Project activity as a way of launching children-adult communities in small towns[Проектная Деятельность Как Способ Запуска Детско-Взрослых Сообществ В Малых Городах]

The article considers the problems of small towns of the Urals and possible solutions to address them. Urban communities engaged in such problems solving are drivers of urban development. If such communities involve high school students, they will naturally be replenished with well-trained specialists fresh from school. The authors propose to include teenagers in designing the future of small towns. To do this, there is a “School of General Designers” technology based on thought-action pedagogy. The article reveals the essence of this technology and proposes several formats for organizing work based on this technology: design and engineering schools, as well as hackathons. The article describes how the work in children-adult teams can be organized and what exactly teenagers do in the context of project schools. Example projects to transform the town of Krasnouralsk are provided. One of them aims at solving environmental problems, another – at the lack of subjectivity in the town. The authors tell about the hackathon format, the practice of organizing it with the support of the Rezh town community, about the involvement of teenagers in the hackathon, as well as about projects to solve critical problems of the town enterprises. In conclusion, the article provides an organizational scheme to launch design in small towns involving high school students.