The notebook deals with socio-cultural centers that are founded on the ideas of civil-public partnership and participatory governance. Socio-cultural centers are being looked at from the perspective of cultural policy and are set in the cultural landscape, drawing out their lines and describing their specificities, including the wider historical perspective. The notebook points to the fact that there are no unique solutions and debates on socio-cultural centers because every community is different, every socio-cultural center creates its own model in harmony with its local situation – cultural, social, economic and political and the available resources and information.

The notebook brings working definitions of concepts and terms that are offered up for further elaboration in each individual socio-cultural center. All offered elements can be chosen, combined or taken out, lines can be added or shortened, depending on the local situations and needs. Hence the name "notebook" because it is expected that each socio-cultural center will add and choose the contents considering their specific local working conditions. The notebook does not offer an exact method, it does not prescribe a recipe, nor does it give strict instructions for development of civil-public partnership and participatory governance, but rather gives a foundation for the strengthening of all involved stakeholders and a collective exercise for better understanding of the offered terms and their use in each individual local community.    

Who is involved and why? Who makes the decisions? Who is responsible for what? What are the relations between all of the involved stakeholders? What are the conditions and criteria for use of spaces? What are the rules for use of spaces? What are the principles? What are the challenges? These are just a few of the questions the notebook recognizes as crucial for establishing or improving of civil-public partnership and participatory governance. These are very complex processes and they take time and need various resources, primarily human, as well as a high level of motivation of the stakeholders involved for encouraging and implementing these challenging ventures, and the notebook wants to contribute to the processes.

The publication was created for the "Towards Institutional Pluralism: Development of Socio-cultural Centers" gathering that was organized by the Foundation and held from 12th to 14th November 2015 in Gliptoteka HAZU in Zagreb.

Authors of the notebook are Davor Mišković, Ana Žuvela and Dea Vidović, and it was designed by Dario Dević and Hrvoje Živčić.

The notebook is disposed under the Creative Commons license Attribution – Share Alike 3.0 Croatia.