13 participants (11 beneficiaries and two affiliated entities) from 7 EU and 1 third countries join forces for supporting the Strategic Research Agenda of the future joint research program on the subject of Blockchain by shedding light on the current partial and fragmented picture of block chain technology (BCT) applications in the agri-food domain and by clarifying the benefits and opportunities which BCT can concretely to stakeholders throughout the food chain offer. The project intends to prepare the way for R&I activities for the decade to come, basing its assumptions on systematic monitoring and reviews of national, European and international R&I pilots/use cases, experiences and best practices and on consolidated and balanced stakeholder views. The active involvement of users is required from the very beginning for the identification of needs and use cases, which will be subsequently translated into operational requirements for services. The goal of the project is to understand why communities, i.e. users, accept/reject blockchain-based projects, the mistakes done by others for not repeating them, the best and innovative practices in blockchain development in agri-food sector (considering its complexity) for arriving to shape different possible futures for BC application. The project will investigate and discuss both technical aspects as well as non-technical barriers to BCTs deployment, but also other issues fostering BCTs deployment, such as interoperability, innovative business models, standardisation and regulatory issues and will be at the base of White Papers addressed to EC. At the same time, the project intends to provide to users some a framework of services (and guidelines) for empowering them in future BCT implementation.

If the link between inequalities and declining levels of trust in the political institutions of democracy in Europe has already been shown, the various ways in which both citizens and institutions are trying to face these inequalities and (re)build a sustainable common future remain somewhat under-documented. Indeed, this lacuna becomes even more pronounced when one considers those attempts that go beyond conventional forms of state-led participation. Responding to this gap, the aim of Fairville is to both document and propose pilot models of urban intervention that engage local academics, -authorities, -community-based organisations, -residents and -users in the collective improvement of deprived urban neighbourhoods via a deepening of resident and user participation in new and existing democratic processes. The idea that urban policies should not be made "for" populations but rather “with" them is a potentially profound engine of social transformation and empowerment. However, the realisation of such co-production processes is often marked by epistemic inequalities and unequal power relations. Cognisant of this issue, the Fairville pilot cases all place an emphasis on exploring the ways in which academic researchers, local communities and local authority representatives can work together to reduce the power and information asymmetries that exist between them. Clustered around three major themes - environmental inequalities, inequalities related to housing and urban planning and inequalities related to climate risks – and ranging from co-diagnosis to co-planning and intervention, the pilots will be carried out as action research and include the implementation of observation, capitalisation and co-evaluation mechanisms. The results of these pilot cases will be widely disseminated to the institutions and citizens concerned and we will work collectively to encourage policy transfer and outreach.