Project PSLifestyle: Consortium meeting in Berlin

In June, the Slovenian project team – Circular Change and City of Ljubljana - travelled to Berlin to meet live for the first time with other participating partners of the project, representatives of organizations from Finland, Greece, Italy, Estonia, Germany, Portugal and Turkey. What a diverse group of cultures, customs and lifestyles!

The main purpose of the meeting was the exchange of previous experiences, good practices, and challenges of the initial phase of the project, as well as in-depth preparation for the next steps of the project work plan, the ultimate goal of which is the development, promotion and implementation of the PSlifestyle online tool.

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Focus of the first half of the meeting was the exchange of learnings from the first two iterations of the Living labs in each country, including the citizens feedback on testing their lifestyles with the beta version (prototype) of the PSL tool. We are happy to see higher than expected turnout in the living labs, with very diverse groups of citizens involved. Overall, the feedback we received on the UI and UX of the tool was very positive, however, there are certain local challenges to be resolved and incorporated into the questions and answers to have the most relevant and relatable localized version for each country. The project and the tool is drawing lots of positive interest, from the side of active citizens, young generations, as well as policy makers, including ministries, other EU and local projects in sustainability, and very importantly businesses who see an opportunity to use the tool to promote the sustainability measures to their employees in a positive and engaging way.

The second part of the meeting was all about the autumn lab sessions and 100 Smart everyday actions – how to prepare the right localized actions and content for the second iteration of the living labs, as well as the project timeline, communication plan execution and milestones, and preparation of the dissemination plan in the autumn for the app launch in the spring of 2023.

Intense as it was, the meeting still provided enough time to get to know each other and have fun. Together we had a chance to visit Holzmarkt 25 – a creative, urban regeneration project, a cooperative founded by the local artists, a self-sustainable microcosmos, livable area open to all, as a true Berliner answer to the wealthy developers sky-rise soul-less complexes along the river Spree.

Two days passed in the blink of an eye; the work was very interesting and instructive also because the project's ambitious goal remains that the online tool PSLifestyle reaches a total of 4 million users in eight European countries in the next three years, with the possibility of later expansion to the global level.