On 17 September, the Alliance for Community Engagement in European Higher Education was officially launched at the University of Tartu during a blended symposium bringing together members of the ACE consortium and a wider audience interested in university–community cooperation. The event gave the project a very tangible focus: alongside discussions about why community engagement matters, participants were introduced to the tools and resources developed by the ACE partnership and to the people who will help shape the Alliance as it grows. The programme opened with Anna Beitane (University of Tartu), who framed the ACE project and its mission, before moving to perspectives on community engagement from both institutional and practical angles.
The academic perspective came from Dr Dorota Piotrowska (Lodz University of Technology), whose keynote examined the case for community engagement from a university strategy and institutional perspective. This was followed by a more hands-on contribution from Aysel Muradova (ACEEU), who presented examples of community engagement in practice, drawing on ACEEU’s approach, tools and impact stories. Together, the two sessions highlighted an important part of the ACE approach: community engagement needs both institutional commitment and practical ways of putting that commitment into action.
A central moment of the symposium was the launch of the ACE Platform and the Guide to Forming University-Community Alliances. Presented by Aysel Muradova and Kathy Kelly (EUEI), the session showed how the Platform connects the ACE Alliance with the practices developed through the project and officially introduced the Guide as a practical resource for organisations looking to build stronger university–community partnerships. This is an important stage in the Erasmus+ project: the work developed by the consortium is now moving beyond project activities and into resources that can be accessed and used by higher education institutions and their external partners.
The discussion then moved to the experiences and expectations of several of the Alliance’s founding members. Dr Shane O’Sullivan (Technological University of the Shannon) and Dr Nenad Zrnic (University of Belgrade) shared their perspectives on joining ACE and the opportunities they see in building a European community around engagement. The event closed with Anna Beitane and Aysel Muradova outlining how organisations can join the Alliance, where to access the Platform and Guide, and what comes next, including the membership campaign and upcoming pilot activities.
The level of interest in the launch also demonstrated the relevance of the topic beyond the ACE consortium, with more than 60 registrations and participants showing interest from across Europe. Reflecting on the event, Anna Beitane from the University of Tartu, organiser of the event, said:
“The launch of ACE Alliance is an important milestone for ACE project because it brings the work of the project to a much wider community. With more than 60 registrations and interest from across Europe, we can already see that there is a real appetite for stronger university-community cooperation. The Platform and Guide give us something concrete to build on as we open the Alliance to new members and move into the next phase of the project.”