A new European resource kit, Partnerships that Work, has been launched to help universities and communities build stronger, more equitable and sustainable partnerships. Developed through the Erasmus+ project SPACE – Supporting Professionals and Academics for Community Engagement in Higher Education, the kit provides four practical tools to help universities and community organisations plan, assess and improve their collaboration. These tools guide users through partnership planning, joint reflection and dialogue, and can be adapted for use at the individual, partnership or institutional level.

Partners of the SPACE project gathered in Girona, Spain, on 5-7 November 2025 for a consortium meeting that marked an important milestone in the project’s implementation. Hosted by the University of Girona and the Girona Region of Knowledge Foundation, the meeting brought together a combination of onsite and online representatives from Croatia, Belgium and Ireland to review progress, exchange insights, and plan the next phase of work.
Over two days of in-depth discussions, partners reflected on the project’s growing impact across institutions and beyond. The consortium confirmed that community-engaged learning has become a shared point of reference within participating universities, influencing both teaching practice and institutional culture.

On 17 October 2025, the SPACE project team held an interactive workshop at the European Association for Service-Learning in Higher Education (EASLHE) Capacity Building Event in Utrecht. The session, led by Bojana Ćulum Ilić and Thomas Farnell, introduced the SPACE co-learning programme – a professional development model supporting university staff in designing and implementing community-engaged teaching and learning.

The SPACE project, funded through the Erasmus+ programme, is a continuation of TECFE and SHEFCE projects, is another community engagement initiative involving four European universities from Ireland, Belgium, Spain, and Croatia. As part of this project, academic staff will integrate community engaged teaching and learning into their curricula, an approach that combines academic instruction with meaningful community engagement.

On January 22-23, the Institute for the Development of Education hosted an inspiring training in Zagreb, organised within the ECEM (Engaging Communities Through Engaged Mobilities), an Erasmus+ project, as the third in a series of trainings and was focused on Community Engaged Learning, with a spotlight on service learning in the context of student mobilities.
Thee training started by painting the big picture, by exploring the social dimension of higher education and the concept of community engagement. Thomas Farnell from the SPACE project consortium shared the TEFCE Toolbox approach, with a special overview of the Teaching and Learning dimension, which is the focus of the SPACE project, so links and possible synergies of the two projects were discussed.