https://fabcity.substack.com/p/fab-city-zagreb-building-local-steam

Since 2018, when it brought the City of Zagreb into the global Fab City initiative at the invitation of Fab Lab Barcelona, FabLab has been working not only in Zagreb but across Croatia to encourage local community development by setting up fab labs and building local ecosystems for learning, collaboration and development.

Programmes and activities aimed at developing local STEAM ecosystems are made possible by the Thematic Systemic Support scheme of the National Foundation for Civil Society Development for STEM as a driver of community development, which gives us a stable framework for continuous work on strengthening the capacity of local actors and connecting initiatives at national level.

We are delighted that the Fab City organisation has recognised what makes our approach distinctive and published an article on its portal presenting the activities of Fab City Zagreb and the development of local STEAM ecosystems in Croatia. This has given our work further exposure to the international community, including presentations of Adriatic GreenLab at events in Brussels (the European Bauhaus Festival and the Engaged Citizens Festival), in Bloomington (Indiana University, USA), at Fab25 and the Fab City Summit in Prague, at the VULCA seminar at the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, and at other events in the region.

We regret that interest in these topics at national level still does not match the level of international recognition, but we thank the National Foundation for Civil Society Development for its continuous support through the Thematic Systemic Support scheme, which makes the further development of our activities and the strengthening of local ecosystems in Croatia possible.