Layers of Values: Exploring Impact in Culture, Art and Education
On 25 September 2025, in the framework of MONDIACULT 2025, Layers of values: Exploring Impact in Culture, Art and Education will take place as an international meeting dedicated to advancing inclusive impact assessment in the arts, culture, and education sectors. In a time when social inclusion, civic participation, emotional well-being, and ecological transition are urgent priorities, the convergence of arts, culture, and education has proven to be a driver for building more diverse, resilient, and imaginative societies. Yet, despite the richness of this field, many initiatives still operate in isolation, and valuable learning remains fragmented. The event will gather projects, practitioners, and researchers working at the intersection of culture, education, and research to address complex evaluation challenges: capturing intangible outcomes, defining success with vulnerable groups or informal settings, and measuring layered impacts that go beyond simple metrics. Drawing on the New European Bauhaus values — beauty, sustainability, and inclusion — it will offer a space for peer exchange, co-creation, and methodological innovation. Organised by the EU-funded PULSE-ART project, in cooperation with European Citizen Science (ECS), the meeting aims to embed diversity not as an optional goal, but as a foundational condition for equitable impact. It will also strengthen connections between cultural, educational, and citizen science initiatives, paving the way for shared tools and collaborative frameworks. If your work touches on culture, education, or citizen science — and you are committed to developing rigorous, inclusive evaluation practices — this event offers a unique opportunity to exchange knowledge and shape the future of impact assessment
Education for Climate Community Café - How do you become an Energy Community?
AURORA - Joint event with the Education for Climate Group Community Café 10th September 2025 from 17.00hrs - 18.00hrs Topic School Energy Communities To join the event register here - https://education-for-climate.ec.europa.eu/community/challenge_hub/event/community-cafe-september, This is an exciting event where you can learn about how the Palomeras Cultural Centre School in Spain has pioneered the first school Energy Community in Madrid with the AURORA project. The school, in a working class area of Madrid, has installed solar energy on the roof tops of their buildings, along with two air source heat pumps to keep the classrooms cool in summer. Funds of €140,000 have been raised from their community, staff and parents of the school, along with students and professors from the Technical University of Madrid as part of a share offer. This means everyone can have a stake in the energy transition. Lower energy bills, no capital cost to the school and a small return on investments from everyone supporting the scheme. It really is true that such transformations not only lower carbon emissions, supporting efforts to reach net zero carbon, but they also lower costs by diverting what would have been fossil fuel profits, back into the local community. The renewable energy generated will also be tracked via the AURORA energy tracker app to allow investors to see the energy being generated and to offset their own personal carbon emissions based on the investment they have made. It will join other projects at Aarhus University Denmark and Ljubljana University Slovenia already connected to the AURORA Energy Tacker app . Could schools in your country follow their lead and be the first school in your town, in your city, moving away from fossil fuels towards the future of clean renewable energy. A teacher from the school will explain what it is has meant to the students and staff of the Palomeras Cultural Centre school in Spain. The whole café event will be an opportunity for open discussion, facilitated by Martin Brocklehurst from the AURORA PROJECT, so that you can understand how to follow the lead that has been set. Looking to the future EU Legislation has also recently changed allowing the export of surplus renewable energy from community energy schemes through the grid to be sold to users around the installation. Once enacted into National law this would allow the export of surplus energy from Schools during holiday periods to users around the school. A great idea for public swimming pools for instance seeking to heat the pool during the summer holidays when usage rates are at their highest. The future looks bright for community energy schemes. In the UK, once the Governments strange block on Power Purchase Agreements on public buildings is removed we can perhaps also follow the EU lead and recommence community energy schemes on schools buildings.
Cluster event: Advancing Public Engagement and Citizen Science in the ERA
The event will celebrate citizen science and showcase the value of public engagement, highlighting best practices, guiding future policy, sharing knowledge and building collaboration. The 2025 EU Citizen Science Prize winners will also be announced! REA is proud to co-host a cluster event which will gather researchers and policymakers to discuss the impact of public engagement on evidence-based policymaking. In addition, - The event will provide a platform to showcase successful and innovative citizen engagement strategies, while reinforcing the value of “Bringing science closer to citizens” within the European Research Area. - EU-funded research projects will present their citizen science and public engagement experience and share best practices. - The winners of the EU Prize for Citizen Science will be announced. The Prize rewards outstanding citizen science initiatives that address social, political, cultural, and environmental challenges through the involvement of citizens. The full event will take place in Brussels. Those connected online will be able to follow the plenary session (in the morning) and the winners' announcement (in the afternoon). The event is co-organised by REA and EU-funded projects IMPETUS and ECS.
CitSciHelvetia is the Swiss Citizen Science Conference. CitSciHelvetia connects Swiss stakeholders in Citizen Science and participatory research in general, promoting the exchange of experiences and shared learning between the three language and cultural regions. It serves as the platform for professional exchange with Science et Cité hosting the second Swiss Citizen Science Conference. CitSciHelvetia'23 will take place on March 29 and 30, 2023 at Landhaus Solothurn. It follows the motto “Citizen Science – Making impact participatory!”. The conference addresses project leaders and project staff of Citizen Science projects, representatives of universities, research institutions, NGOs and associations as well as people who engage themselves in Citizen Science on an institutional level. In addition, the conference addresses representatives of science communication, transdisciplinary and participatory research, and Open Science. Registration for the Swiss Citizen Science Conference is open until March 8, 2023.
The role of photographic heritage in empowering communities participation in cultural heritage
This event is organized by Photoconsortium in cooperation with the University of Pisa and will be hosted at the Museum of Graphics in Pisa (Italy). The event will take the form of a 1-day conference with leading speakers from the CitizenHeritage consortium partners and other experts in digital cultural heritage, in Social Sciences and Humanities research and in the use of participatory approaches in a cultural and/or educational context. The main aim of the event will be to offer insights about successful stories of citizen participation in Cultural Heritage Institutions and Higher Education Institutions. In addition to the conference programme, a digitization desk will be organized, inviting participants to share heritage photos from their family albums, which will be digitized on the spot by a professional photographer. The stories associated with the image(s) will be collected and converted in appropriate metadata to accompany the digital objects. The collected records will be aggregated by Photoconsortium and offered to Europeana for publication.
Open cultural data in citizen science
This roundtable discusses the concept of citizen science as a participatory research methodology in cultural heritage and reviews good practices in creating and communicating open cultural data in citizen science initiatives. Speakers: Mariana Ziku, Fred Truyen, Susanna Anäs, Katerina Zourou, Sofie Taes
Art Pluriverse: A Community Science Series
The Biennale of Western Balkans opens a month-long online programme of collective actions for intangible cultural heritage and open knowledge. The programme focuses on empowering communities of practice in the Balkan region, documenting their cultural knowledge in cooperative, ethical and accessible ways. The 1st edition aims to uplift local knowledge and intangible cultural practices related to textiles, through the development of FAIR community archives and research-based art creation. Share the open calls and join as a partner.