Erasmus+ KA2 – Cooperation partnerships in higher education project proposal, “CIRC.LE: Circular & Socio-Civic Learning Hub”, was submitted with the contribution of our academic staff from the Faculty of Architecture, Zeynep Günay, Bihter Almaç, İmge Akçakaya Waite, Sema Alaçam, Eda Ünlü Yücesoy, Ayşegül Akçay Kavakoğlu and Derya Güleç Özer, together with a partnership between seven European Universities, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM, Spain), University of Bordeaux (UBx, France), University of Miskolc (Hungary), NOVA University of Lisbon (FCT NOVA, Portugal), Technische Universität Darmstadt (TUDa, Germany), University Politehnica of Bucharest (UPB, Romania). The project’s funding by the European Union has been accepted.
CIRC.LE commits to empower new generations of professionals working in a circular transition with a socio-civic compromise. To that end, we establish the Circular & SOC Learning Hub; a meeting point for students, professors, transdisciplinary experts, society at large, and decision-makers, working together with a circular and sociocivic compromise. Students reflect on challenges by evaluating social and civic implications and become co-creators and active part of the challenge. This humanizing approach is considered as the perfect complement to the technical skills for a true application of circularity principles. It creates a multi-stakeholder, participatory, democratic mutual learning and knowledge transfer platform and puts complex dilemmas on the table and out of the box ideas for students’ social and civic development and promotes local action and global thinking. Specific objectives are: To deliver the CIRC.LE Hub, a meeting point for students, researchers, professors and all stakeholders working in a circular transition with a socio-civic compromise; to launch socio-civic (SOC) learning experiences with a global and local perspective, to be addressed by transnational groups of students guided by multidisciplinary experts; to collect and create quality open educational resources on circular and socio-civic aspects and promote training and reflection; to deliver best practices to assess students’ circular and socio-civic experiences.
