RRI-LEADERS adopts a meso-level approach, and will explore the application and sustainability of the RRI paradigm within territorial innovation systems. In RRI-LEADERS a “territory” is understood as a confluence between three interconnected primary aspects: geographical location, socio-economic and cultural bonds, and administrative authority. The project will involve four distinct territories from different parts of Europe, representing different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, different scope of territorial oversight, different institutional and decision-making infrastructures, different R&I landscapes, and different dynamics among territorial actors. As such, the four territories will represent a diverse range of opportunities and implications for RRI, which will enable the RRI-LEADERS consortium to carry out a thorough assessment of the RRI relevance to territorial governance and have the involved territories act as demonstrators for the potential of RRI on subnational level. The partners will engage in a multi-stage co-creation process (referred to as RRI-AIRR) that will mobilise territorial quadruple helix stakeholders towards the elaboration of future-oriented strategy and action plans - territorial outlooks for each of the participating territories. Territorial partners will have the leading role in this process, and will additionally work to ensure the broadest societal and governance-level endorsement. The Consortium will further use the accumulated knowledge to chart a detailed outlook for the future potential of RRI as a guiding framework in territorial governance of R&I, and will aim to provide an evolutionary perspective on RRI for the upcoming Horizon Europe programme.

CIMULACT has as a 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 will expand the outlook and debate on STI issues, increase scientific literacy in a broad sense, which includes the understanding of the societal role of Science, Technology and innovation (STI), and create shared understanding between scientific stakeholders, policy-makers and citizens. This multi-actor approach will embrace EU28 plus Norway and Switzerland. The CIMULTACT builds on the principle/conviction that the collective intelligence of society gives Europe a competitive advantage, which may be activated to strengthen the relevance of the European science and technology system. By establishing genuine dialogue between citizens, stakeholders, scientists, and policymakers visions and scenarios for the desirable futures will be developed and debated, and transformed into recommendations and suggestions for research and innovation policies and topics. In short, CIMULACT will ● Create 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 ● Provide concrete input to Horizon 2020 through recommendations and policy options for R&I and simulated calls for the Horizon2020 Work Programmes. ● Engage citizens and stakeholders in a highly participatory debate/consultation/process on scenarios for desirable sustainable futures and research ● Build capacities in citizen and multi-actor engagement in R&I through development, experimentation, training and assessment of methods for engagement ● Facilitate dialogue and shared understanding between policymakers, citizens, and stakeholders ● Reveal the relative merits of the citizen focussed consultations

Our society becomes ever more knowledge and innovation-intensive, thus rising new requirements for necessary competencies for people both in work and everyday life. The Fourth industrial revolution brings wide automatization in various fields, so people with low technological skills become less competitive in labour market (The EP resolution on creating a competitive EU labour market for the 21st century, 2015). Creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, basic technological literacy becomes a must for young person prosperous life. Future skills forecasts show that the greatest skill shortages could occur across STEM-related field. Europe continues to face a low number of students interested in studying or pursuing a career in the STEAM field. No different are consortium partner countries (Education at a Glance, 2016). According to the OECD research, pupils see STEAM as boring, not related with real life and hard to study. As another piece of research shows teacher is the main factor, who influences choosing STEAM related profession (K–12 education in STEM for America’s future, 2011). There is a lack of various guidelines for schools which would be based on real experience, practical knowledge and schools’ best know-how practices. According to the article, “teachers are highly effective when they feel supported. For example, if someone helps teachers identify areas of development, identify opportunities or paths for teachers to take on leadership roles, provide teachers with access to additional resources for the classroom, etc.“ (Promoting More Equitable Access to Effective Teachers, 2015). There must be a developed system for supporting teachers and helping them achieve better results, through trainings, guidelines and best practices sharing (Linking schools with science, 2011). The Consortium is composed of 6 organisations from 3 different countries, which have different experience within STEAM and science education fields and institutional diversity. These schools have different experience and practice on education, moreover, methods and even the structure of education systems is quite diverse. The diversity for this project is very important because it aims to adapt the guidelines to any country school. Other 3 organisations are education stakeholders. At least 20 000 people will benefit from this project. All partners will be involved in every activity to some extent because consortium has chosen iterative IO creation process. Every intellectual output will have a core team working with the product and leading organization from that team, other partners will have ‘friendly critic’ role. There will be 3 intellectual outputs developed IO1 - STEAM methodology (methodological framework for STEAM education, which will include STEAM manifestation models, state of the art analysis of existing modern technologies that are used or might be used in education (3D printing, robotics, virtual reality, etc.) and emerging trends (genetic engineering, augmented reality, etc.), STEAM readiness level model and self-check tool of STEAM implementation for schools), IO2 - STEAM implementation guidelines (will be practically-oriented deliverable, which will include guidelines for school-business-NGO-etc. partnership development, exemplary descriptions of using new technologies in education, a guide for integrating different school subjects, a template of STEAM implementation plan, etc.), IO3 – Best practices and open educational resources (will have the user-experience based template for gathering and sharing best practices and open educational resources). The project management relies on the basis of internal procedures, which follows ISO 9001:2000 quality standard. This quality management system includes the following key processes of organization: Quality management system; The management’s responsibility; Efficient resources management; Product realisation; The measurement, judgmental analysis, improvement. After the project education system as a whole, individual politicians or bureaucrats will have practical tools for implementing STEAM readiness level model nation-wide and also self-check tool for schools to understand at which point it stands at any given moment. Thus this might lead that created SRL would be adopted European-wide or nationally. The Project will have a long lasting impact (because of ‘hands on’ approach, which will ensure deeper understanding) in various areas (main areas stated in Impact part). Furthermore, this impact will be increased by project continuity and usage of developed material. The biggest impact is expected and wanted on a local level (schools and stakeholders). Continuing this position, consortium desires that all created material would serve not as ranking tool, top-down obligations, but as guidelines for school improvements, leaving for them to decide at which level of STEAM implementation they want or need to be.