Academic project partners meet in Maastricht

At the start of September, the academic partners of SPECIFIC met in-person for the first time for two days of intense planning and workshops. Maastricht, one of the cities to be studied as part of the project, was selected as the location as it allowed all of the partners to travel by train. A beautiful city with a strong cycling culture, it proved the ideal base.

After eight months of working on the project and meeting online, it was invaluable to get together in one room. As well as getting to know each other on a personal level, the meeting provided a prolonged period of dedicated time to both hone the overarching blueprint of SPECIFIC as well as discuss the finer details.

As the transition experiments in each city are in the latter stages of planning, we could draw on each other’s experiences to further develop our own plans, and to tweak them to ensure cohesion and comprehensiveness across the broad range of activities.

Many questions were answered over the two days, and many questions were raised. We continue on SPECIFIC with a renewed sense of purpose and invigorated motivation.