Rural towns face the same challenges as cities, from climate change to people moving away and growing distrust in democracy. Yet they rarely have the financial, technical and human resources to tackle them alone. At the same time, their residents bring a wealth of experience, expertise and ideas. What they often lack is entrepreneurial know-how and support to put that potential to work.
We:Start Zörbig tested whether citizen entrepreneurship can close this gap. In 2024, Public Value Hub ran the pilot together with the town of Zörbig in Saxony-Anhalt. Residents, local businesses and staff of the town administration worked side by side to identify the town’s biggest challenges and to develop first ideas for solving them.
Between June and October 2024, we held three workshops in Zörbig:
· Workshop 1: Saturday, June 8, 2024, KulturQuadrat Schloss Zörbig
· Workshop 2: Saturday, August 10, 2024, KulturQuadrat Schloss Zörbig
· Workshop 3: Monday, October 28, 2024, Zörbig volunteer fire station
Experienced startup coaches guided the participants through proven startup methods such as design thinking. Together, they analysed what holds the town back and what could move it forward.
Around 50 people took part: school students, working people and pensioners aged 14 to 78. More than half of the participants were women.
The participants identified twelve clusters of challenges, among them local public transport, dialogue between citizens and the town, the cleanliness and appeal of the town centre, and leisure activities for children and young people.
For these, they developed twelve solution areas, for example a digital citizen platform, an on-demand bus service, self-service kiosks, pop-up stores and a combined sports and youth centre run jointly by the town, local clubs and businesses.
Many participants said they wanted to continue: in further workshops, by building prototypes and by putting their ideas into practice.
We:Start Zörbig was the first step. The approach is intended to be continued and scaled to other rural municipalities.
