GoGreenNext in Malta: Consortium Meeting & Day 1 Highlights

The Go Green Next project partners met in Malta (24th-27th March 2026) for our bi-annual consortium meeting, hosted at one of our four pilot sites. These types of gatherings offer a valuable opportunity to reflect on progress, share insights, and align the project on the next steps, as we move towards the second half of the project.

With approximately 27 months remaining of the 54-month initiative, (2024-2028), our partners came together to review research developments, strengthen collaboration, and shape the future approach of our work across four pilot sites:

• Malta 🇲🇹
• Cork 🇮🇪
• Klagenfurt 🇦🇹
• Päijät-Häme 🇫🇮

Day 1: Key Discussions & Opening Remarks

The meeting commenced at the Valletta Design Cluster at 9am, where the Project’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Tadhg MacIntyre, welcomed attendees and emphasised the importance of tracking progress, recognising the key milestones to date, and offered advice on how best to prepare for upcoming deadlines.

Members of the advisory board were also invited up to share their valuable insights, helping to set an inspiring and forward-looking tone for the days ahead.

Consortium meetings are a key element of the Go Green Next project, as they create space for meaningful exchange between diverse partners from a wide range of disciplines. From psychology and social science, to geography, sport science, statistics, and law, the diversity of expertise in the room enables rich discussions and interdisciplinary research approaches.

A key theme that emerged from the opening session was: We do not work in silos.

Instead, collaboration, feedback, and shared learning underpin our approach— reflecting Open Science and Fair Data principles that our core components in our approach.

Growing our team

New team members from Maynooth University were introduced, highlighting the continued and evolution of the project.

Welcome to:

Emma O’Toole (Social Sciences BA and Public Policy Msc Graduate)- Head of Communications.
Amelia Carroll (Geography Undergraduate & SPUR Awardee)- Research Assistant.
Anzhelika Buzovska(Graphic Design Undergraduate) – Research Assistant.
Sara Lynch (Psychology Bsc Graduate) – Research Assistant and Translator.

The new team members emphasised their excitement and commitment to sustainable urban transitions research in their opening words. They wish to bring fresh energy and perspectives to aid in the projects success moving forward.

Project Initiatives & Feedback

Mid morning discussions focused on the upcoming initiatives in the project, including the Go Green Trails programme, which Sara Lynch is co-designing. This initiative aims to explore and deepen the understanding, awareness and knowledge of the interconnectedness of health and climate change among citizens. This initiative will be trialled by different age groups, with the first session will being in the late spring in Maynooth, with a local school.

Next up was Martin Grisel – Director and founder of the European Urban Knowledge Network (EUKN EGTC), a European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) that supports national governments, EU institutions, and other stakeholders in the field of urban policy and research – shared internal survey feedback from the consortium members. EUKN is a partner organisation of Go Green Next, and they share their expertise with the consortium members.

These survey insights highlighted the importance of the need to maintain consistent communication across pilot sites—particularly in relation to implementation timelines and shared learning, in order to stay up to date with each others progress.

Policy & Future Impact

Martin followed up again with another key session that explored the role of policy in enabling sustainable urban transitions. The importance of integrating nature-based solutions, citizen perspectives, and health-focused approaches into policymaking was emphasised as central to achieving long-term impact.

Looking ahead, he mentioned that the upcoming EU Presidency in Ireland in 2026, presents an invaluable opportunity to showcase progress and impact emerging from the Cork pilot site.

Communications & Engagement

An update on the communications strategy was another important focus of Day 1. The new communications lead, Emma O’Toole, discussed the upcoming Go Green Next Champions initiative that will be launched across the 4 pilot sites. The initiative aims to empower local climate action leaders who are 18 + across the pilot regions, through offering bespoke online training modules in areas such as climate communication, citizen science, planetary health, and event organisation.

Discussions also addressed common challenges around consortium members producing communication outputs due to time constraints and work loads. Emma will be providing the internal consortium members with upcoming blog templates, writing guides, and activity tracking forms to help smooth over these challenges, and can offer editing, outreach, and design support to ensure communication outputs remain an essential part of the project.

Coming up next…

To wrap up Day 1, each pilot site showcased their work so far, highlighting their commitment to urban transitions, and multi-dimensional health. These detailed exploratory sessions demonstrated the breadth of activity taking place across the pilot sites, which will be explored in the next blog post.

This project is funded by the EU Horizon Programme and the Swiss State Secretariat. Any of the views expressed reflect the author.