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

Programmes and activities aimed at developing local STEAM ecosystems are made possible by the Thematic Systemic Support 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 glad that the Fab City Global Initiative recognised what is distinctive about our approach and published an article on its portal presenting the work of Fab City Zagreb and the development of local STEAM ecosystems in Croatia. That has given our work further exposure to the international community, alongside presentations of Adriatic GreenLab at events in Brussels (the European Bauhaus Festival and the Engaged Citizens Festival), in Bloomington (Indiana University, USA), as well as 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 backing through the Thematic Systemic Support, which makes further development of our work and the strengthening of local ecosystems in Croatia possible.