The Mediterranean is far more than a geographical region: it is a shared space of people, heritage, creativity and resilience, shaped by a diversity of landscapes and cultures and by a strong capacity to adapt. It is from precisely this context that the Mediterranean Makers Initiative emerged – a new collaborative initiative bringing together makers, designers, educators, creative hubs and local communities across the Mediterranean.

Adriatic GreenLab goes Mediterranean

The initiative is taking shape at a moment when the Pact for the Mediterranean (M-PACT) has set out a new political and strategic framework centred on people, sustainability and resilience. In keeping with the values of the New European Bauhaus, the Mediterranean Makers Initiative sees the Mediterranean both as a cultural and geographical bridge between Europe and Africa and as a space where innovation often arises precisely outside the big urban centres.

The aim of the initiative is to connect a distributed network of smaller but powerful local hubs: makerspaces, laboratories, educational and creative spaces, with particular emphasis on islands, rural areas, small towns, and mountain and remote regions. These areas, often overlooked in conventional development policy, are recognised by the Mediterranean Makers Initiative as sources of knowledge, creativity and sustainable solutions.

The Mediterranean Makers Initiative is built on the values of inclusion, participation, open knowledge sharing, intergenerational cooperation and the responsible use of resources. Instead of centralised models, the initiative advocates locally rooted, co-designed and long-term sustainable approaches to development.

This initiative is not a finished project but an open process of co-creation. The first step is the Mediterranean Makers Manifesto, which serves as a starting point for jointly defining priorities, challenges and future collaborations – from local pilot projects to larger-scale Mediterranean partnerships.

The Mediterranean Makers Initiative invites all relevant actors to take part in building a more resilient, more creative and better connected Mediterranean, in which communities become the active creators of their own future.