Urbex Handbook

The UrbEX handbook is directed at youth workers, educators and civil servants who work with youths and / or in disadvantaged urban contexts in processes of social inclusion, empowerment, contrast to school drop-out etc. It aims at providing ideas and tools to employ spatial exploration methods with youths. The method targets in particular youths at risk of exclusion (YARE) or living in disadvantaged contexts. The handbook draws on the field experiences of the organisations partnering in the Erasmus+ project UrbEX II, including the previous project UrbEX (2018), and aims at supporting the establishment of a network and a platform dedicated to Urban Exploration as an educational tool. The overall objective is to connect and provide tools to different organisations and individuals who share an interest in this innovative field of action/research.

In the handbook you find the results of pooling ideas and methods for urban exploration coming from the experiences of the five organisations partnering in the UrbEX Erasmus+ project. They draw on different backgrounds in education, urbanism, social work, participatory practice, art and design. This handbook is structured in three sections.

The first introduces the idea of urban exploration as an educational method and proposes a few pillars for the UrbEX approach.

The second  examines in five chapters the essential steps necessary to realise an educational  project of urban exploration with youth. This section is  conceived as a set of questions to be addressed step by step, and is completed by examples of good practices, methods and resources.

The third proposes a collection of tools and exercises for designing, facilitating and evaluating urban exploration in different moments of the process. They are presented in a synthetic form, with simple instructions to be realised and indications about purpose, timing and materials required.