Time & date: 18 November 2026, 2:00 - 3:45 p.m. CET
Registration link: https://t1p.de/gekgq

With the ESF+ funded National Competence Centres (NCC) for Social Innovation, the European Commission has created a support infrastructure, which strengthens ecosystems for social innovation across Europe. These NCCs are made up of different actors and take different forms. Some NCCs represent a single institution. At the same time, there are o network-based NCCs, which are often designed in a bottom-up manner and strongly build upon civil society structures. In addition, there are hybrid forms in which public administration, academia or civil society coordinate activities. Despite all the diversity and variety in the composition of the NCCs, they share the common goal of strengthening social innovation in the member states. They do this in different ways: by creating incubator programmes, by imparting knowledge and providing training, by helping to design public project calls, through advocacy work, or by research on the ecosystems in order to provide targeted information and enable evidence-based action.

Work done by the European Social Innovation Alliance, one of the NCC consortia, supported by the European Competence Centre for Social Innovation (Social Innovation+ Initiative), revealed the importance of collaborative relationships between NCCs and scientific institutions. Despite this importance for the successful support of social innovation, the work of NCCs is often not yet known in Europe’s scientific social innovation community, NCCs are still in the process of gaining an overview of scientific contributions in the ecosystems and the added value of collaboration between academia and the NCCs often remains untapped.

The webinar by ESSI and ESIA aims to contribute to more visibility and awareness by introducing NCCs and their work to the ESSI community and facilitating an exchange on scientific work. The goal is to create greater awareness of each other and spaces for exchange and future collaboration. As researchers collaborating with the NCCs often do not yet have opportunities to exchange ideas, the webinar will specifically raise the profile of their work and also provide opportunities for knowledge exchange and networking.

Agenda:

The European Social Innovation Alliance:

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Social Fund Agency. Neither the European Union nor the Granting Authority can be held responsible for them.