How can deliberative democracy practices be used by universities to improve collaboration between universities and their local communities? TENACITY is an EU Erasmus+ project that will design and test a set of tools and strategies to engage the academic community, local citizens and decision makers in developing deliberations through a structured and inclusive approach. VA (Public & Science) is one of 9 European partners in this two-year project running until December 2023

The overall objective of TENACITY is to involve universities and other partner organisations in an international partnership to design and develop a set of models and digital tools to strengthen public engagement and increase the relevance of the Academic Third Mission in the knowledge-based society.
The three main project outputs that will be developed:
- A digital handbook exploring different aspects of academic civic commitment through public engagement in the Third Mission;
- Academic Deliberative Arenas (ADA) for open science and innovation as spaces to facilitate public engagement;
- An E-Learning Platform and mobile app with training and resources for academic deliberative practitioners.
In addition, international training activities, national events as well as communication and dissemination activities will be undertaken.
VA will be involved in all aspects of the project development. If you are interested in deliberative democracy practices and would like to find out more about the project, please get in touch.

TENACITY partner organisations:
- UNICAM, University of Camerino, Italy (Coordinator)
- Pluriversum, Italy
- ISTAO, Instituto Adriano Olivetti, Italy
- University of Thessaly, Greece
- University of Zaragoza, Spain
- ACEEU, an independent accreditation Council, Germany.
- University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania
- Vilnius University, Lithuania
- VA (Public & Science), Sweden
Financing
TENACITY is funded by the European Commission’s Erasmus programme. The project runs from December 2021 until December 2023.
More information
Read more on the project website or get in touch with Helen Garrison or Maria Hagardt to find out about on-going activities. Read more about Tenacity in this project flyer (PDF).

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