Consulting Europeans on EU research funding The EU's next seven-year programme for research and innovation, Horizon 2020, is at the heart of Europe's plan for growth and jobs. From 2014 to 2020 around ¿80 billion will go towards funding the best research across Europe. At every stage of the funding process the Europe... The EU's next seven-year programme for research and innovation, Horizon 2020, is at the heart of Europe's plan for growth and jobs. From 2014 to 2020 around ¿80 billion will go towards funding the best research across Europe. At every stage of the funding process the European Commission has been consulting with stakeholders on Europe's research priorities. The EU-funded project VOICES ('Views, Opinions and Ideas of Citizens in Europe on Science') is part of this effort, but with a focus on EU citizens. VOICES is a pilot, which if successful, will inspire other similar citizen consultations and public engagement initiatives towards inspiring Horizon 2020 research priorities. VOICES is being implemented by Ecsite, the European network of science centres and museums. The methodology used in VOICES consisted of holding pan-European participatory and inclusive face-to-face workshops in all languages. In practice, VOICES held 99 participatory workshops in 33 locations in 27 European countries, in 23 languages. Around 1000 people participated in the workshops' focus groups. Focus groups have an important advantage over other social research methods - the method encourages participants to respond and build on the views expressed by the others. This interaction provides in-depth insight into the ideas, values, wishes and concerns of participants and stimulates shared creative thinking, say VOICES' researchers. The results are being analysed and will be presented to the European Commission for input to policy for the Horizon 2020 funding segment on reusing and recycling waste - "waste as a resource". The Commission has made a commitment to take on board the results. VOICES is also making available the documentation for developing content and training for large-scale and coordinated focus groups in public consultations. An open source online platform (Visual Lab) will be created to make the documentation and collected information available. The project's work is relevant to the 2013 European "Year of Citizens", which aims to raise citizen's awareness about how they can benefit from EU rights and policies, and to stimulate active participation in EU policy-making. VOICES received EUR 1.5 million in funding from the EU. The one-year project ends in January 2014.For more information, please visit: VOICES http://www.voicesforinnovation.eu/ Project factsheet ECSITE http://www.ecsite.eu/activities_and_resources/projects/voices Horizon 2020 http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm?pg=home Countries Belgium
