The overall objective of NBS EduWORLD is to nurture an NBS literate society, supporting a just transition to a sustainable future. For this, NBS EduWORLD will create an NBS community that facilitates synergies between NBS professionals and education providers and ensures free and easy access to NBS knowledge and resources for all. To achieve this goal, NBS EduWORLD will summarise the state of play of NBS education in Europe and evaluate the initiatives already in place, determine how to expand and replicate them and establish a basis and framework for the project itself and future initiatives, resulting in guidance and (policy) recommendations. In parallel, the project will analyse NBS demonstrators, with an educational dimension (Tier-1), across Europe (NBS EduSystems), to support the testing and improvement of approaches and resources with NBS demonstrators with no or a limited educational dimension (Tier-2) and create the means and opportunities for all NBS practitioners to engage with educators, inter alia via Tier-3 NBS EduSystems. This will be done whilst supporting the overarching goal of promoting NBS as a viable career prospect for European citizens of all ages. To adequately engage educators who are at different points on their NBS journey, the project will provide specific activities for those who are not yet familiar with the concept and benefits of NBS, and those already aware but in need of support to progress to the next stage. These activities will be scaled up/out by extensive dissemination and communication activities to maximise the project’s outreach and ensure its long-term success. Only by joining with NBS experts + Education Experts + Civil Society + supportive policies can we create an NBS EduWORLD - a community that makes a difference.

EPIC-WE introduces cultural game jams, culture- and value-sensitive game-making and games through and for culture as a novel approach to empower young people as co-creators of European culture and shapers of their own futures in society, cultural institutions (CHIs) and creative industries (CIs). The backbone of the project is the EPIC-WE helix ecosystem - a transferable framework where youth, CHIs, CIs and higher education institutions (HEIs) cooperate as actors in the ecosystem. Together EPIC-WE engage in cultural games jams to create games through and for culture inspired by cultural heritage. The framework explores the potentials of this approach as a method for strengthening European values, belonging and cultural participation. Through game-making activities, EPIC-WE will equip youth with cultural-creative imagination and competencies to face societal challenges with curiosity, creativity, agency and imagination – what we call Empowered Participation. The project is carried out as an ambitious Design-Based Research and Innovation (DBR) action across three European sites, where EPIC-WE ecosystem actors co-create, and through this, develop, implement and evaluate the proposed framework. The validated DBR innovations are presented as accessible resources that enable organisations across Europe to replicate the EPIC-WE ecosystem, formats, and methods. Through extensive research, capacity building and policy advocacy activities, EPIC-WE will ensure that the project’s results reach a wide range of European CHI, CI and HEI actors, including the game industry, civil society organizations and youth. The consortium is in itself a helix ecosystem, bringing together leading research, cultural and creative sector organisations with multidisciplinary excellence in DBR, participatory and value-sensitive design, game design and youth engagement to empower youth as future culture-makers and game-makers in CHIs, CCIs and HEIs and as value-sensitive agents of change in society.

SPROUT provides a new city-led innovative and data driven policy response to address the impacts of the emerging mobility patterns, digitally-enabled operating & business models, and transport users’ needs. Previously tested and implemented policy responses employing access restrictions, congestion charging or infrastructure provision, seem today, unable to adequately address the changes underway in the urban mobility scene. Furthermore, any policy responses should take into all stages of the policy lifecycle and should have an eye not only to the present but also to the future. Therefore, starting from an understanding of the transition taking place in urban mobility, SPROUT will define the resultant impacts at the sustainability and policy level, will harness these through a city-led innovative policy response, will build cities’ data-driven capacity to identify, track and deploy innovative urban mobility solutions, and will navigate future policy by channelling project results at local, regional, national and EU level. To achieve its goals, SPROUT will employ 6 city pilots (including China) with real-life policy challenges faced as a result of urban mobility transition in both passenger & freight, covering urban and peri-urban areas, different emerging mobility solutions, and context requirements. The project pays special attention to the needs of vulnerable groups and users with different cultural backgrounds, taking also into account gender issues. SPROUT ensures an active participation of numerous representatives from authorities of small & medium-sized cities through a 3-layer structure of cities’ engagement approach, and through the creation of an Open Innovation Community on Urban Mobility Policy.

Blue-Action will provide fundamental and empirically-grounded, executable science that quantifies and explains the role of a changing Arctic in increasing predictive capability of weather and climate of the Northern Hemisphere.To achieve this Blue-Action will take a transdisciplinary approach, bridging scientific understanding within Arctic climate, weather and risk management research, with key stakeholder knowledge of the impacts of climatic weather extremes and hazardous events; leading to the co-design of better services.This bridge will build on innovative statistical and dynamical approaches to predict weather and climate extremes. In dialogue with users, Blue-Arctic will take stock in existing knowledge about cross-sectoral impacts and vulnerabilities with respect to the occurrence of these events when associated to weather and climate predictions. Modeling and prediction capabilities will be enhanced by targeting firstly, lower latitude oceanic and atmospheric drivers of regional Arctic changes and secondly, Arctic impacts on Northern Hemisphere climate and weather extremes. Coordinated multi-model experiments will be key to test new higher resolution model configurations, innovative methods to reduce forecast error, and advanced methods to improve uptake of new Earth observations assets are planned. Blue-Action thereby demonstrates how such an uptake may assist in creating better optimized observation system for various modelling applications. The improved robust and reliable forecasting can help meteorological and climate services to better deliver tailored predictions and advice, including sub-seasonal to seasonal time scales, will take Arctic climate prediction beyond seasons and to teleconnections over the Northern Hemisphere. Blue-Action will through its concerted efforts therefore contribute to the improvement of climate models to represent Arctic warming realistically and address its impact on regional and global atmospheric and oceanic circulation.