An open conference will be organized to disseminate the results of WILCO at the European level at the end of 2013.

Members of WILCO’s four main audience groups – the scientific community, European, national and local policy makers, practitioners and the general public – will be invited to discuss ways of enhancing the EU funded research and transfer its results to the various systemic levels. The scientific community will be invited and encouraged to attend so as to improve the sustainability and transferability of project results. External experts will also be invited to provide their insight and provide a relevant framework capable of inserting WILCO’s proposed theory into the existing scientific corpus. Additionally, avenues for exploiting project findings at both levels (e.g. contributing to policy innovation or producing a set of tools for practitioners).

Participation in the conference will be open to the public although on-line registration will be required. The program as well as registration information will be available on this web site when the date approaches.

Event Details

Friday, 31/01/2014
La Tricoterie
Brussels, Belgium

Event Description

This event is invitation only. However, if you are interested in participating, please send us an email at info@emes.net subject WILCO final event by 22/11/2013 (participation will be confirmed shortly after).

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September 17th, 2013
1-4 pm
University of Birmingham, Muirhead Tower

Event Description

WILCO partners of the University of Kent are holding a roundtable about social welfare innovation in Birmingham, one of the WILCO research sites in the UK.

This event provides an exciting opportunity for participants to learn about emerging findings from the research and offer their own insights on the issues raised, based on their knowledge, experience and expertise. The event will include contributions from the WILCO UK research team, Marie Nordfelt from the WILCO research team in Sweden, local academics from the University of Birmingham, and local public and third sector organisations . It should provide a timely and important discussion as local areas try and find solutions to social problems over the coming years in a time of budgetary constraints.

The roundtable will take place between 1 and 4pm on 17th September. Lunch will be provided from 12.30. We hope you are able to join us and welcome your contributions the discussion or please feel free to nominate a colleague.

Please could you let us know whether you are able to attend by contacting Nadia Brookes (n.k.brookes@kent.ac.uk 01227 823807).

This event is being organised with the support of the Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham http://www.tsrc.ac.uk.

The post Roundtable: Social innovation in times of austerity, Birmingham, 17th September appeared first on Wilco Project.

This session, chaired by Taco Brandsen (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands), showed two examples from the European WILCO research project, of which the results are becoming available in 2013. The project ‘Welfare Innovations at the Local Level’ has examined social innovations in the fields of employment, child care and housing in twenty European cities. Anna Domaradzka (Warsaw University, Poland) gave a captivating overview of innovations in her home city, including the work of the MAMA foundation that works for mothers’ rights in Poland by organizing social campaigns, such as “O Mamma Mia! I cannot drive my pram in here!”) – a campaign for adapting public space for prams and wheelchairs; campaigns for employees’ rights, such as “Horror stories”, which lists examples of dismissing mothers from their jobs; online help and workshops for women-refugees and many more. Together with Muranów cinema, it has organised “Baby at the cinema” during which parents can watch films while their children play with baby sitters. This project is being transferred to other cities in Poland.

Danielle Gluns (Münster University, Germany) gave a terrific glimpse of developments in the German city of Münster. Her examples concluded the MAMBA network, which addresses the labour market integration of immigrants with a “one-stop” concept: Its main tasks are to counsel and qualify migrants as well as to find employers willing to offer them jobs. The network comprises five partners from the non-profit, for-profit and public sector. By now it has provided work to more than 200 people and in addition to that, apprenticeships for young participants. The programme was expanded to include further towns in the region of Münsterland and serves as a blue print for several similar initiatives all over Germany. Lars Hulgård (Roskilde University and President of EMES) commented on the links between the two examples and on the theoretical implications of the findings, leading the way to a lively interaction with the audience.

Watch the video explaining the strong links between WILCO and EMES and the benefits of collaboration on Youtube.

The post WILCO at 4th EMES International Research Conference in Liège appeared first on Wilco Project.

University of Liège, Belgium
1-4 July, 2013

Event Description

Taco Brandsen of WILCO and Rocio Nogales of EMES Network will coordinate a panel on the main interim empirical findings of cross-national research on local welfare innovations will be presented to young scholars working in the fields of social entrepreneurship, social innovation and civil society. The aim of this panel is to discuss the emergence and spread of social innovations, based on the results of the three-year comparative research of the WILCO project (7th European Framework Programme, 2010-2013).

A second session, chaired by Annette Zimmer and Lars Hulgard, offers the opportunity to discuss theoretical implications of the interim results of WILCO.

Please refer to the EMES website for more information on the conference and the conference programme.

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This conference for PhD students is the result of the collaboration of four research projects funded by the 7th Framework Programme funded by the European Commission, COPE, FLOWS, LOCALISE, and WILCO and the Doctoral School of Social Science, Aalborg University. The event will take place at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona on June 2013 and it will aim to shed light on questions related to the local welfare state from a social cohesion and social investment perspective.

Event Description

This two-day intensive course will count with keynote speakers representing all four European projects. In order to participate, an abstract will have to be submitted by 15th March 2013.

The post PhD Conference: Local welfare systems and social cohesion appeared first on Wilco Project.

On June 6th and 7th June, 2013 the University of Alcalá (Madrid) hostes the annual congress of the Spanish branch of ESPAnet. The event will include a panel devoted to social innovation (panel number 8) coordinated by Maite Montagut as well as a paper entitled Analysis of social innovation experiences in two cities (Barcelona and Pamplona) (“Análisis de experiencias de innovación social en dos ciudades (Barcelona y Pamplona)”) to be delivered by WILCO researchers Manuel Aguilar, Marta Llobet and Gemma Vilà.

These two presentations focused on social innovation at the local level and its emergence, which constitutes the main research topic of the WILCO project.

Go to the conference website: http://www3.uah.es/congresoreps2013/

The post ESPAnet Spain – IV Congress of the Spanish Network for Social Policy appeared first on Wilco Project.

Arcavacata di Rende, Calabria
19-21 September, 2013

Event Description

Members of the WILCO consortium will coordinate three streams in the upcoming ESPAnet network conference, which will  take place in September in the Calabria Region.

Stream 1: “The local Welfare State”

This session will focus on causes and effects of the provision of local welfare services. This includes local policy  and decision making structures and governance; how services are funded; how do private and public provision co-exist;  what are the implications of the welfare municipality for policy out-comes and the developments of citizens rights.  The aim of the session is to explore to what extent research carried out in Italy and in comparative perspective can contribute  to expand our understanding of current welfare policy transformations.

Coordinators: Per H. Jensen and Costanzo Ranci

Stream 2: “The freeze of care policies in Southern European countries:  exploring and comparing factors, trends and consequences”

This session addresses how and why Southern European welfare states have failed to reform themselves and have given rise  to market solutions. Papers are invited that comparatively analyze the influence of different factors (cultural features,  political ideology, financial constraints, the structure and functioning of the state and labour market and migration regulation)  on the lack of social reforms and on the emergence of care markets in the field of childcare and/or LTC.

Coordinators: Barbara Da Roit and Stefania Sabatinelli

Stream 3: ” The social investment turn in welfare policies:  opportunities and dilemmas”

This stream aims to discuss the social investment approach to welfare policies, placing it in the wider ongoing debate about welfare  states transformations. This implies that both scientific concepts and links to social investment as part of policy discourses will be dealt with.  Main focus lies on the emergence of this new paradigm in the “market of ideas” in the last decade as well as its different notions and the criticisms  that it received. The stream aims to pose questions about the usefulness of the social investment approach in times of crisis and to what extent it can  produce innovation in welfare policies.

Coordinators: Giuliana Costa and Adalbert Evers

The ESPAnet conference will take place September 19—21, 2013 in Arcavacata di Rende, Italy.

The post ESPAnet conference in Italy, 19-21 September, 2013 appeared first on Wilco Project.

May 23-24, 2013
Dubrovnik

Event Description

This meeting will feed into the remaining outputs of the WILCO project: the second book, which will look into interesting similarities and differences of welfare innovations across countries; a series of videos; and the final conference.

Three rounds of discussions will focus on:

1. Patterns of innovations and how they contribute to social cohesion (introduced by Adalbert Evers)
2. The interplay between discourses, instruments/approaches and social problems in social innovation (introduced by Sandro Cattacin)
3. Governance of innovations: support, sustainability and scaling up (introduced by Taco Brandsen)

Discussion rounds will highlight the broader relevance of national findings and identify innovative approaches to be be mentioned in the WILCO recommendations to the EU.

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WILCO is thrilled to announce a unique event aimed at taking stock of all the research that has been done so far in the framework of the Framework Programmes as a way of preparing for Horizon 2020. WILCO organizes this event in collaboration with the European Commission as part of its dissemination strategy.

The goals of this seminar are:

• To encourage the exchange of ideas and best practices among EU-funded research projects on social innovation through a process of mutual knowledge building and discussion.
• To promote networking among members of different research projects on social innovation.
• To produce a publication that summarizes the tradition of social innovation research in Europe and outlines key questions / issues for future research.
• Participation in this seminar is by invitation only.

For more information, contact Rocío Nogales, WILCO Communications Coordinator, at info (at) emes.net

Event Description

Results from this event:

We’d like to thank Julie Simon from the TEPSIE project for her account on this event, which you can read here.

The post Approaches to Research on Social Innovation: Learning from One Another for the Future appeared first on Wilco Project.

17-18 December 2012
Berlin-Köpenick, Germany

Event Description

Three members of WILCO from three different coutries (Adalbert Evers – Germany; Renata Siemienska – Poland; and Laurent Fraisse) will participate in the conference “New opportunities or new restrictions: Social innovation and providers of social services in Europe” in Berlin.

The event is organized by the Observatory for Sociopolitical Developments in Europe on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

Please find the conference flyer here.

The conference programme is available for download here.

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