Time Academy
Time Policies' Capacity Building for Local Authorities
Dates: Monday 30th of June; Tuesday 1st, Wednesday 2nd, and Thursday 3rd of July
Hour: 10:00 to 11:30 CEST
Format: on-line
Description
The Time Academy offers a framework to learn and exchange on time policies, approaching the temporal dimensions of contemporary life and well-being at local and regional levels. Putting time at the centre of policymaking, time policies constitute a fundamental paradigm shift in how municipalities organise public services, urban development, and community wellbeing. As a multidisciplinary domain encompassing work-life balance, sustainable mobility, nighttime economies, and comprehensive care systems, temporal governance demands innovative methodologies beyond usual administrative boundaries and departments within local and regional government structures.
Building upon experiences from municipalities and regions, the Time Academy provides urban officers, decision-makers, and practitioners with a practical training programme designed to implement time-conscious governance within their respective levels of competence. Central to this approach stands the Time Chief Officer model and its dedicated Time Offices, institutional innovations that ensure temporal considerations inform all municipal decisions. By incorporating time perspectives into planning processes, local authorities can simultaneously address gender equality, sustainability challenges, democratic participation and quality of life improvements.
The Academy combines expert-led theoretical sessions with case study analysis from frontrunner institutions and hands-on workshops. This approach, designed as a capacity-building programme, guarantees participants not only comprehend temporal governance concepts — but also acquire practical implementation skills.
Although conceived independently, each session builds upon the previous one, creating a learning journey from identifying existing time policies to implementing specific initiatives addressing climate change. The interactive format encourages peer-to-peer learning and experience exchange between participants.
Session 1: How to Identify Existing Time Policies in My Local Government
Monday 30th June, 10:00-11:30 CEST
Time fundamentally shapes urban and territorial organisation, yet many effective temporal measures remain unrecognised as such. This inaugural session provides participants with a comprehensive methodology to identify latent time policies across seven key domains including equality frameworks, commercial regulations, nighttime service provision and mobility systems.
Participants will learn to evaluate their institution’s current temporal governance landscape systematically, and will receive a methodology for self-evaluating whether an institution has existing time policies.
This session will include:
- Introduction to time policies and explanation of the methodology.
- Case study: applying such framework to develop metropolitan time policies.
- Practical implementation of the methodology in break-out rooms.
Session 2: Evaluating Time Policies Through Evidence-Based Frameworks
Wednesday 2nd July, 10:00-11:30 CEST
In an era where data-driven decision-making intersects with complex societal challenges, local governments face dual imperatives: combating misinformation while designing evaluation frameworks that capture the multidimensional impacts of time policies. This session addresses how municipalities can develop rigorous, time-sensitive evidence systems that blend quantitative metrics (e.g., time-use surveys) with qualitative well-being indicators, drawing on global best practices and addressing institutional barriers.
With the participation of:
- Theoretical framework (pending).
- Case studies on quantitative and qualitative methodologies for evaluating time policies.
- Practical implementation of the methodology in break-out rooms.
Session 3: Designing Cross-Government Time Policies
Tuesday 1st July, 10:00-11:30 CEST
The inherently transversal nature of time policy demands innovative approaches to interdepartmental coordination. This session explores mechanisms to maintain political commitment to temporal governance reforms while overcoming institutional divides. How to maintain the political will to change the social organisation of time in such a complex scenario? How can governments take action in cross-cutting decision-making when it comes to time?
Participants will receive two sets of prioritization mechanisms — one for identifying decision-makers, with profiles to be taken into account, and another one for prioritizing policy areas.
This session will include:
- Introduction to identifying political decision-makers within an institution
- Case studies: on identifying decision-makers andrioritizing policy areas.
- Questions on the methodology in break-out rooms.
Session 4: Time Policies for Climate Action
Thursday 3rd July, 10:00-11:30 CEST
After having analysed how to develop time policies on all its phases, participants will be proposed to design time policies to tackle a specific issue: the climate crisis. By taking into consideration what has been learned so far, and through specific examples on how policy and institutional priorities can be redesigned as core, it will be analysed how time is useful for identifying climate mitigation and adaptation measures.
Participants of this session will receive a standardized profile of cities, where they will be able to identify actions and stakeholders.
This session will include:
- How to identify “time generators” affecting schedules and mobility
- How to classify time policies according to their effect on climate mitigation or adaptation
- Practical implementation of the methodology in break-out rooms.
The Time Academy has a limited capacity and limited spots to guarantee its practical approach. It will first be open to members of the Local and Regional Governments Time Network during May, and in June it will open its registration to everyone else interested.
In case you have any questions or particular inquiries, please contact us at marcmartorell@timeuse.barcelona.
Objectives
- Foster collaboration among civil servants, municipal leaders and urban practitioners by facilitating shared problem-solving to address time scarcity within their competencies.
- Promote and disseminate local and regional best practices in centring time within institutional governance to enable replication of successful models, approaching time policies holistically.
- Analyse how evidence-based time policies impact citizens’ well-being and territorial sustainability to demonstrate their broader societal value.
Practical information
The Time Academy is open to everyone interested in developing further time policies in their local and regional contexts — and is particularly tailored to public officials from municipalities and regions. Participants can expect to receive a comprehensive set of resources in the form of a capacity-building programme that will empower municipalities to create more equitable, sustainable, and time-conscious communities. The Time Academy thus serves as a catalyst for institutional innovation in addressing the complex challenges of contemporary urban life. Through the Time Academy, the Time4All 2.0 project aims to build a community of practice around time policies, fostering long-term collaboration and innovation in this emerging field of municipal governance.
Registration is free, but spots are limited. Certificates of attendance will also be provided to all participants who complete the full programme (all 4 sessions).
This is an open activity promoted by the Local and Regional Governments Time Network. It is part of the Time4All 2.0 project, co-funded by the European Union.
