To provide practical support during the preparation of ideas, the Riga City Neighbourhood Residents Centre will organise workshops on Wednesdays in March in several neighbourhoods to develop ideas for the Participatory Budget Competition.
Prior to the workshops, neighbourhood associations and active residents of Riga were invited to identify and send to their neighbourhood coordinators information on potential plots of land that would be suitable or in need of improvement.
During the workshops, the submitted land plot ideas will be reviewed together with representatives of the City Council departments in order to assess their suitability for different project ideas and to get support in further developing the ideas and preparing the applications.
The pre-submission of ideas is intended to increase resident involvement and highlight areas in neighbourhoods that need improvement and have not been submitted to the project competition so far.
Creative workshops will take place throughout the month of March, on Wednesdays from 17.30 to 20.00. The first workshop will take place on 5 March at 46 E. Smiļģa Street. Next workshops will take place on:
- 12 March at the NGO House, 43a Ieriķu Street;
- 19 March at 161 k-2 Slokas Street (residents are invited to submit ideas for suitable plots of land in the neighbourhoods until 5 March to the coordinator of the Imanta Point - Daira Bite (daira.bite@riga.lv) and the coordinator of the Bolderāja Point - Gaidis Balodis (gaidis.balodis@riga.lv));
- 26 March at 14 Sīmaņa Street (residents are invited to submit ideas for suitable plots of land in the neighbourhoods until 12 March by sending them to the coordinator of the Centre Point - Villiams Kursītis-Vrobļevskis (villiams.vroblevskis@riga.lv) and the coordinator of the Vecmīlgrāvis Point - Jānis Tirziņš (janis.tirzins@riga.lv)).
This year, project applicants will also have the opportunity to work with students from the Faculty of Architecture at RTU, who will help residents to prepare visualisations of their ideas for the competition applications. For students, it is an opportunity to gain practical experience by developing an idea which, if voted for by the residents of Riga, can then be seen in practice.
The total municipal funding for the Participatory Budget this year is EUR 2.3 million.
Riga Municipality has been organising the Participatory Budget Competition and resident vote since 2019. During this period, a total of 216 project applications were submitted by Riga residents. Over the six years of the competition, 53 projects have been submitted for implementation. Of these, 29 projects have been fully implemented and 24 are currently in various stages of implementation.
Information was prepared by: Sabīne Solovjeva, Project Coordinator for External Communications Department of Riga City Council Communication Administration, email: sabine.solovjeva@riga.lv.