MUST-a-Lab: Fourth Transnational Project Meeting in Vienna, Austria

From October 18 to October 20, 2023, the MUST-a-Lab project consortium gathered in Vienna, hosted by the Human Rights Office of the Municipality.  The project MUlti STakeholders Labs for migrants and stakeholders – funded by the Asylum,Migration and Inclusion Fund of the European Commission – aims at incorporating the Policy Lab methodology in the policy-making process of six local administrations involved as project partners, in order to co-design new policies and practices for the integration of migrants together with the final beneficiaries.  For this purpose, three gatherings of the Policy Labs took place throughout the end of 2022 and 2023 in Mechelen (Belgium), Grenoble Alpes Métropole (France), Modena (Italy), Vienna (Austria), Fuenlabrada (Spain) and Livadia (Greece). The Vienna meeting’s primary objective was to review the preliminary outcomes of the Policy Labs held in the six cities, and to plan the final one, from which will result in a collection of Policy Recommendations that the Municipalities will approve and adopt in 2024. As the project aims at producing a long-term impact on the policy making process in terms of participatory democracy, 2024 will be a crucial year for the partners to multiply and disseminate the Policy Lab approach and results on a national, european and international level. For this purpose, the main focus of the meeting was on defining a roadmap for organizing dissemination events and creating networks with other cities, organisations and projects that could be interested in replicating and learning from the MUST-a-Lab experience. As the partner in charge of conveying the Policy Lab methodology and of coordinating the engagement, communication and dissemination activities, the Institute played and will keep playing a very crucial role in the implementation of the MUST-a-Lab project over the next year.