On 6 and 7 February, second workshop was held in Toulouse between the universities of the ENGAGE.EU alliance and their socio-economic partners under the name "Societal chapters". A dozen representatives from the municipalities of Helsinki, Mannheim, Rome, Toulouse, Vaasa and Vienna, as well as from charitable and environmental foundations, attended alongside the heads of the 9 universities involved in the 3rd chapter of the alliance: ENGAGE.EU in Society, devoted to the development of interactions between universities and society.

Toulouse Capitole University is leading one of the missions aimed at developing a network of external partners with whom to collaborate on the various ENGAGE.EU activities. These missions can be linked to education, research and the activities proposed in the Innovation Labs on societal and environmental issues.

The aim of these two days was to

• Getting to know each other better, particularly for newcomers to the network
• Align knowledge - Share the expectations of the ENGAGE in society stra
• Share experiences of successful collaboration between cities and universities
• Identify areas for collaboration, based on themes identified by 4 municipalities.

The participants explored several themes: circular economy, climate change, digitalisation of society, energy, labour market and AI. They prototyped (in 3D) the modalities of a multi-stakeholder collaboration, and reflected on the key success factors and associated risks.

Researchers from UT Capitole who were interested in the topics discussed were able to take part in these two very intense days.

The expected outcome was to produce at least one collaboration pilot that could feed into the stakeholder network development methodology. Two pilot projects were selected: the circular economy - the labour market and AI, which will be the subject of two working groups.

The workshop was an opportunity to initiate a new form of collaboration between the academic and socio-economic worlds, based on co-creation and mutual contribution, with the aim of intensifying the impact of actions on society.