects related to culture and digital technology. It functions as a digital and cultural third-place in the Sanitas district of Tours.
Another local partner we have visited was L'Atelier 216, which is a local makerspace and a participatory DIY workshop open to anyone interested, when one can come to repair any object or carry out a personal project.
Finally, we have visited Le Funlab - Fablab de Tours, which is located in MAME, a former printing house built in 1953 that nowadays serves as a co-working space for many creative industries. In the Funlab we had a chance to present our organisations and our educational activities targeted at adult learners, the FABLABs project itself, as well as to take part in "ReFaire - Regional meetings of makers", in which we met with local makers and took part in 3 workshops. Finally, we visited and discovered Chutothèque Precious Kitchen – an open source platform dedicated to the development of local resources for new uses (re-use of materials, use of plastic waste, recovery of food waste, new eco-manufacturing scenarios for artists, support for partner companies and creation of unique objects or limited series), in which art integrates the field of the circular economy.
A part of the meeting was dedicated also to the management of the project, including working on the project guidelines and evaluating our partnership so far.
The next project meeting will take place in Reykjavík, Iceland at the end of April 2022, hosted by Fab Lab Reykjavík.
