Cimulact as one of the success project from Horizon 2020

• Organised an event with citizens and experts to discuss research programme scenarios.
• Organised an open online consultation.
• Participated in the Pan European Conference in Brussels to define research topics.
• Informed relevant Croatian stakeholders and wider public about the projects, results and used methodology.

Citizens and stakeholders were engaged in a highly participatory debate/consultation/process. One of ODRAZ’s main focuses was related to promoting public engagement and co-creation, either to teach stakeholders about the methods or helping them to conduct such processes in their communities. CIMULACT gave us the possibility to learn about new methods, but also gave us a possibility to conduct the whole, very well designed process in the field. So, we gained a new knowledge, but also an experience, which we will use in our further work.

CIMULACT had as the main objective to add to the relevance and accountability of European research and innovation – Horizon 2020 as well as national – by engaging citizens and stakeholders in co-creation of research agendas based on real and validated societal visions, needs and demands. The project expanded the outlook and debate on STI issues, increased scientific literacy in a broad sense, which includes the understanding of the societal role of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), and created a shared understanding between scientific stakeholders, policy-makers and citizens.

This multi-actor approach embraced EU28 plus Norway and Switzerland. The CIMULTACT builds on the principle/conviction that the collective intelligence of a society gives Europe a competitive advantage, which may be activated to strengthen the relevance of the European science and technology system. By establishing a genuine dialogue between citizens, stakeholders, scientists, and policymakers visions and scenarios for the desirable futures were developed and debated, and transformed into recommendations and suggestions for research and innovation policies and topics.

• Created vision and scenarios that connect societal needs with future expected advances in Science and their impact on technology, society, environment etc. in connection to the grand challenges.
• Provided concrete input to Horizon 2020 through recommendations and policy options for R&I and simulated calls for the Horizon2020 Work Programmes.
• Engaged citizens and stakeholders in a highly participatory debate/consultation/process on scenarios for desirable sustainable futures and research.
• Strengthened capacities of citizen and multi-actor engagement in R&I through development, experimentation, training and assessment of methods for engagement.
• Facilitated dialogue and shared understanding between policymakers, citizens, and stakeholders.
• Revealed the relative merits of the citizen focused consultations.