NEB Junction · Open call for expressions of interest
Open call
Closes Monday, 30 November 2026
23:59 CET. Applicants are notified on Friday 11 December and the training starts on Wednesday 27 January 2027.
Who should apply
Connectors
People who would like to bring a new community into the NEB conversation
Why
To bring beneficial New European Bauhaus practices to your community, enrich and expand the NEB ecosystem
How
A diverse group of underrepresented community voices
Beautiful, sustainable, together
Participating in the programme means connecting and mediating between local, specialised communities and the core of the New European Bauhaus ecosystem via NEB Junction.
The New European Bauhaus aims to activate people at a grassroots level, focusing on neighbourhoods. Bridge Builders is the way NEB Junction reaches overlooked or not yet engaged contexts which have much to gain and much to offer in this exchange.
A Bridge Builder is someone with a real, trust-based relationship to a community the NEB initiative hasn’t reached. A neighbourhood association. A cultural space. A housing group, a youth club, a migrant organisation. A rural network, a cooperative, a school community. A group that is not aware of the New European Bauhaus or has not actively engaged with the initiative.
We are looking for a strong connection or embeddedness into the community you will be representing. We are also looking to understand the hope or motivation that led you to apply. How could NEB reveal, address, or unblock your community’s challenges?
Knowing the New European Bauhaus is neither a requirement nor a disadvantage in the Bridge Builders open call.
The exchange
If you miss a session, there is a recording, a written summary, and an optional call to catch up. You can remain part of the group.
The reason this is worth your time and effort.
Nothing is gathered without consent. Local sessions are written up so they can be shared without identifying anyone who has not agreed to be named.
The training
Online, in the evening, because most people are not doing this as part of a paid job. Each one ends with something you can use in your own community rather than with a summary of what was presented.
Sprint 1
Wed 27 January 2027 · 17:00 CET
The New European Bauhaus in plain language: what beautiful, sustainable and together have meant in real places, and how it works when it works. What NEB Junction is, what the NEB Facility is, and the difference between them. Where you sit in that picture over the coming months, and what the role does not involve.
You take home: One page describing your own community and the topic you want to work on, in your own words.
Sprint 2
Wed 3 February 2027 · 17:00 CET
Designing a session people come to
How to run a short local session with people who have no particular reason to trust a European project. Who to invite and how, where to hold it, what to do about the people who will not come to a meeting. Handling real disagreement in the room rather than smoothing it over. What you can honestly promise your community, and what you cannot.
You take home: A plan for your session: the date, who you are inviting, how you reach them, and how you will run it.
Sprint 3
Wed 10 February 2027 · 17:00 CET
Making what you hear travel
What counts as useful evidence: concrete experience and specific barriers rather than general opinion. Listening techniques, short interviews, capturing a session while facilitating it, and working with people who do not want to be recorded. Consent and data protection in plain language. And how to put a short, specific case to a decision maker without being turned into an anecdote.
You take home: A completed template for your session, and a first draft of the two or three points you would put to a decision maker.
Selection
1
Is there a community here, and are you connected to it. Read by the Democratic Society. Is the topic something a short local session could work on. Anything unclear becomes a question to you, not a rejection.
2
Which combination covers the most ground. A panel of four: the Democratic Society, who chair it, with EIT Climate KIC, NTNU and ERRIN. They work with anonymised profiles and community descriptions.
3
Everyone hears back on Friday 11 December. Selected or not.
Coverage of seven or more distinct communities comes before anything else. The panel satisfies that first, then looks for a range of places and contexts and a spread of topics rather than five versions of the same one. It is a criterion, not a hope.
If your community is not in the first group, that is not the end of it. Every session after the sprints is announced separately with an open sign up. The first group is a starting point, not a closed club.
No. The first sprint exists to explain it, and no term is used in any session without being explained once in plain language. If you already know it well, that is useful too, and it does not count against you.
No, and the programme exists partly because so many communities never have. There is no reporting to do beyond one short write up on a template we go through with you in the third sprint.
The online sprints and the reflection sessions run in English. The session you run in your own community runs in your own language, in your own setting, and the write up can be in your language too. If English is a barrier for you, there is a place to say so on the form and we will talk about what we can do.
There is a recording, a written summary, and an optional call to catch up. You can remain part of the group.
A welcome meeting on 20 January. Three sprint evenings between 27 January and 10 February. One session you design and run in your own community, on a date you choose between 17 February and 17 March. A short summary of it. One conversation with us about what you found. And four reflection sessions between 24 March and 7 April. The clinics and the learning journeys are optional.
Yes. The panel is looking for coverage of seven or more distinct communities, so two applications describing the same one are unlikely to both be selected in the first group. Apply anyway and say in the form that you know each other.
It is written up on a shared template so it can be compared with what other communities said, without identifying anyone who has not agreed to be named. From there it goes into the analysis of common barriers and support needs that NEB Junction prepares for the New European Bauhaus Facility, and into the European recommendations the project produces in 2027. You will be told what came of it.
The Democratic Society, as data controller. The selection panel works with anonymised profiles and community descriptions, so your personal details do not go to the other partners. Reporting to the wider project and to the funder stays at the level of channels, networks and totals.
No. Your expression of interest is registered and remains valid. We will write to you to confirm the new dates and to ask only for what the new form adds: your availability for the new sprint dates and a few lines on your motivation. If you fill in the new form anyway, tick the box that says you already sent an expression of interest and use the same email address, so we can link your answers.
Privacy
Privacy notice for this call
| Controller | The Democratic Society, a partner in NEB Junction, is the data controller for this call, under Regulation (EU) 2016/679. Contact: domenico.ds@demsoc.eu. |
|---|---|
| What we collect | Your name and email, the organisation or group you name, what you write about your community and your connection to it, your availability, any access or language needs you tell us about, and your consent. |
| Why | To assess your expression of interest, to compose a group covering seven or more distinct communities, to organise the programme with you, and to report on it at the level of numbers and categories. |
| Legal basis | Your consent. You can withdraw it at any time, and withdrawing it does not affect anything done before you did. |
| Who sees it | The Democratic Society team running the programme. The selection panel sees anonymised profiles and community descriptions, not your personal details. No applicant level data leaves the Democratic Society. |
| Where it is kept | On a server run by the Democratic Society with Gandi, a hosting provider based in France, with a data processing agreement in place, and stored inside the European Economic Area. |
| How long | Until the end of the NEB Junction project, after which it is deleted. |
| Automated decisions | There are none. Every application is read by a person. |
