THE SMARTEES PROJECT

The first webinar of the "What’s new in social innovation and energy transitions?" series took place on 13 November 2019. The title as well as the focus of the webinar was “Local leadership, or From usual suspects to local heroes – How to work together with your citizens towards a low-carbon society?” Three inspiring presentations ensured a great and successful series kick-off.

Erica Löfström (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway), Søren Hermansen (Samsø Energy Academy, Denmark), and Frances Sprei (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) shared their experiences with local social innovations.

Löfstrom first shared with webinar participants the story of Järva, a socially disadvantaged neighbourhood in Stockholm in which participatory planning was used to address a situation characterised by strong tensions and aggression. During Hermansen's presentation, participants had an opportunity to explore the case of Samso as well as key learnings concerning the different ways and methods for working together with citizens. In her presentation, Sprei nicely summarised the key success factors for citizen engagement, or rather for community action.

From the first presentation on an initially failing process in a Swedish city, to the strong metaphor of actors sitting together around a campfire and the interesting questions posed by partipants, the webinar provided some food for thought on the topic of local social innovation and the importance of community and community ownership.

With the first webinar successfull completed, we are already looking forward to our next webinar in the series.

Webinar 2: Thinking ahead in local policies for successful energy and mobility transitions
Date: 3rd June 2020

We invite you to register for webinar #2 now! To do so, please click here