We make transition! – Towards sustainable and resilient societies through empowered civil society and collaborative innovation project kicked off in Jan 2023! BISER is happy to be one of 11 partners to work for the next 3 years on transitioning the BSR into more resilent and innovative region!
We live with complex ecological and social challenges. Local authorities have a crucial role in driving resilience – societal ability to adapt and react – but due to complexity of the sustainability challenge, they need to mobilise all levels of society to develop solutions that enable a needed change in our traditional ways of doing things.
Various civil society actors – such as NGOs, associations, social entrepreneurs, cooperatives, communities, individuals – have an important role in helping public services to cope with external disturbances. Local authorities however often lack efficient methods for systematic interaction with civil society actors. A key challenge is to integrate civil society actors in innovation efforts and adapt the support structures to encompass also the eco-social dimension on the side of economic dimension.
We make transition! -project will engage a great number of regional and local authorities, civil society and other innovation actors from partner regions and beyond to learn, pilot and adapt a so-called Transition Arena method – a strategic tool of transition management. In this project the method is adapted to co-create a transnational inclusive sustainability vision, and at local levels pathways and concrete steps to sustainability transition focusing on the role of various civil society organisations.
Each partner region will pilot transition arenas that will focus on selected sustainability topics, such as sustainable consumtion and sharing economy, food, mobility, construction, employment…
The project will provide regional and local authorities experiences and concrete knowledge on how to utilise Transition Arena method in a practical way as a tool of engaging various actors, also from the grassroot level, to co-create solutions for eco-social sustainability.
Key activities of the project include:
– Focus groups in each partner region with public sector and civil society participation
– Online workshops on transition management and role of civil society actors
– Select a transnational group of change agents to create a transnational inclusive sustainability vision for the Baltic Sea region
– Organise transition arena in each partner location in cooperation with local authorities
– Workshops for local and regional authorities on how to utilise transition arena method to empower and co-create eco-social sustainability solutions with civil society and other innovation actors.
Partners:
1. The Baltic Institute of Finland (Lead partner)
2. Council of Tampere Region, Finland
3. Regional Council of Helsinki-Uusimaa, Finland
4. Council of Southwest Finland, Finland
5. DD StratLab, Estonia
6. Social Innovation Centre, Latvia
7. Vidzeme Planning Region
8. City of Gdynia, Poland
9. Baltic Institute of European and Regional Affairs – BISER, Poland
10. Trondelag Region, Norway
11. University of Bremen, Germany
Contact in the BISER
Project Manager – Magdalena Strzelczyk magdalena.strzelczyk@biser.org.pl
Contact in the Baltic Institute of Finland
Johanna Leino, Development manager
e-mail: johanna.leino(at)tampere.fi
The Project is co-financed by the EU Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme.
Total project budget is EUR 3,3 million, out of which EU co-funding is EUR 2,5 million.
