ARCADIA showcased its Twinning process as a best practice during the seminar Module 4: Orchestrating, part of the Innovation for Place-based Transformation Capacity Building Programme. The initiative, coordinated by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) together with ERRIN, EURADA, and Climate-KIC, brought together key regional actors to strengthen innovation capacities through collaboration, peer learning, and systemic transformation.
The online session took place on Thursday, 30 October 2025, gathering more than 100 participants from over 70 European territories. As the fourth chapter of the JRC ACTION Book: Innovation for Place-Based Transformation, the Orchestrating module explored how public institutions can connect stakeholders, foster coalitions, and guide governance processes to advance fair, green, and digital transitions across regions.
Key themes
The seminar covered four key thematic blocks:
- Agenda setting and sharing: developing shared transformation agendas.
- Enabling multilevel cooperation: strengthening coordination across governance levels.
- Collaborating among departments: promoting cross-sectoral collaboration within administrations.
- Collaborating among territories: building interregional cooperation and alliances.
Within the fourth block, ARCADIA delivered a 7-minute presentation on its Twinning Programme, illustrating how interregional collaboration can drive innovation and collective learning. This was complemented by a contribution from ERRIN, which focused on the role of networks and platforms in supporting regional cooperation across Europe.
Field-based learning and peer exchange
ARCADIA’s presentation drew concrete examples from its recent Multi-Regional Study Visit to Skåne (Sweden) in October 2025, which included ‘labs’ in Malmö, Helsingborg, and Lund. The Malmö lab demonstrated participatory approaches to urban renewal, specifically, urban greening at the Nyhamnen port, co-created with local associations and citizens. In Helsingborg, the focus shifted to blue-green corridors and river basin restoration, highlighting long-term thinking among local farmers and the importance of learning by doing for land management. The Lund lab explored the catchment-wide approach to climate-resilient infrastructure, emphasizing stakeholder engagement through the Water Dialogue model, and showing how a landscape’s recovery can be approached holistically, with bottom-up leadership by local actors.
Key takeaways included the value of experimental approaches, the crucial role of empowering stakeholders, and the need for patient, trust-building processes, particularly when addressing historical frustrations or resistance to change. The field visit further revealed that informal, face-to-face exchanges – such as roundtables – are often more effective in building consensus than formal written surveys, especially among stakeholder groups like landowners.
Practical mechanisms and documentation
Throughout its Twinning and peer-learning activities, ARCADIA used open calls, local expertise pooling, and trial-and-error methods not only to achieve climate resilience goals but also to create a living resource of practical knowledge. The ARCADIA Adaptation Journal played a pivotal role, documenting insights and field visit experiences, and providing a platform for showcasing transformative learning in action.
Impact and outlook
Through its participation, ARCADIA reaffirmed its dedication to promoting collaborative innovation and capacity building among European territories, contributing to the EU’s broader mission of inclusive and sustainable transformation. This experience underscored the effectiveness of interregional exchange as a practical learning mechanism, facilitated through both direct visits and innovative tools like the ARCADIA Adaptation Journal, for capturing, documenting, and spreading impactful lessons and innovative practices across Europe.
Ph: SBH