In this interview, we speak with Katharina Meiners and Daniela Janßen, the participation coordinators at the City Administration of the City of Oldenburg. They highlight Oldenburg’s motivation to join Speak Up and the initiatives that the city of Oldenburg has already been doing.
Can you tell us something about yourself and your organization?
Oldenburg is a large city with a “small-town-feel”. It is located in Northern Germany and has 170.000 inhabitants. As a city, we think it is important to develop continuously and to be a modern, open and innovative administration that is close to our citizens.
Katharina has been working as the participation coordinator for the City Administration of Oldenburg since 2022. She has studied “cultural studies and education” and feels inspired to be a point of mediation within the city administration between the challenges of the future and urban society.
Especially for the Speak-up-project, Katharina Meiners has had the active support from Daniela Janßen, who joined the team in August 2024. After several years in a marketing agency and a degree in economics and German, she is highly motivated to work for more participation: “Public participation must ditch the niche”, she demands.
‘’Our goal is to continue developing new ways to learn effectively from the visions and ideas of our citizens.’’
What inspired your organization to join the Speak-Up-project and what do you want to achieve through your participation in this project?
We felt inspired by the Speak-Up-project because the project offers the opportunity to give and receive input from project partners with similar challenges. The exchange of knowledge is something that we look forward to. Furthermore, the opportunity to work together with partners that are involved in research and the other international partners is what drew us to this project, to combine theory and practice in the best possible way.
Our goal is to continue developing new ways to learn effectively from the visions and ideas of our citizens. Therefore, we want to understand how to reach different target groups, such as young people, because not all target groups have the same communication style or stay at the same places. We would like to ensure that all citizens feel addressed and motivated to voice themselves and be part of our city.
We use a digital tool to make participation accessible and available to all citizens all day. However, we would like to delve further into in-person exchanges where our city officials visit and engage effectively with citizens – directly linked to the reality of their lives and directly in their neighborhood or district.
‘’We would like to ensure that all citizens feel addressed and motivated to voice themselves and be part of our city.’’
What are your expectations of participating in the Speak-Up-project?
We want to understand the people of Oldenburg even better. Sometimes it is difficult to think outside the box in everyday life. In the Speak-up-project, we are in constant dialogue with our international partners and can inspire each other. Our expectations are to gain new perspectives and information from our international team and we want to be inspired by the ideas of the other partners.
We would like to see even closer cooperation between politics, urban society and the administration and find out what is moving people. It is a huge opportunity to regain a louder center, not just letting the fringe groups speak. That is why it is so important that ALL citizens know that they can participate.
This summer, as our first major joint project with the International Youth Think Tank (IYTT), we organized a summer camp with the aim of getting young people more involved and to get into an exchange on the topic of democracy. Open Chair Democracy Talks (OCDT) were held over three days in Oldenburg's city centre to discuss local problems with residents. Furthermore, the content of these talks became the basis for the development of the participating young people's own ideas and concepts.
What is a previous citizen engagement initiative that your organization is proud of?
An initiative that we are proud of is called “#MehrÄlterBunter” (German for “more, older and more colorful”) born out of the city of Oldenburg's demographic strategy. In this project, we organized monthly meetings where citizens bring their ideas to the table. The topics we discuss are diverse and go from mobility to climate change. In these meetings, citizens mention a specific challenge, for example how to involve elderly people into the digital world, and then we brainstorm what we can do to improve this challenge. For this specific example, we organized a week of workshops in March and our citizens created these workshops.
What are future initiatives that you are currently working on?
In the next months, we will develop three solutions for the target group of young people in order to get them more involved, drawing on the ideas proposed by young people and developing a concept for school workshops.
In addition, we are excited to exchange ideas and knowledge with our project partners and continue to develop our participation processes!
