Open for Partnerships
Every spring and summer, the same scene plays out across Europe: consortium leads race to complete their teams before proposal deadlines close in autumn. And almost every consortium is missing the same piece — a partner who can make citizen participation real. Not a box to tick in the work plan, but a method that produces results evaluators can see and communities can feel. This is the season we build for, and this year we're saying it out loud: CollectiveUP is open for partnership. Here is exactly where we're heading — and where we're looking for you.
Horizon Europe Cluster 2: several proposals already in motion
We are currently working on several proposals for Horizon Europe Cluster 2 — Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society — for the call closing on 23 September 2026. Our active topics span the cluster's full breadth: "artistic intelligence" and harnessing the power of the arts for innovation and soft skills (HERITAGE-01), digital and media literacy as drivers for democratic and civic resilience (DEMOCRACY-10), citizenship education as part of lifelong learning (DEMOCRACY-09), and government in transition — how governments change the way they work (DEMOCRACY-03).
If your organisation is building for one of these topics — or a neighbouring one — and needs a partner for citizen participation, co-creation, digital inclusion or ethical AI, this is the moment to talk: consortia are taking shape now, and September deadlines arrive faster than anyone expects.
Calls we want to build for
The New European Bauhaus
The NEB Facility's 2026 calls speak our language — beautiful, sustainable, inclusive neighbourhoods shaped with the people who live in them. We are actively looking for consortia forming around:
- HORIZON-NEB-2026-01-PARTICIPATION-02 (IA): Innovative approaches for the spatial design of neighbourhoods
- HORIZON-NEB-2026-01-PARTICIPATION-03 (RIA): Understanding inhabitants' experiences of neighbourhoods to support their health and well-being
- HORIZON-NEB-2026-01-BUSINESS-02 (RIA): Understanding capital market dynamics for increased investment in NEB projects in neighbourhoods
- HORIZON-NEB-2026-01-BUSINESS-03 (RIA): Approaches to reuse vacant, obsolete or underutilised spaces
Participation is literally in these calls' names — and participation methods that produce evidence are exactly what we bring. If you are a city, university, developer or civil society organisation eyeing one of these topics, we would love to explore it together.
Driving Urban Transitions
The Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership opens its 2026 call on 1 September — one of Europe's most important funding instruments for transformative urban research and innovation, across the 15-Minute City, Positive Energy Districts and Circular Urban Economies pathways.
We know this ecosystem from the inside. Through our CONIFER project, CollectiveUP works on inclusive urban mobility within the DUT community and contributes to the DUT Knowledge Hub — including its webinar series, where our first session tackled strategies for reaching neglected social groups and spatial contexts. We are looking for partners for DUT 2026 proposals: if your consortium needs the voices of children, newcomers, elders and underrepresented communities brought into urban design — with methods, not just intentions — we should talk before your team closes.
What we bring to a consortium
We are a Belgium-based social digital innovation startup. We are not an AI lab — we are the people who make sure technology works in the real world, and works fairly, with the citizens our partners are trying to serve. Concretely: participation methods that produce evidence (photovoice, co-creation, participatory foresight, sociocracy — used from Ghent to Cluj-Napoca); digital inclusion and ethical AI expertise across the EU's triple transition; and coordination credentials — we led the COSME-funded DIGISET project from kick-off to its fourteen policy recommendations, submitted to the EU Portal this June and already feeding EU-level policy conversations. We were also recently pre-selected by the European Commission for citizen participation and deliberative democracy services. We join consortia as a committed partner, and for the right ideas we co-develop proposals from the first sketch.
Contact us via the form or send an email to our CEO: liliana.carrillo@collectiveup.be
