Creative solutions for tomorrow's Europe
The 'Emerging users demands for sustainable solutions' (EMUDE) project was a Specific Support Action (SSA) working to generate various scenarios for use in future research and development activities with regard to social innovation. The interest in advancing work in this area was based on observations of active, enterprising people finding creative ways to deal with everyday problems. The EU-funded EMUDE team sought to highlight ways in which social and technological innovation could complement each other for social benefit. researchers conducted a field study to identify promising cases and study their characteristics in the framework of contemporary society. The study focused mainly on Europe, with a special emphasis on eastern European countries, but also considered the phenomenon of creative community beyond its borders. The aim of this approach was to determine the potential for an exchange of experiences between European and non-European countries. in association with eight European design schools, a network of observatories was created for the collection and eventual study of 56 creative communities. With special emphasis on social and environmental value in the framework of a knowledge-based society, researchers were interested in following the ways in which social enterprise was generated. They termed this evolution of creative communities towards lasting forms of social organisation 'diffused social enterprise' (DSE). on the basis of their findings, proposals were made with practical applications of how to enable solutions, platforms and frameworks to enhance DSE and its potential for contributing to local welfare and new models of local development. As such, EMUDE efforts also produced insights into how DSE can help support existing European policy agendas, and have implications for industrial research funding.