Contextual aspects; drivers and brakes

The background for this pilot goes back to conversations and interviews held mostly between the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV)and high-ranking civil servants during a previous H2020 project Innovative Social Investment Strengthening Communities in Europe (InnoSI). During that project the UPV team undertook a case study of the reappearance of active employment policies from a perspective of social investment with the desire to capitalise on a political change after 24 years of single party rule in the city of Valencia.

An assessment was made of the services currently offered to the public in Valencia for those wishing to be self-employed or seeking to start their own business. Several business accelerators exist around the city. These generally offer co-working or office space, often with the chance to receive investment financing from the accelerator which then takes a share of the firms. However, these types of institution tend to look for scalable projects that would allow them to obtain return in the future and often look to invest in tech companies rather than traditional or soft services. Other co-working spaces charge up to 150€ a month for their facilities and do not necessarily offer any kind of help or advisory services to their customers.

Since 2015, local government has increased the number of schemes available within the active employment policy budget and has provided users with attention points where they can receive free advice on how to go about setting up a business. It also has a small number of economical office spaces available to start-ups dotted around the city. Central policy has also improved the financial risks involved in setting up a business by lowering the self-employment tax for the first 12 months, reduced from a sometimes crippling 256€ to 50€. With all these factors in mind, the UPV approached the city hall once again to see whether they were interested in participating in a pilot scheme for entrepreneurs based upon a co-creation methodology.

Peoples voices during community reporting sessions in the early analysis and co-design phase has revealed following contextual factors preventing service value:

• High unemployment
• Active employment policies axed during the recession
• No single entity offered real support. Citizens had to explain their situation or project idea to many different people and offices who were not invested
• No financial support
• Decisions were made for people not with them
• Many opportunities fell by the wayside

The learning curve in this pilot has been steep.

• Administrative culture and silos. One of the obstacles that has held back further relations with institutions has been the ‘chain of command’ that exists within the public administration within Spain, and the oft-mentioned political bias that exists within it. The town hall is divided into councils that deal with different areas, i.e. urbanism, innovation, mobility, citizen safety, etc. Due to the electoral system, it has become the norm for there to be pacts between political parties in order to be able to govern with a majority, which leads to a sharing out of the councils, which in turn leads to a lack of coordination between one town council and the next. This has an effect not only on how each council functions internally (following a political line), but also hinders the ability to enact conversations of change in other sectors. This does not mean, however, that those conversations will not be taking place, and councils are invited to participate. Living Labs (Northumbria University) helped to identify how higher level mangers could become more involved in the evaluation process.
• Limited knowledge  among top-managers on what co-creation is and how its culture is to be enacting, including their own role model.
• Stakeholders. With regard to the stakeholders involved in Co-Crea-Te, the map of stakeholders changed since the start of the project. The idea was originally  to involve NGOs with experience in labour market insertion to help with training and method in the process of getting people back to work. This relationship did not really come to fruition due to several factors. One was the inability, due to restrictions of the project; of not being able to include the NGO concerned, called Novaterra, as a partner in the project, nor being able to subcontract their services. They participated in the co-design events at UPV but since then communication has been scant. Another reason is that their field of activity lies slightly outside the remit of Co-Crea-Te, as they work fundamentally with people with learning disabilities, which is something not excluded from our pilot, but is not a core objective. One of the challenges faced by staff at Co-Crea-Te is precisely the identification and engagement of all the stakeholders originally involved in the process. It has become clear over time that involving all those agents is increasingly difficult, and no less important is the fact that some of those stakeholders may not be particularly helpful to the objectives of the pilot.

The reverse side of this is that other stakeholders have appeared on the scene who have played a key role in the development of the project. One of the most important is a local bank Caixa Popular. Valènciactiva and the bank signed an agreement whereby entrepreneurs would be able to access financing of up to 60,000€ at an interest of around 3.75 per cent and, most importantly, without the need for a guarantee. The pilot was contacted by another organisation with close relations to the third sector who organise microcredit for small companies and entrepreneurs. The conditions they offered were even slightly better than the bank and some entrepreneurs have since taken up the option of these microcredits. 

• The driving role of Community Reporters and the Peoples Voice Media in training those
• The  facilitating role of the project team (action researchers and service professionals)