Setting the foundations for the next years of the project
In the seven months since the official start of REFLOW, we are proud to have achieved important goals while also setting the foundation for the project’s next 2.5 years.
We began our journey at the kick-off meeting at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in June 2019. The meeting was an excellent chance for our 27 consortium members to get to know one another and to start organising our collaboration. On that occasion, all the project’s building block leads presented their initial plans and we had the opportunity to understand each of the six pilot cities’ visions for the implementation of Circular Economy (CE).
Our kick-off meeting concluded with an invitation to present REFLOW at the annual OpenLivingLab Days 2019 in Greece in September, where we were asked to contribute to the development of calls for a “human-centered approach” to CE. REFLOW was one of the few projects in its early stages to be invited and we are truly honoured to have been recognised for our innovative approach to CE.
Our next major event was the first Co-creation Workshop at CBS (Nov 20-21). The workshop, attended by all pilots and consortium members, was an excellent opportunity for us to continue aligning the pilot cities with the different facets of REFLOW. The two-day workshop was based on a series of round tables, each representing one of REFLOW’s building blocks: social impact, technological infrastructure, city metabolism, governance, capacity building and communication. Additionally, we hosted two sessions focused on key indicators for measuring the success of implementing REFLOW’s vision for CE. These sessions allowed the pilot cities to reflect on the different dimensions of CE that characterise REFLOW and how this setting will impact their city’s specific context.
Over the past months, while much of our efforts were dedicated toward internal documents, we also produced the first public deliverables, the “Data Management Plan” and the “REFLOW Handbook” in November.
The next months will be quite intense, as we will need to deliver the “Detailed Pilot Planning and Evaluation framework” at the end of February and five other public reports in May summarising and assessing the status of our pilots and paving the way forward to the implementation of our vision. In order to produce those deliverables, we will have an in-depth discussion with each of the cities to support the progress of the project towards the next steps and help them develop and implement their vision. We are looking forward to this next stage of the project and where it will lead us.