Learning from local cases, meeting local change makers and talking to them about their projects, ambitions and lessons learned are essential elements of JPI Urban Europe’s AGORA Dialogues. However, the pandemic made it impossible to organise on-site workshops and field visits. For almost two years we are organising the highly interactive formats of AGORA Dialogues digitally. While online workshops have a number of advantages (among them easier accessibility; reduced environmental footprint) they have one big shortcoming: there is a lack of local experience of visiting interesting and innovative projects in host cities.

In January 2022, prior to the AGORA Dialogue “Identifying the crossroads between urban circularity, mobility and energy”, we sent a film team to Athens, Greece to bring the on-site experience in the form of videos to the workshop. We met with inspiring change-makers, from various fields, who are eager to change the city for the better and spoke about their local initiatives and projects, challenges for urban transformation and how research and innovation can support change processes.

The videos have now been gathered and published in a separate playlist on our JPI Urban Europe youtube channel, click here to watch them!