AGORA - Advancing innovative coGeneration Options for Revitalising local Areas

Priority

Innovative and socially responsible Danube region - Increase competences for business and social innovation

Project Idea Promoter
(name of the institution)

URBASOFIA

Needs and challenges
(Needs, main problems or challenges to be addressed)

Current schemes and tools for running effective and efficient multi-level governance are not yet properly operating in Europe, especially in the Danube macro-region. In the current macroeconomic trend, there are no more financial resources for large-scale transformations and renewal projects to address for the major societal challenges. In this context, new policy approaches are needed in order to produce effective answers to current social, economic and cultural challenges, but without homogenizing contexts and needs.

Processes supporting local revitalization and development need to act as catalysts, allowing institutionalization and hybridization of new concrete practices, actions and policies aiming at reactivating spaces and giving them meaning. Revising competencies, reinventing programs and recovering space for new economies are the three key pillars of the AGORA proposal: an integrative bottom-up approach to redefine the instruments for generating place-based quality of life.

Objectives
(main and specific objectives to be achieved)

AGORA aims at co-producing new policy strategies for social innovation, revising competencies and roles of the public and private actors, reinventing programs and recovering space for new economies within a networked system of learning and innovation:
1. Setting up scalable networked systems of innovation in AGORA partner countries: enlarging the decision-making framework in AGORA partner areas through workshops, building the capacities of both local actors as well as public administrations, experimenting with new roles and informal institutions, in order to generate better services and opportunities.
2. Enhancing local social and economic capacity by co-creating Community Space Innovation Agendas (CSIA), as instruments to rethink local potentials and open up new spaces and new businesses, leveraging on endogenous social and economic capacity.
3. Generating replicable new business models, organizational structures and public services for maximizing social and economic impact of the CSIA.

Main results and core outputs

The project proposes a 360-degree approach to social innovation, opening up the public sector value chain to the citizens and working both with the latter (bottom-up) as well as at transnational level to bring organizational innovation in the local administration. Main outputs:
- Social Innovation Communities Benchmarking toolkit
- Multilevel governance and co-production workshops
- AGORA local communities and transnational atlas of stakeholders
- Community Space Innovation Agendas in territorial partners
- Business plans and co-creation pilots for public services
- Policy paper and toolkit for cities and stakeholders
- Online science shop and innovation platform
- Training and capitalization seminars

Main foreseen activities

WP1 Project Management
WP2 Communication
WP3 Systemic assessment (governance, socio-economic baseline, best practices)
WP4 Creation of AGORA local communities
WP5 Community space innovation agendas
WP6 Services and solution co-creation
WP7 Transfer and capitalization

Innovative character of the project idea

AGORA is highly innovative not only in terms of methodology, but also outputs: participatory policy making and co-creation of public services have not yet been tested with concrete results at this scale, and the AGORA policy paper will be the first document addressing the profound paradigm change in decision making at local level in the very specific Danube Region area with concrete, transferable tools and results. On the long term, through capacity building and the embedding of innovative economies and engagement approaches proposed, AGORA has the potential of being one of the building blocks for structural change in multi-level governance.

Estimated Total Budget
(in EUR)

2600000

Estimated duration
(in months)

36

ERDF Partners

LP Cluj Napoca, partners from Romania (2), Slovenia (2), Bulgaria (3), Hungary (1), Germany (2), Austria (1)

IPA Partners

Partners from Serbia

Associated Strategic Partners

PAC10 EUSDR, ASPs from The Netherlands, Italy, France

ERDF Partners

Territorial partners (cities, metropolitan areas, partners able to perform the piloting activities) from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Austria. We also welcome ICT expertise partners from these countries.

IPA Partners

Territorial partners from Montenegro, Serbia

Associated Strategic Partners

ASPs providing expertise in temporary use and reuse, new technologies, policy planning, public services

Name

Sabina Dimitriu

Address

Iancu de Hunedoara Blvd., Bucharest, Romania

Country

Romania

Telephone number

+40773702216

E-mail address

sabina.dimitriu@urbasofia.eu

Is the applicant the project's potential Lead Partner?

If not, is the potential Lead Partner already being chosen?