ANCI TOSCANA ASSOCIAZIONE

Their core work

ANCI Toscana is the regional association representing municipalities across Tuscany, Italy, acting as the institutional voice and capacity-building arm for local governments in the region. In H2020, they positioned themselves as project coordinators focused on urban innovation — specifically on how design thinking and cultural strategies can drive transformation in cities. Their real-world value lies in connecting EU research agendas directly to the city governance level: they can mobilize municipal networks, run participatory urban experiments, and translate research outputs into local policy. For consortium builders, they are a rare combination of public authority legitimacy and active project leadership experience.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their H2020 entry point (2017, DESIGNSCAPES) was grounded in design methodology and innovation capacity — essentially asking how cities can be better equipped to use design as a problem-solving tool. By 2020, with T-Factor, the framing had broadened to societal transition, with culture and creativity replacing design as the primary lens. This is a meaningful shift: from a skills/methods focus toward a wider transformation agenda that positions cities as vehicles for social change, not just urban service delivery.

They are moving from practical capacity-building (teaching cities to use design) toward positioning urban culture and creativity as drivers of deep societal transformation — a direction well-aligned with EU New European Bauhaus and post-2020 urban agenda priorities.

How they like to work

ANCI Toscana has exclusively led projects — coordinator on both H2020 grants — which is unusual for a public association and signals strong institutional confidence in EU project management. Their consortia are medium-to-large (36 unique partners across 14 countries over two projects), suggesting they build broad, multi-country coalitions rather than tight specialist teams. Working with them means accepting their leadership role; in return, they bring an established network of municipal and urban research partners across Europe.

With 36 unique partners across 14 countries from only two projects, they have built a notably wide network for their size — averaging 18 partners per consortium. Their geographic reach extends well beyond Italy, suggesting active European-level consortium building rather than a home-country-centric approach.

What sets them apart

Very few municipal associations — as opposed to individual city governments — take on EU research coordinator roles; ANCI Toscana is an exception, giving them a dual value: institutional authority across an entire regional network of municipalities, and demonstrated EU project management competence. For consortia that need a credible public authority anchor with reach across multiple Italian cities simultaneously, they offer something a single city administration cannot. They also bridge the gap between urban policy and innovation research in a way that pure research institutes typically cannot.

Highlights from their portfolio

• DESIGNSCAPES
  Their largest grant (€1.77M) and an Innovation Action — a demanding scheme that goes beyond research toward real-world implementation — making this a strong proof point of their execution capability in urban design innovation.
• T-Factor
  Running concurrently with DESIGNSCAPES from 2020, this project shows ANCI Toscana managing multiple EU-funded coordinatorships simultaneously, and marks their pivot toward culture and creativity as urban transformation strategies.