TCBL uses Europe’s Textiles & Clothing (T&C) industry as test beds for evolutionary-driven co-design, dynamic optimisation and deployment of business models. It aims to increase the performance of a sector that, over the past two decades, upheld three main strategies to handle global competitive pressure: cost-oriented, product/service-oriented and productivity-oriented. TCBL provides a business experimentation framework for exploring variations on such strategies. The framework will be supported by Knowledge Spaces as a generative force and Business Services as an enabling force. A network of Business Labs will be set up, based on three key variations: Design Labs (e.g. creating emotionally-oriented immaterial value), Making Labs (e.g. converting skilled labour into material value), and Place Labs (e.g. generating spatial community- and socially- oriented value). Each of these Labs will explore the issues of cost, product/service and productivity enhancement in a transversal manner and from cross-disciplinary perspectives - including economic, anthropological, and engineering approaches as well as new business values such as environmental and social responsibility, sharing economy, social enterprising, customer-driven small series production (the focus of this call) and emergent or disruptive technologies. With these tools, and supported by an open Associates Programme, TCBL will carry out real-life experimentation and market deployment of a number of Supply Chain, Localisation, Business, Skill Management and Policy innovations involving no fewer than 160 workshops, laboratories and manufacturing plants at EU level with at least 15,000 T&C workers involved. In addition, 10 new innovative companies will be generated within the supply chain of T&C, enabling the diffusion and scaling up of results. By so doing, a knowledge based, transformational ecosystem will be developed, integrated into an open, yet structured platform environment.

Resilience is defined by the United Nations as “the ability to resist, absorb and accommodate to the effects of a hazard, in a timely and efficient manner”. Thus, resilient communities are those in which their citizens, environment, businesses, and infrastructures have the capacity to withstand, adapt, and recover in a timely manner from any kind of hazards they face, either planned or unplanned. In recent years efforts have been spent to tackle resilience and there is, still, a long path forward in defining an EU valid and sound approach to the problem. RESILOC aims at studying and implementing a holistic framework of studies, methods and software instruments that combines the physical with the less tangible aspects associated with human behaviour. The study-oriented section of the framework will move from a thorough collection and analysis of literature and stories from the many approaches to resilience adopted all over the World. The results of the studies will lead to the definition of a set of new methods and strategies where the assessment of the resilience indicators of a community will be performed together with simulations on the “what-if” certain measures are taken. These studies and methods will serve for designing and implementing two software instruments: 1. the RESILOC inventory, a comprehensive, live, structure for collecting, classifying and using information on cities and local communities, implemented as a Software as a Service (SaaS). 2. The RESILOC Cloud-based platform for assessing and calculating the resilience indicators of a city or a community, for developing localised strategies and verifying their impacts on the resilience of the community. The Cloud platform, a combination of SaaS and PaaS, includes the inventory as its repository. The project will make use of built solutions in four field trials and includes a high-profile communication plan, heavily based on Social Media platforms.

Innovation is relevant not only to economic sustainability but also to social and cultural life. Therefore, the creation of an organizational climate enabling and catalyzing innovation deserves special attention and needs to be explored from a sound operational perspective. Cities embed this organizational climate (Jacobs, 1969) and are by nature innovation generative systems. It is within this perspective that the DESIGNSCAPES project aims to realize a better uptake, and further enhancement and upscaling, of Design enabled Innovation in Europe, through direct financial support to flagship and innovation generating initiatives as well as a huge capacity building effort targeting multiple stakeholder groups (citizens, researchers, practitioners, innovators and policy makers). In so doing, we will foster the linkages between research, policy and practice and contribute to making Europe a global leader in the domain. The main features of the DESIGNSCAPES project are the following: - It builds upon the generative potential of innovation in cities - It leverages Design Thinking and Design Driven Innovation concepts as blueprints. - It has a direct and purposeful focus on the scalability potential of Design enabled Innovation - It proposes an original, holistic, evaluation, replication and impacts assessment framework. - It makes use of a “supportive governance approach”. Expected results include: a City Snap Shot tested in 10 countries and 12 cities, a EU Catalogue of Design enabled innovations, Training Modules for local facilitators and innovators, Policy Briefs, e-Publications and a final Conference. Approximately €1.5 million will distributed among 50+ new Design enabled initiatives as required by the H2020 call through 3 consecutive yearly rounds of a 3-staged Technical and Financial instrument akin to the US and NL SBIR program and the SME instrument of the EC.

Our project combines the development of an effective methodology to identify young people at risk of being NEET, an innovative intervention drawing on existing good practice piloted in PT, IT and ES to prevent young people with such characteristics from becoming NEET, and an impact analysis to measure the outcomes of these pilots at regional/national level. In combining these three elements, this project aims to develop an effective front-end strategy to address the NEET issue within the EU, by focusing on prevention rather than remedial action and supporting a “smoother” transition of potential NEETs from the VET system to the world of work. We will focus on students/trainees (15 -24) who are in the VET system, ending their compulsory education but is risk of becoming NEETs; persons (15-24) who are not in the VET (as well as unemployed persons). Other target groups: see Point F. The multi-stakeholder consortium, public bodies and private entities, with dimension/capacity to implement the project over 3 years is led by CECOA (PB VET provider). TIHR (Research Institute, PR) has a long experience of applying social science methods to research and evaluate the experiences of NEET in UK and at EU level. CECOA (PT), FMA (ES) and CPV (IT) are PR Foundations, and FJA (one of the Lisbon Parishes, PB) will be involved in the methodology testing and organisation of a set of events to spread the project at national/regional/local level. UCP is a non-state PT University (PB) - impact evaluation. ISOB is a DE PR Research Institution - quality evaluation. The partners are part of the already existing and regular network of organisations the promoter cooperates with, whenever the issues VET, labor market and skills development/matching are at stake. Main activities: project management activities, communication, cooperation; O1 - identification of the risk factors of becoming NEETs at local/regional/national level and reflection about the most effective supportive measure to prevent the risks of becoming NEETs; O2 – testing/adapting a model of INDIVIDUALIZED targeting and TAILORED intervention for young people at risk of NEET; O3 – conception of a guide aiming to present the model, containing the methodological approach, reporting the results of the pilot test and the impact analysis; O4 – impact evaluation, recommendations and potential for sustainability of methodology; O5 – to present a quality user feedback and usability evaluation report. Dissemination activities (Part G2).Methodology: at the core of this proposal is the insight that fighting the NEET issue is often an ex-post strategy: intervention occurs only after disengagement. In addition standard „one-size-fits-all” solutions have proven to be ineffective. The project focusses on developing and building on existing interventions which identify potential NEETs EARLY ON, by identifying typical risk patterns, addressing the INDIVIDUAL needs of such learners and exposing them to suitable work-based environments, and to elaborate with them TAILORED and FLEXIBLE pathways to further education, training or work. Results: 5 intellectual outputs (O1, O2, O3, O4, O5), multiplier events (focus groups, networking activities, national seminars, EU conference), transnational meetings. The length of the project will allow the research team to measure the results of the screening and intervention pilots. It’s innovative and sustainable as it will provide unique policy solutions to address systemic problems. Impacts: it’s expected to benefit young people (15-24) through pilots and mentoring and coaching sessions; others not involved directly in the testing will also be reached through dissemination; the intellectual outputs will be available and able to be used/applied. To be a success, enterprises and social partners must also be involved; with a stronger approximation between VET system and the world of work, helping/supporting the curriculum design, providing opportunities for students to get in contact with the job requirements. Local or regional authorities with VET and employment responsibilities are also expected to experience impact. They are as much interested to act preventively as youth unemployment is scaling, calling for urgent measures at political level to promote youth employment and preventing the disengagement of young people from society. They are expected to be involved in multipliers events, pilot testing (coaching/mentoring), and access to the IO and results through group reflections, holistic approaches and local solutions, large scale dissemination (Part G2).A strong Strategic Partnership, the IO, the Network of Stakeholders and learning activities are expected to bring high level of potential longer benefit. Despite the recent changes and the economic interventions, there are still challenges to solve at EU and national level, and authorities continue to need to engage in measures to solve unemployment, in particular among the young population.