On 12 October 2021, TRANSFORM organised a participatory lab ‘Citizen engagement TRANSFORMing regional R&I policymaking’ within the European Week of Regions and Cities.
The session brought together an audience with a genuine interest in citizen engagement from different regions of Europe, representing public authorities, academia and research, as well as NGOs and CSOs.
First, the speakers briefly presented three citizen engagement methodologies – co-design, co-creation and citizen science – tested in TRANSFORM regional clusters in Lombardy, Brussels-Capital and Catalonia. This was followed by an open discussion in breakout rooms where participants explored how these three methodologies can help enhance regional R&I decision-making, discussing the benefits but also various challenges that might arise in the process. The outcomes of these discussions were clustered and presented to the audience, also giving space to participants to share their thoughts and views.