The CommuniCity project aims to create a model and guidance for European cities to independently organise open calls and run pilot programmes. This work happens through organising three rounds of open calls and running 100 pilots. Theme of the challenges and pilots is to find innovative technical solutions to bridge the digital divide and enhance the well-being of marginalised communities.
In the First CommuniCity Open Call Round three partnering cities Amsterdam, Helsinki and Porto organised an open call resulting in 10 challenges and 13 pilots. The pilots kicked off in May 2023.
The Second Round of CommuniCity Open Call expanded to four new cities; Aarhus, Breda, Prague and Tallinn. These seven cities identified 20 challenges resulting in 25 pilots. The pilots of the second round were running from December 2023.
The Third Round of CommuniCity Open Call was launched in September 2024 resulting in piloting between December 2024 and May 2025. New cities joined in to find solutions which help the lives of marginalised groups.
Each round of the open call is a learning experience not only to the piloting parties but also to the project partners gathering the learnings to be shared to all European countries in the form of this CommuniCity Manuals, to mention.
The open call process remains consistent across all rounds:
Challenge – cities identify the challenges they want to address.
Open call – city-specific challenges and open call documents are published.
Selecting pilots – expert jury members of each city evaluate the applications. Piloting contracts are signed.
Piloting – winner applicants and cities pilot the solutions in collaboration with end users.
Wrap up – achievements and learnings of the pilot are gathered and shared within the pilot stakeholders and to other interested parties. Evaluation of potential continuation of the collaboration or scaling up follows.
The more detailed information of the CommuniCity pilot process is described in the following chapters of this toolkit.