ConCiencia Local

ConCiencia Local is a collaborative process that connects researchers from the University of Vigo with staff from Pontevedra City Council. The initiative creates a shared working space where both groups can better understand how scientific knowledge is produced, how municipal decisions are made and how they can work together on a local challenge. The process combines mutual learning, dialogue and co-creation. Participants first explore the needs, constraints and working practices of research and public administration. They then identify how different forms of knowledge can contribute to the selected challenge and jointly develop proposals that are scientifically informed, relevant to the municipality and realistic within the local administrative context. The action also studies the collaboration itself through questionnaires, interviews and observation, with the aim of understanding which conditions help or hinder cooperation between universities and local authorities. The wider objective is to move beyond occasional consultation and establish more stable ways for scientific evidence, professional experience and local knowledge to inform public action.

The process has already held its presentation session, which also served as a first collective discussion. Researchers from the University of Vigo and staff from Pontevedra City Council got to know each other through group dynamics and then, in small groups and in a plenary circle, began to share their expectations and to discuss the needs, constraints and ways of working of research and municipal administration.