After three years of collaboration, creativity, and coastal innovation, the Horizon Europe EmpowerUs project reached its successful conclusion in September 2025 — but its impact is only beginning. Working hand in hand with coastal communities across Europe, the project has helped local changemakers address the pressing socio-economic and environmental challenges shaping their shores.
About The Project
The project focused on enhancing sustainable, inclusive and resilient coastal development, incorporating key principles like co-creation, inclusive transition mechanisms and ‘Leaving No One Behind’ to develop and implement local pilot initiatives in six Transition Coastal Labs (TCLs) across Europe. The TCLs are located in:
- Bulgaria: Burgas
- Cyprus: Eastern Limassol Region
- Finland: Åland Islands
- Ireland: Connemara and the Aran Islands
- Norway: Træna
- Spain: Cap de Creus
The six pilot initiatives were co-designed based on the identified challenges and needs of the local communities. Coordinated by both an Academic Lead and Local Host partner, each pilot aimed to enhance the environmental, economic and social sustainability of the respective TCL.
In addition to the pilot initiatives, the project has produced a number of key results, including a Handbook of Inclusive Methodologies, a Transition Roadmap, various policy briefs and academic papers, among others. These results will provide a variety of stakeholders (from local communities to policymakers at the EU level) with key insights and inspiration to support and design similar coastal initiatives in the future. Discover the full suite of results and resources on the EmpowerUs website.
ERINN Innovation’s Role
ERINN Innovation played a pivotal role in the project’s success, leading the communication, dissemination, exploitation, and knowledge management work. As leading experts within this space, we worked in collaboration with partners to ensure that the project’s results were widely disseminated and reached the relevant audiences at the local, national and European levels.
We also worked closely with the coordinating partner, Nordland Research Institute, providing project management support to the team and coordinating the project task on Ocean Literacy activities. Each TCL team was supported in organising local Ocean Literacy activities in their communities, and we co-developed a number of Ocean Literacy resources, most notably the Women Making Waves Activity Book. We also collaborated with Nordland Research Institute on the rollout of the Ocean & Society Survey, and produced and disseminated a series of policy briefs, capturing national Ocean Literacy needs and policy recommendations for the six TCL countries.
Reflecting on his time working on the EmpowerUs project, Donnchadh Kindlon, ERINN Innovation Senior Project Officer, said:
“It’s been a real pleasure working on the EmpowerUs project. The highlight for me has undoubtedly been getting to work with such fantastic partners over the last three years and getting to work on marine social sciences, an often underappreciated yet very important field. I’m looking forward to exploring future opportunities to work with the partners again!”
Project Legacy
While the project has officially wrapped up, the legacy of EmpowerUs continues. With six Transition Coastal Labs established and strong relationships built, the local host partners will continue to engage with the communities to ensure the results are taken up and the project has a lasting positive impact.
The project has ended at an exciting time for EU marine policy, with the launch of the European Ocean Pact by DG MARE earlier this year. The Pact includes a dedicated strategy for the development and resilience of EU coastal communities, and EmpowerUs partners plan to continue to engage with DG MARE to ensure that the key insights from the project are taken into consideration within the strategy.
EmpowerUs has also recently been featured on Euronews on their Ocean Documentary series. Watch here.
Want to find out more about ERINN Innovation’s co-creation work in EmpowerUs and other projects? Discover insights from our recent Co-Creation event.
