Urban Doers Community #2

Building on the success of our pilot in 2023-2024, which attracted over 190 applications from 24 countries, we are launching a second edition of the Urban Doers Communiuty to continue strengthening the voices and expertise of local innovators across Europe. The first cohort of 20 initiatives spent a year collaborating, learning, and contributing their invaluable insights to European urban policy. Their collective work came together in a joint policy paper that offers concrete recommendations for supporting community-led urban transformation. You can meet four of them in this video.

What is the Urban Doers Community?

The Urban Doers Community is a community of practice and learning with the objective to bridge the gap between community-level innovation and European programmes, Missions and policy objectives.  The second Urban Doers Community will bring together 12 community-level initiatives from DUT countries for a year of mutual learning, capacity building, and knowledge and experience exchange. 

The programme operates through two complementary components, each producing distinct but interconnected outputs:

Component 1: Connecting and building capacities

The selected initiatives are going to take part in dedicated Urban Doers events, other DUT activities such as conferences, webinars, workshops, and trainings designed to enhance their capacity to engage with European research and innovation programmes. The aim is to support Urban Doer initiatives in developing the knowledge, connections, and confidence needed to participate in future proposals answering the DUT research and innovation joint calls as partners. 

Component 2: Gathering and sharing insights for policy making

This component centres on two key outputs designed to ensure the local knowledges, innovations and experiences are accessible, promoted and “learnable” on the European level:

Case study report (5 pages per Urban Doers Initiative): Each Urban Doer will produce a case study documenting their local approach and translating their experience for other European contexts. These case studies will focus specifically on practical strategies for enhancing the impact and mainstreaming community innovations, identifying what has worked, what barriers exist, and what enabling conditions are needed to learn across different urban settings.

Joint policy paper (collective document): The Urban Doers cohort will co-create a policy paper that synthesises shared insights and formulates concrete recommendations for policymakers at local, national, and European levels. This paper will address how community-level innovations can be better supported, scaled, and integrated into urban transformation strategies. It provides actionable guidance on what policy frameworks, funding mechanisms, and institutional support are needed to enable widespread adoption of successful community initiatives.

Remuneration

Participating in the Urban Doers Community represents a commitment of 13 months starting in May 2026 during which selected initiatives receive €9,000 (excluding VAT) as a lump sum remuneration, plus up to €2,500 (excluding VAT) in travel reimbursement to participate in the community's on-site activities. 

Who can apply?

This opportunity is aimed at associations, NGOs, cooperatives, cultural organisations, or micro-enterprises with fewer than 10 employees. Eligible organisations work on urban transformation at the community level and have not previously participated as partners in EU-funded research and innovation projects. 

Note that research institutions, universities, public administrations and businesses with over 10 full-time equivalents are not eligible to apply, as the programme intentionally focuses on community-level actors who are often excluded from European programming. Additionally, organisations and individuals who already have participated as a beneficiary/partner/coordinator in DUT and Horizon Europe (and previous Framework Programmes) funded projects as partners are not eligible. 

Se full eligibility criteria in Appendix E in the Concept and Guidelines document further down on this page.

How to join the community

Join the Urban Doers Community by submitting an application below.

The application deadline is 16 March (13:00 CET).

Completing the application takes approximately 30–60 minutes. For an overview of the application questions, see Appendix D in the Concept and Guidelines document.

If you have any questions, please contact the DUT Management Team at urbandoers@dutpartnership.eu.