Case Study: Children’s City Vienna

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Hi! My name is Jutta Hofer. I'm from Vienna, I work for organisation based in Vienna called "Wien Extra".
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It works very closely with the municipal department of education and youth.
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We are organising a project called "Rein ins Rathaus"
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which could be translated "Reign in the City Hall" and it is children's city
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inside the City Hall of Vienna, which takes place during one week at our summer holiday.
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It's basically children's city, where children can learn how cities are
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managed and also governed, where they can independently and freely organise
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the city for themselves. We have about 50 facilitators who help
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children manage this city. But how the city is managed and governed
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is basically done by children. These children are between 6 and 13 years old.
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Doors of our Children's City open at 10 o'clock every day and will be closed again
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at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. And on Monday, on our first day, children will
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come to city and come to the City Hall and enter the Children's City.
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They'll get three Holli-Cents, which is our money in the Children's City.
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So they can start and they can either start going to look for a job in our department, that provides with jobs.
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Or they can go and spend that money. If they decide to start with a job, we have different
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kind of jobs, of course. Everything that's needed in a city, like post offices
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or waste department or newspaper offices, video agencies. We have marketing agencies,
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we have also places where they can study and educate themselves.
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Which are very interesting places, because those places offer children
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the possibility to either work there as a trainer or teacher or give them the
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possibility to study there. So it offers both ways.
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In our city children have to work for a half an hour, 30 minutes.
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After this time they get paid three Holli-Cents. One amount goes for taxes and
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after they finish the work, they have to go to the bank, where they get the money and
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one part of their earnings goes straight to the Financial Department,
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which takes away the tax. We have also have shops and a little restaurant, where
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they can spend money they have earned or they can also work there. So every place
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we offer in the city is also an opportunity to have a job.

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Hi! My name is Jutta Hofer. I'm from Vienna I work for organisation based in
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Vienna called "Wien Extra". Very special thing about our Children's City is
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that we have voting and elections every day. So every day in our city a new mayor
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and a new city council is elected by children.
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Once children have worked three times and studied twice - that's because
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we think that by the time they have worked three
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times and studied twice, they know the city well enough to be
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able to govern the city. So after they've done that they can apply to be a
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mayor or a counsellor of the city. Two o'clock every day
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elections start and all the kids walk around and introduce their daily statements
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to be elected. And then at three clock we have a
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little introduction, where everyone can participate. They get paid to go to the
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election in our town, everyone can come. So all the kids support going to the elections
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and listening statements of all the kids, who want to be elected.
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And then after little introduction, little Q & A,
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kids can go and vote. We have small tubes with pictures of them, so even
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children who can't read yet or can't read well enough, know which
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pipe is for which candidate. And after that our radio station
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announces the winner and then the Children's City government starts to work.
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From three o'clock or half past three until two
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o'clock on the next day to get through all their promises and
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all the laws they want to impose in the city. But so special about
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"Rein ins Rathaus" is a fact that because kids have to work first and
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have to get to know the city, for example working as a post officer, and they find
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out that the post office doesn't work well enough, because everyone isn't
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using the post office enough. So they don't have enough to do. So they start getting all the other jobs
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and studies they need to be elected and once they are elected, they try to improve
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what they experienced, while they were working in the city. That's one group
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of kids that do it this way. They really want to improve what
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isn't working well enough according to their own experiences in the city.
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And what others do, is they want to be elected, want to
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become a mayor or counsellor of the city. For example those kids promise, that
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there won't be any taxes anymore or that they will only have to work 15 minutes
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to get the same amount of earning.
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And every second or third year the city runs out of money, because some of the kids
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that were elected, promised to get rid of all the taxes. If they got
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elected they had to make emergency meeting with all the
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counsellors. They always come up with the idea, that there are so many kids
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living or working in the city. And they have lots of money and
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quite a few kids, who don't have much money. It wouldn't be fair to ask
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all of them more money for taxes, so the city would have money again. So they come up with the
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idea of taxes only for rich kids. And that's very fascinating for us as
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the facilitators of the project, because all those ideas children come
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up with, are reflected from real situations of cities or governments.
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All the problems children get involved with as a government of the
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city, as the city counsellors, they have to figure out by themselves, how to solve those problems.
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We are only there to help them to translate
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ideas into laws, help them with solutions.
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We have little book of laws to introduce at the beginning of our
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holiday game. And by the end of the week it's much much longer. We start
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with 19 laws that are basic rules of our game, that we decided are necessary
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for the children and for the town to work and to make it possible,
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that everything runs well. Once the children are in charge, it goes
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around, laws get changed, new laws are created and at the end of the week we
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have the book that is sometimes full of 50 laws. So they really work and
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they really have a lot of ideas and they want to implement lots
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of their ideas in town.

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Hi! My name is Jutta Hofer. I'm from Vienna and I work for organisation based in
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Vienna called "Wien Extra". What is very special about our project is that
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because it's located in the city hall of Vienna, we are very closely in
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contact with the city government of Vienna, so we have many politicians who
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visit our Children's City or invite the children into their offices.
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The mayor of Vienna always invites the children into his office and
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our Mayor of Children and the mayor are
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meeting in his office and talk about difficulties and burden of
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having so much responsibility. We also have our News Team, which moves around from
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one office to another and visits our city councelors.
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All those visits that are recorded in offices inside the
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city are then shown in our little city cinema and
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also on our info wall. "Wien Extra" is very connected to many
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municipal departments of Vienna and so is our city. Every year we
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try to implement a new municipal department in our City or try to make
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our City as real as the official city is. By working with those municipal
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departments it's a lot easier to make it authentic.
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Our target group for this project is six to thirteen year old kids. Even children
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who can't read or count as good as 12 year olds, can participate in this
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project and be part of it. Because there are many jobs, like in
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post offices or the restaurant, where it's not necessary to read as much as
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when you are the mayor of the City. I think that our Children's City "Rein ins Rathaus"
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is really the best example of practice for children cities, because
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we work so closely with the city of Vienna and so closely with the government of the
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city of Vienna. Children really experience throughout the play
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and throughout those every day elections. They really experience how fast
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decisions can be implemented in the town and how fast the impact of their
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decisions will appear in the city. So it's not just participating and giving them the
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possibility to move around freely and create new ideas and create new
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departments or offices, it's also the direct impact that political decisions
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have for a city and for other citizens. And that's what makes our
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Children's Cities so special.