POP-MACHINA aims to demonstrate the power and potential of the maker movement and collaborative production for the EU circular economy. We draw from a number of cut-edge technologies (factory-of-the-future, blockchain) and disciplines (urban planning, architecture) to provide the support necessary to overcome scaling issues; a typical drawback of collaborative production; to find the areas more in need of our intervention and to reconfigure unused spaces. We put forth an elaborate community engagement program to network, incentivize and stimulate through maker faires and events existing and new maker communities in all our municipalities. We build upon the current informal curriculum for maker skills development by nurturing the social side and we put educators and makers together to exchange ideas on the training modalities. A particular focus on the skill development of women and vulnerable groups will aim to empower these (underrepresented) segments to partake actively in collaborative production. In every pilot area we will demonstrate business oriented collaborative production of feasible and sustainable concepts from secondary raw material or other sustainable inputs, based on the needs and preferences of the local stakeholders. A thorough impact assessment framework with increased scope (e.g. social) will be co-designed with stakeholders after short basic assessment trainings and will be used in the assessment of our pilot work. Based on the findings we will kick-start a series of policy events to discuss openly – without pushing our results – the tax and legal barriers that hamper collaborative production.

AgRibot is a groundbreaking project aimed at advancing robotics as well as augmented and extended reality (AR/XR) technologies within the agricultural sector. The project’s overarching goal is to achieve a range of critical impacts including: improving working conditions, reducing environmental footprint, addressing workforce shortages, and enhancing overall sustainability and competitiveness. In alignment with strategic initiatives such as the Farm-to-Fork Strategy, the Common Agricultural Policy post-2022, and the broader ambition of embracing the Digital Age, AgRibot is poised to drive a transformative shift toward a fair, safer, and resilient agriculture sector.

Sustainable development is among the grand challenges of the next decades. To come closer to achieving that state, the EU is committed to mainstream the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the European policy framework and current Commission priorities. Moreover, special attention is paid to means for the achievement of the SDGs, their universal application to all countries and the simultaneous address of the economic, environmental and societal dimensions of sustainability. Thus, there is the need of not only raising awareness, but acquiring a sustainability literacy, in the sense of a functional education that will provide the necessary skills and motives to cope with the challenges of and contribute to sustainable development. As a result, it is essential to provide an innovative pedagogy to students of higher education that will be the policy makers of tomorrow. In particular, their education should be exploring sustainability and the complexity among its different dimensions; moreover, it should provide the necessary means for the students to experience processes of complex decision making, sharpen, their clarity of thought, enhance their communication abilities and help them develop critical thinking as well as key competences to address the complexities of sustainable development. This type of education needs to become a learning process move towards being transformed into a more experiential and student-centered way of learning: thus helping students to constantly assess the environment, operating and adapting to it through processes of revision from their frames of reference and provide the appropriate materials to comprehend systemic complexity. The objective of the SUSTAIN project is to commence and promote sustainable literacy among students of higher education (and young people in general) through an innovative and student-centered education. To achieve this objective, we will design, develop and implement a course to be taught in students of higher education; a course hybrid in nature, as it will combine game-based learning with an analytical style of education. In detail: 1) The course will deal with transportation sustainability, societal metabolism and decision making under those contexts. The purpose will be to teach students the definitions of those notions, how they are translated in everyday life, and formalize the mathematics necessary to make robust decisions. 2) The project team will develop small, illustrative simulation models that will make the definitions more concrete and allow students to experiment in a consequence-free environment. The simulation models can be used to identify scenario exemplars on how we can achieve sustainable urban transportation and a balanced societal metabolism, while taking into account formal decision making process. Thus, greater insights will be provided to the policy makers of the future regarding the complexities of decisions in uncertain issues where many stakeholders are involved. 3) The approach of the SUSTAIN project is hybrid and as such the material develop so far, will be translated, in elements and mechanics of a Serious Game. The purpose is to create a board game that will allow students to learn about transportation sustainability and societal metabolism through playing. One important aspect of the design of the game it will be that it will avoid to be just an informational/fact-delivering game; the core design principle will combine delivery of facts with experiential elements that will allow students to explore their own sustainability goals and the means to achieve them. The project team envisages that the impact of the project will be in three ares: - At the European (and EU) level, the project will provided added value in the efforts of the EU to disseminate the principles of sustainability, while at the same time educate the future generation of policy makers to be better equipped to promote and achieve the SDGs. Furthermore, the project will continue the effort for an enhanced education that will utilize and incorporate the principles of game-based learning and IC Technologies. - For the partners of the project, the impact will take the form of a strengthened cooperation and networking of different organizations among different European countries and with different scopes and experiences. At the same time, it will strengthen the role of the participating partners in their respective areas, as the project will bring cutting-edge research closer to students and citizens. - Finally, for the students that will participate in the project, the new course will provide a more student-centered education that will inform them on important EU and global issues, and at the same time help teach them develop the key competences to deal with complex situations that they will have to face. The project will bring them in touch with the work performed by the partners and connect them with other facets of the European culture.