ONTARIO COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN UNIVERSITY

Their core work

OCAD University is Canada's largest art and design university, bringing design thinking, participatory facilitation, and co-creation methodologies into research and innovation policy contexts. In H2020 projects, they contributed as a North American bridge institution — connecting European research networks with Canadian and US communities through structured ICT cooperation dialogues and capacity-building workshops. Their distinctive value is applying creative, people-centered design methods to complex challenges like international R&I policy alignment and gender equity in science systems. They are not a laboratory or engineering partner; they are a process and facilitation specialist with a transatlantic reach.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (DISCOVERY, 2016–2017), OCAD's contribution was squarely in ICT cooperation infrastructure — running discovery labs, facilitating transatlantic networking events, and connecting political, industry, and economic thought-leaders across the EU, US, and Canada. By 2020–2023 (GENDER STI), the subject matter shifted entirely to gender equality and social equity in R&I systems, though the same participatory toolkit — design thinking, co-creation, benchmarking, communities of practice — remained central. This suggests OCAD's core offer is methodological (facilitation and design process) rather than domain-specific, making them adaptable to whatever policy dialogue topic a consortium requires.

OCAD is moving from technology cooperation facilitation toward social equity and inclusion themes in science policy, which aligns with growing EU and Canadian priority areas — making them a plausible partner for future Horizon Europe projects in responsible research and innovation or ERA-related gender mainstreaming initiatives.

How they like to work

OCAD has never coordinated an H2020 project, always joining as a participant within large international consortia. With 22 unique partners across 18 countries from just two projects, they are embedded in wide, diverse networks rather than tight repeated-partner clusters. Their role is consistently that of a specialist contributor — brought in for their facilitation methodology and their non-EU geographic position — rather than a technical work-package leader or project manager.

Despite only two H2020 projects, OCAD has accumulated 22 distinct consortium partners across 18 countries, a sign of participation in broad, politically diverse international consortia. Their Canadian base gives European consortia a credible third-country anchor, particularly for projects requiring transatlantic reach under EU international cooperation mandates.

What sets them apart

OCAD is unusual among H2020 participants because it is a dedicated art and design institution, not a science or engineering university — meaning it brings creative process design and human-centered facilitation as its core research competency, not laboratory output. As a Canadian institution, it fulfills a structural need in EU consortia targeting North American cooperation, offering authentic connections to US and Canadian research, policy, and industry networks that European partners typically cannot provide. For consortia working on dialogue-heavy, multi-stakeholder international programs, OCAD offers a rare combination of methodological creativity and transatlantic institutional legitimacy.

Highlights from their portfolio

• DISCOVERY
  OCAD's only funded H2020 project and their entry into EU cooperation, where they served as a North American anchor institution facilitating structured ICT R&I dialogues between Europe, Canada, and the USA using discovery lab formats.
• GENDER STI
  Demonstrates OCAD's ability to reapply its design-thinking and co-creation toolkit to social policy domains, contributing to a multi-year multilateral dialogue on gender equality in science and technology systems across EU and third countries.