In TRANSFORM three European regions join forces and open up their R&I activities to co-create more responsible approaches to innovation. Lombardy in Italy, Brussels in Belgium and Catalonia in Spain are all leaders in experimenting new pathways for territorial development. TRANSFORM brings them together to design, test and disseminate three sound co-creation methodological frameworks (participatory research agenda setting; design for social innovation; and citizen science). These frameworks will be at the forefront of implementation of Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3). They provide approaches and application areas of responsible and accountable territorial development through new forms of local decision-making. They have also proven beneficial in aligning science, innovation and society, making R&D more responsive to citizens’ needs, concerns and aspirations. The three initiatives will implement a mutual learning process within and beyond Europe, pairing with a parallel co-design exercise in Boston (Massachusetts, US). The work in these three clusters will support and increase co-creation and participatory processes within their R&I ecosystems, both building on existing regional commitments towards transformative opportunities and strengthen the opening effect on the organisations involved. Regional governments involved in TRANSFORM will reflect on, experiment with, learn from and adopt RRI approaches to their R&I policies and actions. Concrete examples of inclusive and sustainable territorial development will be attained, thus providing a set of reliable Policy Recommendations to transforming regional R&I ecosystems towards RRI. TRANSFORM will also be integrated into Strategic Roadmaps for the implementation of RRI within S3, addressed to S3 key players, for maximum benefit across all S3 Thematic Platforms.

PULSE-ART will produce compelling evidence illustrating the positive impact of arts in education for the enhancement of cultural expression and awareness (CAE). At the heart of this initiative lies the concept of integrating art, culture, and heritage institutions, including museums, galleries, cultural centres and overall CCIs, into the educational framework. This integration aims to effectively address the deficiencies of the educational system, hindering the improvement of CAE through the arts. Reference materials will be created and integrated into the Arts in Education for Cultural Awareness Observatory, including a Competency Framework, a Professional Development Programme and a self-reflection tool, which will be validated and tested through 7 case studies in 7 countries using different art techniques with a lifelong learning perspective. Collaborative Hubs between educational institutions, spanning all levels of education, and art and cultural heritage organisations will be created to bridge the identified gaps through innovative and tailored methodologies of arts in education, leveraging the expertise and fostering partnerships. PULSE-ART will guarantee the inclusion of all Children & Young people, with the overarching objective of fostering democracy and civic engagement throughout Europe. Multi-stakeholder engagement at different levels (European, national and local), capacity building, co-creation and mutual learning are key elements of PULSE-ART. The consolidation of local partnerships through the case studies will allow accounting for different educational systems and local contexts, embedding intercultural, inclusivity and gender aspects in the research, while the use of a variety of art techniques in different contexts will enrich the validation of the produced methodologies, products and research outcomes. National action plans and a European policy brief will inform policies to support the inclusion of arts in education to increase CAE.

STEP CHANGE (Science Transformation in EuroPe through Citizens involvement in HeAlth, coNservation and enerGy rEsearch) replies to the H2020 Topic SwafS 27 on “Hands-on citizen science and frugal innovation”, Sub-topic A, citizen science. The project, coordinated by the University of Primorska, is based on the assumption that citizen science (CS) can play an even broader societal and scientific role than it is generally acknowledged, particularly in those critical fields of research (like Energy, Health and the Environment) where human and non-human factors are deeply entangled. In these areas, a set of highly-contested, socially relevant research fields is emerging where CS can play a pivotal role by making science more socially robust, inclusive and democratic while strengthening the capacity of scientific investigation over emerging phenomena that cannot be easily caught within narrow disciplinary boundaries. Then, STEP CHANGE was designed to contribute to making the most of CS potentialities, while at the same time identifying, analysing, and tackling such limitations and risks. In this regard, STEP-CHANGE is based on the implementation of five Citizen Science Initiatives (CSIs) in the areas of Energy, Environment, Health and Infectious Diseases, through the participatory and self-reflexive analysis and evaluation of their collaborative research processes, scientific outcomes and societal impacts. The CSIs regard: 1) wildlife conservation in Slovenia (UP); 2) non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in the UK (TGI, NIHR and OUXF); 3); energy communities in Germany (WECF); 4) infectious disease outbreak preparedness in Italy (UNITOV); 5) off-grid renewable energy in agriculture in Uganda (ARUWE). Horizontal activities are also foreseen: Scoping process (SfC), Participatory evaluation (K&I, AU), Mutual learning and training (ZSI), Stocktaking (ECSA) and Communication (EUSEA). The consortium is geographically balanced and formed by 13 partners, from 7 European countries and Uganda.

In ANERIS, we propose to develop the next generation of scientific instrumentation tools and methods for sensing marine-life. The design of the new instruments and methods will integrate different types of marine life-sensing technologies: genomics, imaging-biooptics and participatory sciences. The technologies will be implemented in a co-design framework, involving all the interested stakeholders: academia, industry, civil society and government. The project proposes the concept of Operational Marine Biology (OMB), understood as a biodiversity information system for systematic and long-term routine measurements of the ocean and coastal life, and their rapid interpretation and dissemination. The production of FAIR Operational Marine Biology data will be carried out in a distributed IT infrastructure built from edge and cloud compute nodes, to be connected with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The technologies will be tested and validated in different case studies, involving the ANERIS innovations, commercial instruments to be improved and different world-class research infrastructures (RI). The project will develop a training program for the operation and use of these new solutions for all the involved stakeholders and particularly the research infrastructures staff. Overall, the project proposes to benefit all the actors involved in the quintuple helix framework of innovation, promoting innovation and knowledge sharing among them: (1) the academy with new life-sensing technologies to use in research; (2) the industry with new technologies and methods to exploit; (3) the governments, with improved observational systems and data products to be used in environmental management directives; (4) the civil society, empowered through the proposed participative technologies and large collaborative networks and (5) the Research Infrastructures, integrating new generation of sensing instruments and methods, and their staff being trained on those new technologies.

The overall objective of ECS is to widen and strengthen the European Citizen Science community through capacity building and awareness raising activities such as the creation of a European Citizen Science Academy and the establishment of a network of 28 ECS Ambassadors. ECS will capitalise on EU-funded actions such as the EU-Citizen.Science platform and Cos4Cloud to support links and collaboration between members of the European Citizen Science community, who will be involved in the co-design and co-creation of a large variety of services, strategic priorities, training opportunities and policy recommendations. A key focus is on inclusivity, which will be achieved through dedicated actions such as engaging libraries affiliated to the Public Libraries 2030 network to attract underrepresented publics, as well as ad-hoc support to countries/regions lacking citizen science networks, platforms and policy recognition. ECS will create extensive capacity building opportunities by engaging in particular excellent researchers in a variety of disciplines, for example through the involvement of the Marie Curie Alumni Association, and emerging Horizon Europe Missions, Clusters, and wider ERA activities, to allow easy access for newcomers in citizen science activities. ECS is committed to push modern science towards open science as its modus operandi by providing open collaborative spaces where citizen scientists can familiarise with the concept of "open and FAIR data with open and FAIR tools" and get actively engaged, while connecting with existing e-infrastructures such as EOSC through the collaborative development of data/metadata services. The engagement of the Global Citizen Science Partnership will guarantee wide international cooperation. These efforts will result in a number of key scientific, societal and policy impacts which will strongly contribute to securing Europe's global position as a leader in citizen science throughout the entire research and innovation system.