<< Objectives >>We aim to create a Maker ABC, a guide for the exchange of best practices between stakeholders of the maker movement, a contemporary subculture, promoting the values of environmentally conscious design and production, community engagement and sustainable business modeling, in line with the UN sustainable development goals.<< Implementation >>The project activities include:- three adult education training on essential areas of focus: entrepreneurship, sustainable development and community engagement, for adult learners, representative of the maker movement: makerspace coordinators, makers, educators, policy experts- The Maker ABC, a best practices guide to be used as a tool to support entrepreneurs and educators- meetings with local and international representatives of the maker movement - sharing of best practices with the gen<< Results >>1) the development of key competences for adult learners connected with the maker movement.2) the creation of synergies between local and international actors of the maker movement.3) The Maker ABC Best Practices Guide - a methodology on how entrepreneurship, sustainable development and community engagement can support actors involved in the maker movement to thrive and to raise awareness about the maker movement among policy makers

The raise of Fab Labs and maker spaces are creating new opportunities for citizen-driven innovation in a myriad domains ranging from open hardware to digital fabrication, community informatics, and participatory sensing. In the past five years, the broad availability of open hardware tools, the creation of online data sharing platforms, and access to maker spaces have fostered the design of low cost and open source sensors that independent communities of citizens can appropriate to engage in environmental action. By collectively measuring and making sense of changes in environmental phenomena citizens can become aware of how their lifestyle affects the ecosystem and be inspired to adopt more sustainable behaviours at the individual and community levels. Making Sense will show how open source software, open source hardware, digital maker practices and open design can be effectively used by local communities to appropriate their own technological sensing tools, make sense of their environments and address pressing environmental problems in air, water, soil and sound pollution. To achieve this, the project will develop a Making Sense Toolkit based on the Smart Citizen platform for bottom up citizen science, developed at Fab Lab Barcelona. The toolkit will be tested in pilots in Amsterdam, Barcelona and Prishtina, aimed at deepening our understanding on the processes enabling collective awareness. Based on the pilots, we will develop a conceptual and methodological framework for participatory environmental maker practices. It will show how to provide citizens and communities with appropriate tools to enhance their everyday environmental awareness, to enable active intervention in their surroundings, and to change their individual and collective practices. And finally we will develop will develop a scientifically informed framework for citizen co-inquiry and action towards hands-on transformation of their surroundings.

RURACTIVE aims to foster a just and sustainable transition of rural areas by developing smart, community-led, tailor-made, place-based and inclusive solutions within local Multi-Actor Rural Innovation Ecosystems (RIEs) in 12 pilot area (Dynamos - Ds) in 7 EU, 2 Associated Countries and Switzerland. RURACTIVE will unlock the innovation potential of rural communities by addressing six integrated Rural Development Drivers (RDDs) – namely multimodal mobility, energy transition, agri-food and agroecology, culture and cultural innovation, health and wellbeing, nature-based and cultural tourism – and transversally integrating climate change mitigation and adaption, biodiversity and social justice and inclusion. RURACTIVE will empower rural communities to act for societal change, by making available existing knowledge around smart solutions that integrate various forms of innovation (digital and technological, technical, organizational and social, business models and financial) and enhancing rural communities' capacities and skills, by providing training, capacity building, and knowledge transfer. Implementing a methodology for RIEs establishment in 12 Ds, RURACTIVE will work towards inclusive decision-making processes for all, including vulnerable groups and people at risk of exclusion, providing RIEs with instruments and capacities to collaboratively co-develop, co-implement and co-monitor smart and community-led solutions. Also, by offering an open set of data-driven tools (Decision Support Tool, Adaptive Monitoring tool), a digital infrastructure (RURACTIVE Digital Hub), and defining a programme for external Innovators, RURACTIVE will provide a fertile ground for change in rural areas. Results will be out-scaled through knowledge exchanges and networking at EU level (open contest for Additional Ds and RURACTIVE Forum), the deployment of training and capacity building activities for further rural communities and the creation of open e-learning courses and MOOC.

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.

The vision of FOSTER is to build a foundation from which a new Knowledge and Innovation System (KIS) for Europe’s food system can emerge. The current structure is insufficient to address the emerging challenges of nourishing people in a healthy and sustainable way. Key objective is to gain insights into how it can be built to be more inclusive and better governed. FOSTER shall help to transform Europe’s food system outcomes and will achieve this by: - building a FOSTER Platform including food system-state of the art knowledge, foresight by semi-automated Horizon scanning, trend and threats-analysis and new multi-dimensional scenarios of EU food systems to 2040; - implementing the FOSTER Academy -including 4 Summer Schools- for integrating food system-related disciplines and citizen science to enhance food system understanding across the ERA; - initiating and assessing a co-creation and co-learning process within six national resp. regional Citizen Driven Initiatives (CDIs), in which new knowledge, strategies and Action Research Agendas are gained; - scaling out and deep CDIs solutions and approaches to other territorial contexts; - studying different R&I mechanisms of policy support for mission-oriented R&I policy for food systems transformation, and analysing and ground-proofing them in each CDI; - strengthening science-policy interfaces by co-learning processes with external experts and developing recommendations for food systems R&I policies tailored to different geographies and sectors; - identifying the trigger points to help ‘unlock’ system lock-ins and support further dynamics towards system transformation; - and applying reflective monitoring on all FOSTER’s co-learning activities to develop insights into how the KIS can be broadened from an agricultural-KIS to a food system-KIS. To inspire adoption of FOSTER learnings, over 20 workshops and a final conference will be conducted; scientific position papers and policy briefs will be widely communicated.