Citizen participation is the driving force behind the #Jerez2031 European Capital of Culture bid. From the outset, we have deployed a strategy to place people at the center of the generation of ideas and projects for our cultural program.

We have done this through a novel and innovative participation process, designing and developing a model of citizen co-creation laboratories through the Ágoras Ideas Lab and Ágoras Projects Lab, which, with the participation of more than one hundred cultural, social, and educational stakeholders from the province of Cádiz, took place between July and October 2025.

These co-creation laboratories have enabled more than 80 projects to be addressed for potential inclusion in the #Jerez2031 cultural program.

#Jerez2031 continues to build its candidacy process from the bottom up. As a whole, the #Jerez2031 forums have formed a network of exchange spaces with the aim of working consecutively in two labs: Ideas Lab and Projects Lab. A participatory process that has allowed, through co-creation, to identify citizen proposals for inclusion in the different programming lines of the bid book.