T6 Ecosystems is a partner of a new and exciting project, called PARTART4OW, funded by Horizon Europe. The project, entitled “Participatory art for society engagement with ocean and water” began in September 2024 and will last for 30 months, bringing together 5 partners from 5 European countries.
PartArt4OW aims to connect society with the ocean and waters, raise awareness on the challenges they face, and build a network of artistic communities to support sustainable ocean and water policies. Through 3 open calls, the project will support 19 multi-stakeholder Participatory Art Initiatives (PAIs) that focus on participatory art and creative processes. The project will provide funding, human capital (including training), and organisational capital (including planning and monitoring) to selected PAIs through the PartArt4OW Accelerator Programme in order to enhance their impact. PARTART4OW also organises stakeholder engagement, PartArt Sailing Lab activities and ecosystem building.
Researchers from T6 Ecosystem participated in the Kick-Off Meeting of PARTART4OW that took place at Sapienza University in Rome, on October 3-4. The meeting was a great opportunity for all consortium members to meet in person for the first time, after a long proposal writing process and online meetings to kick-start the project in September. The meeting was also attended by Anastasia Nastaseanu, the Project Officer of PARTART4OW from the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). In addition to presenting the activities and discussing the various tasks for the following months, we were able to fine-tune our working and communication processes as a consortium in order to ensure an efficient and successful fruition of the project.
T6 is leading two crucial activities within the project. T6 is tasked with designing and managing the Open Calls and with assessing the impact of the PAIs and of the project as a whole. For this, we will develop the impact assessment methodology as well as the necessary data gathering tools, assess the achievements and impact of the selected PAIs, develop the PartArt4OW impact dashboard and holistically evaluate the project in order to improve its actions and derive lessons learned. Our role in the project reflects the strengths and long experience of T6 supporting innovation and participatory processes for artistic research and citizens.