ReGENerative Communities for All project launch

The ReGEN4All project team in Lisbon

ReGEN4All Launches in Portugal

The Erasmus+ funded REGEN4ALL project was launched in Lisbon last month, where project partners met for the first time to kick off this year-long project based on ecovillage research.

The purpose of the ReGEN4All project is to serve researchers, practitioners, and adult educators from ecovillages and academia as well as policy makers on all levels in order to make the knowledge gained within and through ecovillages more accessible both for research and policy decisions on sustainable lifestyles and living environments. 

As a practitioner, ecovillager or an educator, it can be hard to reach ecovillage related research, to know it is there and to be able to use it in their work. Without access or capacity to find this research, it will stay hidden and not used. Everybody will have an interest in making ecovillage related research more known and utilised, therefore the project partners have set the target to create links and make research easily accessible.

Partnership, cooperation and best practices for researchers and ecovillages

The project partners are GEN Europe (represented by GEN Research), ISCTE-IUL (Center for International Studies / University Institute of Lisbon), ECOLISE and LOES, the Danish Ecovillage Network. 

This project is a starting point for a flourishing cooperation between researchers, educators  and practitioners. Within the project the aim is to create Communities of Practice within those target groups, both on a national and European scale. The partners will create a web-platform that contains a matching system between ecovillage researchers and ecovillages, a database that contains a collection of literature about ecovillage research and a code of conduct on how to approach ecovillages as a researcher – and for ecovillages how to handle researchers conducting research in their ecovillages. Furthermore, the project will hold an online colloquium series of presentations and discussions between researchers and practitioners. 

The greater picture is to create an international and decentralised research institute for ecovillage research on all levels of GEN in close collaboration with academic institutions and advocacy institutions such as ECOLISE.

During the launch the ideas behind the project were revisited and led to decisions about the outputs. A high level of commitment and ownership characterised the meeting and the project team lived and worked together tirelessly for a week and are now ready to work and produce the desired results.  The next in person Transnational Project Meeting will be held in Germany, at Nature Community, just before the GEN Europe Gathering 2023, taking stock of the process, aligning strategies and preparing how to share the project results for the wider circle at the GEN Gathering.  

About the Project

The ReGEN4All project was born at the European Ecovillage Gathering in 2022 and stems from the years of ecovillage research, networking and advocacy conducted and catalysed by the GEN research team and partners.

The purpose of the ReGEN4All project is to serve researchers, practitioners, and adult educators from ecovillages and academia as well as policymakers on all levels. ReGEN4All aims to make the knowledge gained within and through ecovillages more accessible both for academic research and to help inform policy decisions on sustainable lifestyle and regenerative practices.

ReGEN4All is a year-long project that includes six online research colloquiums, the establishment and research of Communities of Practice (CoPs), the creation of a database of ‘state of the art’ ecovillage research, and an online platform weaving it all together. The platform will include a pilot matching system to connect ‘ecovillagers’ and researchers, a protocol on how to approach ecovillages, and more!

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3 Comments

  1. I was not free to join for the whole event and wish to know if it was recorded so that I may hear the contributions of all the speakers. It’s such am important project. Thank you for inviting me and for all your commitment to bing this into being.

    Sincerely,

    Gillian.

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