The CulturalRoad consortium gathered in Athens on 17 and 18 February for the project’s second plenary meeting, bringing partners together to review progress and agree on the next steps as the project approaches the end of its second year. The two-day gathering offered partners a valuable chance to reconnect, exchange ideas, and reinforce the collaborative foundations of the project. The meeting was kindly and warmly hosted by our partner National Technical University of Athens (NTUA).
The first day centred on the project’s Five-Pointed Star Rating System, with partners reviewing data, key performance indicators established, and methodology alongside the first results achieved to date. The initial insights gathered through stakeholder workshops held in the project’s five demonstration sites in Catalonia, Ljubljana, the United Kingdom, Karlsruhe, and Eilat was also an important part of the first day discussions. With focus groups involving end users scheduled to begin later this year, partners reviewed and coordinated their approach to ensure consistency across all demo sites in preparation for that next key stage of the CulturalRoad co-creation framework.
The second day turned to communication, dissemination, and exploitation, central areas to the project’s long-term impact. Two dedicated workshops gave partners the chance to engage collectively on the project’s one level up / one level down knowledge transfer mechanism, discussing how knowledge generated within CulturalRoad can be transferred to national policymakers, municipalities, and local authorities. Partners also worked to refine the project’s Key Exploitable Results, clarifying what the project will ultimately deliver and the pathways for taking those results forward. The collaborative format of the workshops proved particularly valuable, enabling partners to define concrete outputs and leave Athens with a clearer, more unified direction.
