Hackathon - Public spaces for a healthy mind

On March 17, 2023 we organized a Hackathon for the first time, in collaboration with the Municipality of Groningen and the Aletta Jacobs School for Public Health. The question that invitees to the hackathon tackled was, "How can we use public space to improve the mental health of youth/young adults between the ages of 12-30?" In groups, people from all sorts of different backgrounds (varying from young people themselves to architects, scientists, high school care coordinators, social workers, artists and many more) set to work to come up with solutions to this question. The hackathon was a great success, more than 65 people attended with many different perspectives and young people were also widely represented. In April, the results of the hackathon were discussed with the councillor, which will also be followed by an image-forming session with the city council. The councillor's intention is to include the results in the 2024 budget. This process has not yet been completed and we will report on the outcomes with the city council at a later date.