Du har väl inte missat att Idéburen Utveckling driver ett Erasmus+ Small-scale Partnership-projekt tillsammans med folkbildningsorganisationen Dock Europe i Hamburg?!
I början av juni var det dags för det andra studiebesöket inom Erasmusprojektet Shared City Shared Future. Den här gången ägde det rum i Malmö, där en stor grupp från fyra olika initiativ i Hamburg togs emot av Idéburen Utveckling, Backa Kåken och flera lokala projekt som arbetar med och leds av unga aktivister.
OBS – den här reserapporten är i engelska eftersom det är ett internationellt projekt där projektspråket är engelska.
About the Shared City Shared Future Project
This Erasmus+ Small Partnerships project is an exchange and learning programme between Kirseberg in Malmö and Altona in Hamburg. It is led by the non-formal education platforms Idéburen Utveckling and dock europe e.V. Both organisations work with hands-on processes of civic self-organisation in response to pressing local issues and community-led urban development, with an emphasis on young people’s leadership. The programme invites young leaders, youth workers, and young activists to exchange and share their working practices, ideas, tips, and tools on how to build movements, create events, co-produce physical common spaces, strengthen democratic participation, and support others to feel included. It includes study visits to Malmö and Hamburg with workshops, case studies, and social networking opportunities, as well as a series of online sessions to share methodologies and learnings rooted in local processes.
About the Study Visit
Together with Petra, Suna and Mariamu from Dock Europe, the participants came from several different associations, each involved in diverse community and solidarity projects in their own city, specifically in the neighbourhood of Altona, where Dock Europe is located.
fux eG: A 300-member cooperative that bought and renovated the former Viktoria barracks in Hamburg to create a self-managed space for culture, education, and production. Funded through loans, crowdfunding, and rental income, it now hosts around 200 people working across diverse fields and offers “solidarity spaces” with lower rents to maintain social diversity. The site also functions as a neighbourhood meeting place and venue for cultural events.
Fux Populi: A group of young locals who run a monthly community kitchen from within the canteen Fux und Ganz. They have attendance of up to 100 people from across the neighbourhood, food is on ‘pay what you can afford’ basis and the aim is to bring the neighbourhood to Fux.
Altavoz Hamburg: A self-organised collective that provides sound systems and a 7.5-ton truck with crew for demonstrations and events across Hamburg. The collective prioritises groups with limited financial resources and those struggling to be heard.
Tyger Trimiar Gym: A martial arts gym from and for FLINTA* (German abbreviation for: women, lesbian, inter, non binary, trans and agender) people based in Fux eG.
Dock Europe: A non-profit educational organisation that runs international exchanges, political youth and adult education and expert consultations. As a recognised provider of child and youth welfare services, it works at the intersection of social, community, political and extracurricular education, focusing on self-organisation, empowerment, participation, and neighbourly learning. It operates a 450 m² International Education Centre and Hostel in fux eG.
Hosted by Idéburen Utveckling, the programme introduced participants to Malmö’s grassroots city development initiatives, focusing on community-led action, youth leadership, and cross-cultural exchange. Over four days, participants explored the Kirseberg neighbourhood and wider parts of Malmö, took part in workshops, joined local festivities, and reflected on strategies for inclusive and democratic city-making.
Themes and focus of this visit
From conversations at the start-up meeting and in local processes in both neighbourhoods, as well as online workshops and conversations in-between meetings, we had been collecting questions that could guide our learning activities.
- Why do you organise? What matters to you?
- What are the formats, tips, and tricks to bring different people together?
- How do you organise among yourselves? How do you keep going?
- What practices enable efficient yet warm communication?
- How can conflicts be managed constructively?
- How to respect expertise and build new capacities?
- How can projects like Backa Kåken and fux that deal with land and property ensure that everyone feels heard and empowered whilst still meeting pressing deadlines?
Thursday, June 5th 10:00 AM
While the Hamburg crew were making their way on the train across the many bridges of Denmark, a group of Backa Kåken volunteers were frantically preparing for the afternoon and evening activities, shopping, cutting vegetables and moving furniture and workshop materials across Malmö.
3:30 PM
The guests from Hamburg arrived in Malmö and were welcomed in the neighbourhood of Kirseberg at the Grand Circus Hotel, where they would be staying for the coming days. They checked into the beautiful circus wagons and organised the bicycles that would become their transport over the next few days.
4:00 PM
Everyone gathered in the large circus tent on the hotel grounds. It was time for the famous Swedish fika, a moment to share coffee, get to know each other better, and introduce themselves and their organisations. We picked back up questions of ‘what moves us’ and ‘what do we move’ as initiatives. The introductory workshop, prepared and led by Matilda, one of the young organisers from Backa Kåken came with fun icebreakers and helped set expectations for the days ahead, and together we added to our bank of questions to bring on our travels through the city and to ask each other and the different initiatives we were going to meet.
Some of the questions and expectations
- Is self-organising for/by young people common in Malmö?
- How do you get young people involved? Collectively?
- How do you get people passionate who are not involved yet?
- How does financing work in Sweden?
- What does ‘political’ mean to you?
- How to organise as the political shift to the right intensifies?
Afterwards, the group started working on their costumes for the annual neighbourhood carnival ’Backakarnevalen’, taking place the next day. This year’s theme was ‘Wacky Animals’. We asked each group ‘If your organisation was a wacky animal, what would it be?’, resulting in pretty imaginative creatures.
5:30 PM
Backa Kåken hosted a public open event to welcome the guests in style. Food and music set the tone for a lively evening. Fux Populi teamed up with Backa Kåken to make paella for 50 people. It turned out that every last rice corn was needed! Many Backa Kåken members, friends and local neighbours turned up and the evening turned into a long beautiful summer night with everyone chatting, eating and dancing, highlighting the project’s emphasis on hospitality and culture as a way to encourage collective action.
More about Backa Kåken
Backa Kåken is a grassroots neighbourhood initiative in Kirseberg in Malmö that’s been mobilising since September 2023 to bring the former prison site into community ownership and open it up as a neighbourhood hub. What started as a bold idea has grown fast, the association now has over 300 members, 400 shareholders, and has involved more than 2,000 people through meetings, lectures and workshops in libraries, parks, sports halls and in its own project space inside the prison compound. Backa Kåken challenges the usual top-down approach to development, asking why buildings are left empty, and who gets to decide what is valuable and for whom. Instead, the aim is to explore democratic ownership, cooperative financing and shared governance to create a long-term affordable and accessible place for people to live, work, learn and meet.
Isak from youth-led street dance culture association Gr8t Ones turned up to offer a street dance workshop. He had just become a member of Backa Kåken and asked how he could contribute. This is the kind of happenstance we love! (Editors note: Gr8t Ones have since moved into the first site Backa Kåken develops and joined the last trip to Hamburg.)
Friday, June 7th, 8:30 AM
Friday was the Kirseberg day, where we planned to explore the neighbourhood, visit different initiatives and bring our creatures to the neighbourhood culture carnival. The day began with breakfast in the circus tent before setting off on a bike tour to get to know the Kirseberg neighbourhood better. Heavy rain delayed our departure, so we had some extra coffee and lots of good conversation. Ellen from Backa Kåken, who grew up in Kirseberg and was our tour guide for the day, told our guests what it was like to grow up locally and what makes ‘Backarna’ (The Hills) as it is called in Malmö so special. “We call it the Kiseberg spirit.”, she explained, “We are a bit the Australia of Malmö. They just placed everything here, they didn’t want inside the old city walls, mental hospital, prison, paupers cemetery, breweries – even the last witch burnings in Sweden were here! So people developed their own identity, a sort of ‘we can do it ourselves’ spirit, resistant and very creative! And that’s what we now build on at Backa Kåken.”
More about Kirseberg
Kirseberg, locally known as ‘Backarna’, is a district situated in the east of Malmö with a strong identity and a history of marginalisation. Situated initially outside Malmö’s city walls, it is where the city has historically placed many of its unwanted institutions: a thieves’ graveyard, Sweden’s last witch burning, a large mental hospital, traveller sites and a large prison. In the 1900s, Kirseberg grew into a working-class neighbourhood, home to newcomers from the countryside who couldn’t afford city living. Here, they leased small plots of land to build their own homes, some of which, the street houses, still stand today.
In the 1960s and 1970s, ‘Backa residents’ residents successfully organised to prevent the demolition of several blocks of street houses. They mobilised resources and established the first ‘byalag’ in Malmö, which is a form of a self-organised neighbourhood initiative. Activists at the time used participative events, from local clean-ups to guerilla theatre and community archiving to mobilise the local community in resisting demolition and shaping a new narrative for Kirseberg. The outcomes of this process have been collected in the book ‘Backarna – Liv och historia i en förstad’ by local resident and architect Anna-Margrethe Thagaard, today an active member of Backa Kåken.
Today, Kirseberg (population app 16,000) is a vibrant cross-section of Malmö, in terms of both population composition and a mix of buildings with street houses, condominiums, and rental apartments, however income and public health figures lag behind Malmö average. It still retains a ‘village feel’ – a place within the city but also apart from it. A neighbourhood that, over the years, has been characterised by a sense of exclusion, which also contributed to a strong sense of community and identity. There is a distinct ‘do-it-yourself’ culture here, with many engaged residents who care about their neighbourhood and are eager to take an active part in its development.
10:00 AM
When the rain eased, it was time for the first study visit of the day. Drevet is a non-profit association in Kirseberg, working with sustainable urban development, through sharing services and re-use initiatives. They work closely with Röda Oasen, a collective housing initiative that took over one of the buildings in the former mental hospital Ellen had told us about. This whole part of the neighbourhood is in renewal, with a lot of new housing built and new people moving in. Drevet plays an active role in the development of the Sege Park area, contributing to new models for co-housing and collective living. They organise meeting spaces and opportunities to share and collaborate, but also for example run a recycling project. Their focus is very much on creating sustainable future neighbourhoods. Jesper from Drevet took some time to tell us their story and also shared openly the challenges that come with trying to set up sharing systems for tools and such, especially in a community with quite a bit of transience, where people maybe don’t stay very long, because the rents are just that little bit too high.
Back on our bikes, we had some interesting conversations about how behaviour change has so much to do with a change of collective culture. Some of the young people in the group also discussed that “there has to be some joy in those proposed sustainable futures and that it has to feel affordable and accessible to normal people.”
11:15 AM
After Drevet, a short bike ride took the group to Bulltofta IF, a youth-led association based in Kirseberg. Alongside Backa Kåken, Bulltofta IF had already taken part in the Kickstart event in Hamburg. We turned up at their headquarters where we were warmly welcomed with cake and fruit. Bulltofta is led and organised by young people, they call themselves young leaders and are between 15 and 19. So, of course the whole study visit and presentation was professionally managed by a group of young leaders. We were very impressed, both by them and their story.
Bulltofta started as extracurricular sports activities in a local school, before it became an independent association that works in the whole neighbourhood (and now even beyond). It has grown rapidly in just a few years into a strong local organisation with nearly 1,000 members and 40 young leaders. Bulltofta IF works to build community among children and young people, mainly through sports, but also through discos, meetings, homework support, and other leisure activities. When asked what matters most to them and why they do this work, they told us that many local families struggle to pay for activities for their children and that the biggest motivation for them as a group is to ensure more equal access for children in their community. It also sounded like being a young leader is a lot of fun, they described themselves as ‘a bit like a family’. It’s a lot of responsibility, but they also get to travel and learn new things and finally many of them have been participants in Bulltofta IF, so they know from experience how important the work is.
And then we had a famous Malmö falafel together! “Because Malmö”, as Armin from Bulltofta explained to us, “is the Swedish capital of the falafel! Nowhere else will you find such a good falafel.” Everybody agreed wholeheartedly.
3:00 PM
After lunch, everyone gathered at Kirsebergs torg for the annual Backakarnevalen. This super local celebration, organised by the local culture association Vi på Backarna has been happening for 40 years in the neighbourhood! Backa Kåken participated with a float shaped like the old Kirseberg prison, a papier-mâché costume of the Kirseberg water tower and all of the weird and wonderful animals crafted the night before.
Later, the group visited Beijers Park, where community stalls and activities were held. Backa Kåken hosted its own stand, selling shares in the prison and informing visitors about current activities.
5:30 PM
In the afternoon, the group cycled into town where they met Robert Nilsson Mohammadi, history lecturer and researcher at Malmö University, whose work focuses on ‘cultural memory’, looking at how history and events are remembered and knowledge and culture are produced by local people. He took us on a meandering walk through the working class neighbourhood of Möllevången and the history of the labour movement and social justice struggles. We learned a lot about how the district – and the city as a whole – has been shaped by workers’ movements. We visited the very first working movement owned meeting space and park – Folkets Hus and Folkets Park – in Sweden and visited the famous monument ‘Arbetets Ära’ – a monument to the workers’ struggle that holds up the city of Malmö.
About the Folkets Hus and Folkets Park movement
The Folkets Hus och Parker movement is a Swedish workers’ and popular-education movement that began in the late 19th century, when trade unions and social-democratic organisations created member-owned community buildings and parks as democratic spaces for meetings, culture, leisure and political organising. It grew rapidly through the early 20th century as the labour movement expanded, becoming a nationwide network of people’s houses, open-air parks, theatres and cultural venues.
The first Folkets Hus was established in Malmö in 1893, followed shortly by one of the earliest Folkets Park initiatives (also in Malmö, formalised in the 1890s). These emerged because working-class organisations lacked access to meeting spaces and sought independent, democratic venues free from employer or state control, as places where workers could gather, educate themselves, socialise, and build collective power. While many Folkets Hus and Folkets Park venues remain active today, their role has diminished as the welfare state expanded.
7:00 PM
Time for dinner! We went to visit Sandra from Backa Kåken at Sofielunds Kollektivhus, just a short walk from Möllevången. Along with good food and company, participants got a tour of the co-housing building with its rooftop terrace, cinema room, and workshops and learned about the cooperative housing model behind it. The association rents the entire building from the municipal housing company and sublets apartments to its members. Each apartment is fully equipped, but residents share common spaces and responsibilities, such as cleaning and cooking for communal meals. Experiencing collective living first-hand offered another perspective on alternative urban and housing models.
The day ended with relaxed conversation and connection before a free evening in Malmö.
Saturday, June 7th 08:30AM
We started the day with breakfast in the circus tent and then headed out to explore more of Malmö and its urban initiatives.
9:30 AM
The first visit of the day was to Frasses Fulflyttar, a workers owned and organised moving company. We were welcomed by Pablo, one of the 40 people that work at Frasses today. He told us how it all started nearly 15 years ago “as a joke really or maybe like an intervention, if you want to use a fancy word”. Working for a moving company is a tough job and it tends to be quite badly paid. A couple of people who had been working for big private moving companies for several years, asked themselves if they couldn’t do the management themselves and pay themselves a better wage. They started with one van, and a couple of jobs. It worked a lot better than they imagined and today they have 10 vehicles. Everybody earns the same, some people only do the moving, others, like Pablo also do admin and more organisational development work. As a worker you become a member of their association and they have a flat organisational structure. Pablo said that it is chaotic at times, people’s lives are complicated and not everyone can contribute in the same way. But they seem to manage to deliver good work or they wouldn’t have been able to grow. Today they also have a cleaning and a furniture assembly arm of the business. And a micro-brewery! They are a non-profit organisation, but that doesn’t mean that they are not out to make a good income. “It’s not the money coming in itself that’s the problem, but what you do with it.”, says Pablo. They donate 10% of all income to social causes, currently mainly to women’s shelters. And they take care of each other. They pay enough that everyone can work a bit less (moving is hard on the body) and they have good dental care and other perks.
11:00 AM
A short walk later, the group arrived at Naturmolnet, a neighbourhood park run by the association Växtvärket. The site was once a gravel lot and formerly home to the Hells Angels’ headquarters before it was blown up in the 1990s. In 2020, Växtvärket got permission from the property owner to turn the lot into a park for local residents. The park was built together with local schools, associations, and children, and quickly became a beloved space in northern Sofielund, which is one of Malmö’s least green areas. Today, Naturmolnet hosts concerts, markets, circus performances, and family activities, as well as private gatherings.
Växtvärket mainly works in Sofielund and Augustenborg with projects around participatory, sustainable, and child-friendly urban development, aiming to create more inclusive and playful cities. They also build and run adventure playgrounds for example
After some time in the sun at Naturmolnet, there was a bonus visit to the nearby Kollektivverkstan on Palmgatan, a shared workshop focused on wood, construction, and carpentry.
12:30 PM
Then we went on to Scaniabadet to have lunch in the sun and enjoy the view of the sea (all of us), and even a refreshing swim in it (some of us). The Malmö crew used this opportunity to show their guests quite a different face of Malmö, the regenerated harbour area Västrahamnen, with very nice (and pretty expensive) apartments.
3:30 PM
We then went only a 20min cycle ride across the city to an area where the average income is about half that in Västrahamnen. Rosengård was built as part of the Million Programme (1965–1974), when Sweden put up a million new homes to tackle a huge housing shortage and improve living conditions for working-class families. Over the years, the area, like many Million Programme neighbourhood, has been subject to segregation, racialisation and a lack of investment, all of which have shaped growing inequality and disparity in living conditions across Malmö. We joined the solidarity initiative Allt åt alla (everything for everyone) in one of the many green and open courtyards where they were just finishing a session where neighbours share their issues around rent increases and lacking housing quality.
Together we visited the new Folkets Hus Rosengård, where Allt åt alla is one of the local associations. Members shared more about their work on labour and housing rights at both local and national levels. It was an inspiring discussion on solidarity and community organising. For members of the group that grew up in similar neighbourhoods in Hamburg, Rosengård was like “coming home” and they told us about the importance that places like Folkets Hus Rosengård had for them growing up, both in terms of socialising and feeling part of a community and to learn how to organise around important issues or to ask for that which we need to live well. And others commented on how, even though they were in a different country, the issues felt so similar and how it was fascinating to experience so many different ways of facing or even solving them.
This encounter led naturally into the final workshop where participants reflected in small groups on lessons and insights from the week.
Here are some of the reflections and observations.
- SOME AHA MOMENTS
- Talking to Bulltofta IF, how they self-organise, thye just do it – so easy and light!
- Frasses, amazing concept, how they genuinely care about workers & people in general, how they embrace the chaos
- Meeting Allt åt alla and really getting into an exchange
- The dance workshop, doing something together, focusing on oneself and simultaneously finding out about the others and how it makes them feel and about the political history of street dance.
- Different country, same struggles – so many different ways of solving things
- WHAT DO I PUT IN MY BAG? (TAKE WITH ME PERSONALLY)
- The spirit of ’just doing it’. Doing it – Making mistakes – Learning from it.
- Embracing the chaos – ’Staying with the trouble’
- Organising by building trust through direct communication in the community. No fear!
- There are many different ways to organise
- You don’t need to be a ’professional’.
- FOR THE NEXT VISIT IN HAMBURG (AND BEYOND)
- Visit and learning about Hamburg initiatives
- Practical things – exchanges of practices
- Exchange about the different cases – how do you do something? how do we?
- New project – Malmö, Hamburg, Marseille, Tunis!
- Designing something together
6:30 PM
A bit tired and very hungry, we headed to Annelundsgården, where we had gotten free tickets for a concert. After a lovely evening of pizza, music and great company, it was time for most of the Malmö crew to say goodbye and wave off the guests from Hamburg, who were leaving the next day. It strangely felt like a lifetime together and also way too short!
Saturday, June 7th 09:30AM
One last breakfast in the circus tent and then everyone was off and away, either to explore Malmö further or spend a couple of hours in Copenhagen.
It had been a few truly educational and inspiring days, filled with discussions and reflections on organising, local pride and belonging, inclusion in urban development, and exchanges between Malmö and Hamburg.
For the Malmö-based participants, the visit also became an eye-opener to everything that already exists locally, things that are easy to overlook. Malmö may be small compared to Hamburg, and it’s easy to think there’s not much to learn from here, but seeing the city through the eyes of visitors was inspiring and gave new insight into all the amazing things happening locally and what we do well as a city.
11:00 PM
Messages were coming into the whatsapp group: the train had gotten stuck just after Copenhagen and had ultimately returned to the central station. This meant either night bus or an extra night in Copenhagen. Oh no! But everyone stayed in good spirits. Who cares, it was well worth it anyway!
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.