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.

Mingei will explore the possibilities of representing and making accessible both tangible and intangible aspects of craft as cultural heritage (CH). Heritage Crafts (HCs) involve craft artefacts, materials, and tools and encompass craftsmanship as a form of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Intangible HC dimensions include dexterity, know-how, and skilled use of tools, as well as, tradition, and identity of the communities in which they are, or were, practiced. HCs are part of the history and have impact upon the economy of the areas in which they flourish. The significance and urgency to the preservation of HCs is underscored, as several are threatened with extinction. Despite their cultural significance efforts for HC representation and preservation are scattered geographically and thematically. Mingei will provide means to establish HC representations based on digital assets, semantics, existing literature and repositories, as well as, mature digitisation and representation technologies. These representations will capture and preserve tangible and intangible dimensions of HCs. Central to craftsmanship is skill and its transmission from master to apprentice. Mingei will capture the motion and tool usage of HC practitioners, from Living Human Treasures and archive documentaries, in order to preserve and illustrate skill and tool manipulation. The represented knowledge will be availed through compelling experiential presentations, using storytelling and educational applications and based on AR and MR and the Internet. Engaging cultural experiences have positive impact on interest growth and tourism, which support HC communities and institutions and foster HC sustainability and preservation. The consortium brings together complementary expertise and content. Pilot themes exhibit richness in tangible and intangible dimensions and are directly related to European history.

People Oriented Transport and Mobility (POTM) holds a great promise for tackling some of the most persistent urban and peri-urban sustainable mobility challenges of common interest to EU cities. Even though researchers, practitioners and policy makers are aware of this potential, the current research and innovation framework is plagued by a surprising lack of evidence and transformative POTM solutions. Cities-4-People brings together a multidisciplinary consortium to introduce a community-driven POTM framework based on participatory, inclusive and transparent innovation processes. We incorporate collective awareness and open innovation to understand the real needs of EU citizens and co-create new mobility solutions with them, harnessing digital and social innovation. Based on a local community setting and supported by cross-disciplinary teams and a comprehensive suite of collaborative technologies (both online and offline), citizens along with public and private city stakeholders will co-develop concepts and endorse concrete solutions – inspired by growing mobility trends (e.g. shared mobility and connected mobility). The best solutions will be put to the real test in a thorough pilot and scale up program in 5 different EU urban areas with rich diversity in terms of size, population density and socio-economic context. In parallel, the project will introduce an open process to co-develop a common Core Outcome Set of definitions, metrics, indicators and methods to guide POTM impact assessment and place, for the first time, the citizen into the equation. We will use this common baseline throughout our evaluations together with some less traditional techniques (e.g. people as sensors, real time user feedback). We believe that this work will act as the first open standard in POTM and will open up the way not only for the structuring of this young research field, but also for the attraction of interest from entrepreneurs, companies as well as investors (social or not).

TCBL uses Europe’s Textiles & Clothing (T&C) industry as test beds for evolutionary-driven co-design, dynamic optimisation and deployment of business models. It aims to increase the performance of a sector that, over the past two decades, upheld three main strategies to handle global competitive pressure: cost-oriented, product/service-oriented and productivity-oriented. TCBL provides a business experimentation framework for exploring variations on such strategies. The framework will be supported by Knowledge Spaces as a generative force and Business Services as an enabling force. A network of Business Labs will be set up, based on three key variations: Design Labs (e.g. creating emotionally-oriented immaterial value), Making Labs (e.g. converting skilled labour into material value), and Place Labs (e.g. generating spatial community- and socially- oriented value). Each of these Labs will explore the issues of cost, product/service and productivity enhancement in a transversal manner and from cross-disciplinary perspectives - including economic, anthropological, and engineering approaches as well as new business values such as environmental and social responsibility, sharing economy, social enterprising, customer-driven small series production (the focus of this call) and emergent or disruptive technologies. With these tools, and supported by an open Associates Programme, TCBL will carry out real-life experimentation and market deployment of a number of Supply Chain, Localisation, Business, Skill Management and Policy innovations involving no fewer than 160 workshops, laboratories and manufacturing plants at EU level with at least 15,000 T&C workers involved. In addition, 10 new innovative companies will be generated within the supply chain of T&C, enabling the diffusion and scaling up of results. By so doing, a knowledge based, transformational ecosystem will be developed, integrated into an open, yet structured platform environment.

Made4You facilitates co-design of open healthcare for people with physical limitations. People’s needs regarding their physical limitations are personal, subjective and diversified. To customize health care solutions, a process of personalization is needed, which cannot be provided through the current industrial focus of ‘one size fits all’. Therefore, the project aims to: - Build an ecosystem, linking existing local communities of citizens with disabilities and their families, healthcare professionals and makers and establish collaboration between these separate communities to develop their own open-source and license interventions. - Provide access to open source and digital fabrication tools enabling citizens with disabilities and healthcare professionals, in co-creation with designers and makers (DIY communities and maker spaces) to create customized self-made solutions to improve quality of life or services provided. - Improve the accessibility of open source products; co-production of products that are tailored to people with special needs or disabilities as well as healthcare professionals and bypassing the limitations of the classical industrial production. - Foster the ecosystem through open exchange of knowledge, case stories and manuals. Within the DIY approach, local production and global knowledge sharing is key. - Build guidelines that allow anyone to replicate formats everywhere, considering the socio-technical aspects as well as relevant legal and regulatory frameworks, quality standards, IPR implications, security, safety and privacy issues. The long-term goal is to affiliate a community of designers, users, fablabs and maker spaces who develop similar projects and replicate events and activities in various cities all around Europe or even globally. This process will produce a critical mass of projects that can be used and build upon: a knowledge-sharing platform that aims to achieve mass adoption and global impact.