Fairville project: where are we? (Part 2)
Three years after the launch of the Fairville project, one of the Research and Innovation Action (RIA) under Cluster 2 – Democracy of Horizon Europe, Fairville has continued to experiment with co-production involving civil society actors, universities, and local authorities. The goal has been to foster multi-stakeholder engagement in addressing deep-rooted urban and environmental inequalities, together with affected residents and community groups. The broader ambition is to contribute to rethinking urban democracy and inequalities through the co-production of knowledge and action-oriented programmes.
Following this approach, multiple activities have been carried out across the eight pilot cases (Fairville Labs) – Brussels, Berlin, London, West Attica, Marseille (Belle de Mai and Atelier 4-5), Giza, and Dakar – to explore the potential of co-production in tackling inequalities and reducing democratic gaps. So far, the project has worked in multiple directions and across different scales, from building knowledge to understand the relations between inequalities, citizens’ engagement and democratic quality to nurturing key academic debates and starting building of a counter-manual of co-production for fairer cities. Still, Fairville has experimented co-production across different scales within the Fairville Labs, while also taking the time to co-evaluate their activities. Finally, it has focused on exploring pathways for embedding and/or scaling co-production processes, while also developing collaborative communicative and dissemination outputs to support this endeavour.
All the discussions that shaped these work directions were carried out in a spirit of openness and collaboration by the project partners and within the Fairville Labs. They were richly debated and thoughtfully developed together during Fairville meetings, such as the Open Citizens meeting in Brussels in November 2023 (link to blog post), the Fairville Mid-Term Meeting in Marseille in June 2024 (link to blog post), and the Intermediary Brussels Workshop in March 2025, as well as during public events, including the Fairville Mutual Learning Seminars (link to blog post) and the Dialogue in Co-production seminar series (link to blog post).
Three consecutive blog posts provide an update on the main advancements and ongoing key debates emerged in these fruitful years, as well as offers a summary of the project’s main achievements.
PART 2
The dual learning role of co-evaluating Fairville Labs’ activities
One of Fairville’s core areas of focus has been the co-evaluation of how co-production is practiced across different Labs, with the goal of keeping the process inclusive and transparent. To support this, within the framework of WP4, all Fairville Labs collaborated in designing a common evaluation framework (link to report), which they then used to reflect on their own activities. This included examining how participants collaborated during the process, whether responsibilities were fairly distributed, and whether any barriers limited participation of certain individuals and, more broadly, the overall impact of the initiative.
Between 2024 and 2025, the Labs carried out a first round of co-evaluation through individual interviews and group discussions, creating a physical and social space conducive to the expression of diverse perspective. Five key criteria were examined: (1) Inclusion and Inclusiveness in Co-production; (2) Participation, Democracy, and Shared Governance in Co-production; (3) Shared Knowledge in Co-production; (4) Effectiveness of Co-production; and (5) Empowerment and Shared Power in Co-production.
This process helped uncover both the opportunities and the challenges of co-production in real-world settings. It thus contributed to a better understanding of the institutional and political mechanisms that may facilitate or obstruct democratic participation, and potentially to enhancing Labs’s capacity to influence on institutional practices and to advocate for change. For example, many Labs struggled to engage local authorities in a consistent and meaningful way, revealing how deeply rooted inequalities – whether related to adequate housing, environmental conditions, or risk mitigation – and opaque decision-making processes can limit the potential of co-production to bring about real change.
The co-evaluation served for a dual purpose: it helped Labs improve their own practices – providing insights on how their activities can become more inclusive, transparent, and accountable – and it also offered a method to analyse co-production itself. A key concern was making sure the process stayed relevant and accessible to local communities, avoiding, for instance, turning it overly rigid and scientific – while ensuring it remains applicable for research purposes. This was a central topic at the Fairville workshop in Brussels (March–April 2025), where participants shared feedbacks on the main challenges met by some in engaging participants, either institutional actors or activists, in the co-assessment format, as well as discussed how to make co-evaluation more meaningful.
Through the co-evaluation work, Fairville seeks to identify what enables or hinders co-production, and what that means for local inhabitants in terms of enabling or constraining emancipatory futures. This, in turn, can strengthen the Labs’ ability to influence on institutional practices and to advocate for change.
Embedding and/or scaling co-production processes within the Fairville Labs and beyond
Another key area of work within Fairville, developed within WP5, has focused on exploring pathways for embedding and/or scaling co-production processes both within the Fairville Labs and beyond. The overarching aim is to deepen learning and advocacy around integrating co-production into urban planning and governance, ultimately fostering more equitable and democratic urban environments across Europe and beyond.
Over the past two years, this work has been guided by a central question: How can co-production practices be meaningfully embedded and scaled in contexts marked by inequality and democratic deficits? This question has been pursued through sustained engagement with the Fairville Labs, strategic scoping with allied networks, and a collective effort to identify key levers or "enablers" to support the scaling of co-production. Discussions within the consortium have increasingly focused on the challenge of resourcing the strategic potential of regulatory frameworks, the mobilisation of collaborative networks (and ‘communities of practice’), discursive shiftsand forms of knowledge recognition necessary to sustain co-production as an everyday governance practice.
To this end, a first significant contribution of Fairville has been the analysis of the barriers and opportunities to scaling co-production practices, as well as the identification of key enablers to support these practices. The findings, emerging from WP5 research conducted across the Fairville Labs (D5.1 Barriers and Emerging Pathways to Scaling Co-Production: A Perspective from the Fairville Labs) revealed that obstacles to both co-production and its scaling exist within the state (at various levels), within civil society and community groups, and at the interfaces between these actors. These barriers include institutional resistance, resource constraints, fragmented governance structures, and challenges in fostering collaboration among stakeholders with differing goals or organizational cultures. Conversely, opportunities for scaling are diverse and linked to various entry points, challenges, and tactical rationales for scaling identified within the Labs. Enabling conditions include, among others, strengthening community cohesion and addressing issues of misrecognition. Scaling was shown to be a plural, situated and iterative practice, encompassing consolidation, expansion, replication, and, in the last instance, institutionalisation.
The research identified four emerging pathways to scale:
Scaling through consolidation: deepening existing co-production coalitions (often within a Lab context) by strengthening community cohesion, internal capacity and trust before widening reach
Scaling through growth, expansion, or replication: adapting co-production practices to new sites, actors or issue areas, often by “reading the cracks” (by exploiting openings such as shifts in leadership, regulations or emerging alliances)
Scaling through network-building: nurturing transnational communities of practice - as exemplified by the Dialogues in Co-production series - to circulate knowledge, build solidarity and generate translocal alliances capable of sustaining co-production across diverse urban contexts
Scaling through upscaling: embedding co-production into regulatory frameworks, planning policy and governance structures - requiring sustained coalition-building and strategic engagement with institutional actors, alongside situated interventions within governance structures to routinise co-production.
Secondly, Fairville has focused on identifying, connecting with and catalysing transnational learning networks, connecting with and supporting initiatives that promote co-production as a daily governance practice. A major achievement in this area has been the development and launch of the Dialogues in Co-production (DiC) – a transnational public seminar series (both online and in-person) designed to foster exchange, collective inquiry, and advocacy. The DiC series curates case studies and dialogue-based exchanges through an iterative strategy informed by consortium-wide consultations and diagnostic insights. It aims to address jointly identified barriers and opportunities in co-production.
Specifically, the DiC programme has unfolded through two complementary strands: an initial series of actor- and sector-focused dialogues (April-December 2025) exploring the roles of activists, academics and professionals in co-production alliances across thematic arenas central to Fairville, including housing and environmental inequalities; and a subsequent Enabler Series (from January 2026 to September 2026) offering a more strategic lens, unpacking the structural conditions required to establish, resource, regulate and defend meaningful co-production. Together, these strands form a mutually reinforcing trajectory advancing co-learning, network-building and collective advocacy.
We had actively promoted the DiCs through our Fairville website, mailing list and across social media channels to reach activists, academics, professionals, and civil society actors across Europe (see image below with a collage of posters). The website serves as a central space to archive and disseminate all materials including slide decks, Miro board notes, audio recordings in English and French, and session summaries. By doing so, we hope to ensure that participants and the wider Fairville community can access the content for learning and further networking. Our aim is to create a shared repository of outputs that directly informs and builds the evidence for the development of Policy Briefs and a guide to co-production titled Enabling Coproduction: A Companion.
Communication visuals produced for the Dialogues in Co-production (DiC) programme.
Communication and dissemination as collaborative efforts
Finally, one of Fairville’s key areas of work in the framework of WP6 has focused on communication, dissemination, and the broader use of a series of project outcomes. These outcomes not only represent newly co-produced knowledge aimed at fostering more democratic and equitable societies, but also serve as tools to strengthen and expand the networks of stakeholders involved in the Fairville Labs and beyond, while actively engaging local partners in co-production processes.
To support the project’s overall goals, this work is grounded in the belief that communication and dissemination should be collaborative efforts – co-created by researchers and local actors. All Fairville communication and dissemination activities are tailored to the needs of specific audiences, made accessible in local languages when needed, and designed to raise awareness and advocate for co-production initiatives.
One of the main achievements in this area has been the creation of the “Cartes Blanches” series – a collection of co-produced articles and visual materials (like flyers, pamphlets, and posters) that combine text, graphics, maps, and illustrations (link to the documents). These materials serve three main purposes:
to clearly and concisely present the Fairville project and the work of the Fairville Labs to the general public.
to summarize key findings and support the project’s impact strategies.
to inform and advocate on core Fairville themes – such as co-production, inequality, and local democracy – by translating lessons learned into accessible language for a broader audience, potentially local stakeholders.
The Cartes Blanches outputs are both informative and advocacy-oriented. They aim to spark public interest in Fairville’s core questions – like how co-production can help reduce inequalities and strengthen local democracy – while also supporting the co-production process itself. In fact, creating a local Carte Blanche was designed to be part of the co-production journey, with content and target audience selection made in collaboration with local actors. In this way, they contributed to democratizing knowledge and action at the local level.
Another major achievement for Fairville has been the initial design of the Fairville Experimental Connection Centre. This Centre is envisioned as a shared space – primarily virtual and then physical – where academics, civil society, and public authorities can come together to tackle the dual challenges of inequality and participation, with a special focus on co-production. Its mission is to promote knowledge exchange, build networks, and strengthen collaboration among researchers, citizens, facilitators, associations, and public institutions engaged in co-production across Europe and beyond. The Centre has four main goals:
To bridge the gap between universities, civil society, and public institutions by grounding research in real-world challenges.
To make scientific knowledge more accessible and relevant to a wider audience.
To share and build on the insights and advocacy developed through Fairville, influencing the science-policy-society interface.
To extend the project’s impact beyond its official timeline.
To reach these goals, the Centre will focus on disseminating and building on Fairville’s research, learning, and advocacy outputs, supporting the ongoing Fairville open seminar series and organizing new events that foster learning and collaboration, creating strong links with other Labs, platforms, and centres that share similar missions, potentially advancing Fairville’s research and policy agenda into the future.
The Fairville Experimental Connection Centre will be soon launched in two phases: first as an online platform hosted on the project’s website, and later as a physical shared space in Brussels and another city where a Fairville Lab is active. Stay tuned!
The following Fairville members contributed to the writing of this blog post: Giuseppe Faldi, Kavyashree Swamygowda, Agnès Deboulet, Philippe Urvoy, Loukia Batsi, Alima El Bajnouni, Barbara Lipietz, Alessio Koliulis, Tim Wickson, Catalina Dobre and Luisa Moretto.
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