Maia Municipality, in a partnership with the coordination team of the Strategy for Citizenship Education of Castêlo da Maia Schools Association (AECM), held during the school year 2020-2021, the imPEC Creative Ideas Contest, under SPARCS project, addressing the carbon neutrality and energy positivity as central themes to work in a collaborative way with the municipality, on a sustainable and carbon neutral vision for the city until 2050.

Open to all students of the different levels and cycles of the Schools Association, and having in mind the need of assuring an interdisciplinary collaborative work, providing, at the same time, significant learning in different disciplines towards the development of citizenship awareness and involvement, the school contest was designed to have different work proposals, addressed to each age group, including drawings, mock-ups, texts, civic action proposals or scientific and technological projects.

The ImPEC Creative Ideas Contest was received with a challenging spirit, and more than 350 students of different graduation levels explored their ideas for the city development guided by 12 teachers.

The school teachers, together with the municipality, and based on criteria such as the main idea of the proposal, level of detail, creativity, overall consistency, oral communication, visual composition, time management and students’ interactions, awarded 55 students and 26 works/projects from a total of 350 participants.

During the Worlds Environment Day, along with the release of the book “Maia – a community towards integral sustainability”, the municipality also recognised the winning work proposal, that presented a holistic project based on photovoltaic panels, water turbines and seaweed bioreactors for CO2 capture. All together with the importance of civic engagement as important vectors towards Maia’s City vision 2050.

All other students and works were also recognized in an award ceremony, that took place in the school auditorium, on the 18th June, where the school director and our Mayor highlighted the importance of this collaborative work and involvement of the entire school community on this visioning exercise. The Mayor expressed how grateful he was to realize that Maia has an interested and engaged community towards sustainable development.

One certainty remained from this experience: all participants in this challenge of co-creating the Maia’s City Vision 2050 revealed civic awareness and willingness to intervene in building a better future, towards carbon neutrality and energy positivity!