The ESIRA project is pleased to announce the upcoming Scientific Dissemination Workshop & Community of Practice (CoP) Session, taking place on 17 December 2025 at 10:00 CET, online on MS Teams.

Under the title “From Collaboration to Action: How Multi-Actor Platforms Shape Rural Innovation,” this event, chaired by Sonia Marcos, Beatriz Izquierdo and María Elena Nogueira, will explore the transformative role of Multi-Actor Platforms (MAPs) within social innovation and social economy initiatives in rural areas. The workshop will analyse how MAPs contribute to bottom-up rural innovation, support community-driven development, and strengthen social economy ecosystems.

Rural regions across Europe continue to face structural challenges such as depopulation, ageing, and social fragmentation. Multi-actor approaches (MAA), widely adopted in Horizon Europe projects, offer a promising pathway to addressing these complex issues by bringing together diverse stakeholders to co-create solutions grounded in real community needs. As an instrument of responsible research and innovation, MAPs enable more participatory, demand-driven, and socially relevant outcomes.

This workshop provides a timely opportunity to reflect on the successes, obstacles, and lessons learned from ongoing and completed EU projects that have implemented MAPs, Rural Labs, Living Labs, and other participatory infrastructures for collaborative innovation.

Registration link

CALL FOR PARTICIPATIONS

ESIRA team invites EU Horizon projects (ongoing or completed) to contribute by presenting their experiences with the multi-actor approach. Submissions may address one or more of the following themes:

• Experiences of processes involving the establishment of these MAPs; 
• Participation issues of MAP members, understanding of the motivations that drive participation and studies focused on the profile of participants (gender, age, rural resident, individual-collective representation);
• Potential and challenges of this methodology as a tool for creating social capital and promoting social economy initiatives in rural areas;
• Advantages and disadvantages of multi-actor platform work: How can successful initiatives be generated;
• Collaborative work in multi-actor platforms: Building networks with other collectives, public and private institutions, and similar platforms;
• Who participates in the platforms? An analysis of the sociodemographic aspects connected to these participation instruments.

Each presentation will last a maximum of 10 minutes, followed by discussion.

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE SESSION: “LESSONS LEARNED AND FUTURE CHALLENGES”

A roundtable discussion will gather 4–5 participants with hands-on experience in multi-actor approaches. They will reflect on key questions, including:

• Key outcomes of the participatory process, 
• Whether these participatory structures have been maintained once the project has concluded, 
• How they may have changed, 
• If new participatory structures have emerged in the rural territory,  
• Key factors underlying the main opportunities and challenges of these structures. 

If you are interested in participating in the Scientific Dissemination Workshop or the Community of Practice Session, please submit your application at the following link by December 12th:

Participation link

We look forward to receiving your applications.