CENTROSCIENZA ONLUS ASSOCIAZIONE

Their core work

Centroscienza is a Turin-based science centre and non-profit association that designs and delivers public science engagement experiences — live shows, hands-on experiments, games, and dialogue events — aimed at bridging the gap between research institutions and everyday citizens. In EU projects they contribute their informal-learning infrastructure and event-production expertise, most visibly through participation in the European Researchers' Night network and citizen science initiatives. Their role in H2020 was specifically to translate complex research activities into accessible public formats, reaching youth and general audiences in Italy. They operate at the intersection of science education, cultural programming, and responsible research and innovation (RRI) policy.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first project (TRACKS, 2014–2015), the focus was on event-based public engagement — researchers' nights, awareness campaigns, shows, and games — essentially one-directional outreach where science is presented to audiences. By the time of CLoSER (2016–2018), the vocabulary shifted meaningfully toward citizen science, co-creation, participation, and RRI, indicating a move from broadcasting science to involving citizens as active contributors. This mirrors the broader EU policy shift of the same period, and suggests Centroscienza was tracking that trend rather than simply repeating established event formats.

Their trajectory points toward participatory science models — if they remain active, future collaborations are more likely to involve co-design with communities and RRI compliance support than straightforward science show production.

How they like to work

Centroscienza has never led an H2020 project — both participations were as a non-coordinating partner, which suggests they position themselves as a specialist contributor rather than a project driver. Their consortia were very small (five total partners, all domestic), indicating they work in tightly scoped, nationally focused projects rather than large international networks. For a prospective partner, this means they can be engaged as a reliable public-engagement specialist within an Italian context, but they are unlikely to bring pan-European consortium connections.

Centroscienza's H2020 network is extremely limited — five unique partners, all within Italy, across only two projects. There is no evidence of cross-border collaboration in the available data.

What sets them apart

Among Italian H2020 participants, Centroscienza occupies a narrow but clear niche: a practitioner organisation with physical infrastructure and operational experience in public science engagement, as opposed to universities or research institutes that communicate science as a secondary activity. For a consortium needing a credible Italian public-engagement partner with event production capacity and informal-education expertise — particularly for MSCA or Horizon projects with dissemination or RRI requirements — this is a ready-made fit. The caveat is that their H2020 activity is dated (2014–2018) and modest in scale, so verification of current capacity is advisable before engagement.

Highlights from their portfolio

• TRACKS
  Commemorated the tenth anniversary of the European Researchers' Night, combining live experiments, games, and shows in a flagship public engagement event — the clearest demonstration of Centroscienza's core event-production capability.
• CLoSER
  Marked a conceptual step forward by embedding citizen science and responsible research and innovation into the engagement model, going beyond event-based awareness toward structured public participation in research.