Co-Engage (an Erasmus+ project) was a cross sectoral project addressing the intersection of the key competence of Lifelong Learning through its methodology and partnership. By exploring the diversity of approaches of co-creation such as entrepreneurship-building, active citizenship, environmental quality, social inclusion, digital literacy, local policies, formal and non-formal education etc.

One of our key deliverables for the project was an e-book of co-creation best practices from across Europe but, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we decided as a consortium to produce two e-books, with one focussing on co-creation practices that emerged from lockdowns across the continent.

The e-book’s are now available to download using the below links.

Citizens as Co-Designer: Practices on how to engage citizens in community building

COVID Responses: Citizens as actors in a global crisis

At the end of August the Co-Engage project will come to an end and last week saw out its final meeting, hosted by our Polish partners in Warsaw. It was a somewhat sad end to the project for PVM as we were unable to travel for one last in-person meet-up and, instead, had to settle for dialling in on Zoom.

As we move towards the final reporting stage, we also look forward to the publication of the project’s e-book, which we will link to on this blog as soon as it’s available.

The final Co-Engage lab took place in Toulouse at the end of July. Unfortunately, due to coronavirus travel restrictions, Sarah and Georgia from PVM had to attend online, but that didn’t stop it being an enjoyable few days.

The lab focused on the topic of condominiums, with participants working with case studies and co-design practices to solve problems for fictional residents and owners. Hosted in an actual condominium complex by our French partners, we had the opportunity to see an example of such a residential development, as well as meet stakeholders.

As online participants, it was great that our hosts had thought about a way to include us more fully in proceedings as well, giving us specific tasks and a proper roll in the lab, enabling us to have a great time and produce something of value.

With Co-Engage coming to an end later this month, we’ll be able to share the project’s e-book and results with you soon.

At the end of June, the Co-Engage project held the second in its series of training labs to test the co-creation practices it has researched from across Europe.

The lab, organised by School Raising was hosted in Bologna, Italy and focused on applying our learnings so far to co-create a crowdfunding campaign designed to engage citizens in assisting a local school with a project to improve its facilities and educational offering. Unfortunately, due to ongoing COVID travel restrictions, PVM had to attend online, but it was good to see that many of the partners were able to attend in-person – hopefully we’ll be able to join them soon.

The work in the labs included deciding on a project to crowdfund for, brainstorming pledges and settling on the amount we would charge for each one (think The Price is Right!). We also discussed how we could publicise the campaign, settled on a name and shared contacts we could use to help us gain support, before presenting our ideas to each other and finalising the campaign.

Although managing a hybrid training lab with a mix of online and offline participants was certainly a challenge, the School Raising team and the rest of the partners who were attending in person did everything they could to ensure online attendees were able to engage with discussions. We even got a quick tour of the venue at one point!

The next lab is in Toulouse later this month – one we will also be attending online – but, hopefully, come August we’ll be able to meet our Co-Engage partners in-person for the first time in 17 months.

Unfortunately, due to ongoing travel restrictions our second transnational partnership meeting (TNP) for Narratives of Impact couldn’t happen in Milan as previously hoped, so instead we met online for one-and-a-half days of project updates, planning and, if course a good chat about food, wine and travel.

Hosted by COSV, PVM attended along with fellow partners INTRAS, CRN, and SNDE. It was great to catch up with everyone and the meeting felt productive. We’re all excited about this project, which will be releasing its first intellectual output very soon.

One of the highlights was a presentation by one of the project’s stakeholders, Julia Schieber of Friedrich Alexander University of Nuremberg, who talked to us about the Odisseu Project. The project aims to give young people a better understanding of the lives of refugees and has used lived experience storytelling to produce an interactive game where the player can follow one of three characters’ stories as they experience becoming a refugee. On the second day of the meeting we had a chance to play the game and it gave us all some interesting ideas around storytelling, its uses and its impacts.

We’re hoping that for our next TNP in November we can all be together in the same space but, in the meantime, keep an eye on our blog for the release of our first piece of work on this project.