41 videoclips have been produced over the course of the GoNano project. They have been developed with different audiences in mind. Some aim to educate and inspire research and innovation actors to engage society, while others have been developed to educate and inform broader audiences of the potential impacts of nanotechnologies and of opportunities to integrate societal considerations at early stages of research and innovation.

Enabling co-creation in nanotechnologies

Deliverable 6.2 is part of the overall community and capacity building activities of GoNano. This deliverable specifically aimed to offer guidelines to citizens and other stakeholders who would like to have a voice in nanotechnology. To support citizens and stakeholders in the nanodebate, various output was developed, including a subtask report on exploring engagement opportunities for citizens and stakeholders, a public engagement database, ‘how to..’ guide on participating in the nanodebate, and a website section with easy to understand information about nanotechnology and results of the GoNano project.

For a details overvieuw of the various output please see D6.2 – Guidelines and information for citizens and CSOs

In summary

Mapping already available opportunities for public and professional stakeholders to have a say on the development of nanotechnology.

This first task focussed on mapping already available opportunities for public and professional stakeholders to have a say on the development of nanotechnology. GoNano reviewed 49 engagement initiatives (European projects, networks or platforms, and local projects and organisations) that aim to engage citizens and stakeholders with nanotechnologies (and emerging technologies more broadly) to map exisiting engagement opportunities in more detail. A key finding of the report is that concrete opportunities for citizens and CSOs to actively engage with nanotechnologies are relatively scarce, despite a plethora of public engagement initiatives. For those citizens and stakeholders interested in engaging with nanotechnology, suitable engagement opportunities can be hard to find. The report concludes that more engagement initiatives are needed that focus on the ’empowerment’ of citizens and stakeholders rather than on passive engagement. The responsive capacity of research and innovation needs to be enhanced in order to align research and innovation with the values, needs and expectations of society.

Please read the full subtask report here: Subtask 6.2 – Information and guides for citizens and CSOs

Developing an online resource database

Based on the findings of subtask report 6.2, GoNano developed an online public engagement database. The database lists engagement initiaitives that are currently inviting citizens and stakeholders. The list is not meant to be exhaustive, but gives a first indication of what is out there and how to get involved.

Click here for the public engagement database.

Developing guidelines for and citizens and CSOs who would like to engage with nanotechnologies

With the ‘How to..’ guide for citizens, GoNano aims to support citizens who would like to engage with nanotechnologies to express their own needs and concerns and ensure that their thoughts are taken into account in future developments. The guide offers a five-step approach which helps citizens define their interests, identify the right engagement opportunity, and become involved in nanotechnology research and development:

1. Define your purpose;
2. Find the place and community;
3. Get prepared;
4. Create together;
5. Reflect on the process and results.

Each step in this guide is supported by a brief summary of the step, followed by an example or exercise to help visualize and act as guidance through the step. For each stage there is a hint or advice based on the experience gained during the GoNano project. This also includes background information, tools, formats and inspiring ideas.

Click here for the ‘How to..’ guide.

Produce easy-to-understand information on nanotechnology and the results of the GoNano project

The findings from the GoNano project have been made available in a dedicated section on the project website to make it easier for citizens and societal stakeholders to understand the key concepts and possible developments of nanotechnology and support them to engage in research activities or in the public debate on nanotechnologies. This website section offers all the output developed as part of Task 6.2, but also includes relevant outputs from other GoNano work packages and external content. A brief summary of the website sections is given below; a full description is available directly on the website.

• The homepage of the section: ‘Join the nanodebate’ introduces the information available on the other pages. The sidebar at the right-hand side provides easy access to tools developed or citizens; the public engagement database
• The page: Nanotechnology in a nutshell presents easy to understand information on nanotechnology. This section briefly answers the question what is nanotechnology? and provides some examples of nanomaterials applications in commercial products. Supporting background material, including informative videoclips and brochures
• The page: Why might you care about nanotechnology gives a short introduction about the governance of nanotechnology. The videoclips and posters of future scenarios that GoNano developed are introduced as an example to help visualize future nanotechnology applications and raise questions on acceptability, sustainability and desirability that come with it.
• The page: Join in: engagement opportunities provides the public engagement database developed as discussed previously.
• The page: The GoNano approach summarises the aims, activities and main findings of the GoNano project. It provides a complete overview of the outcomes and results per work package, including the deliverables, toolkits, videoclips and the white papers.

Click here to visit the Join the nanodebate webapage

The full report can be found here D6.2 – Guidelines and information for citizens and CSOs

*The document may not be seen as an official deliverable of the GoNano project as it has not yet been approved by the European Commission

As part of its overall efforts towards training and community capacity building in Work Package 6, this report reviews European projects and other initiatives that aim to engage citizens and stakeholders with nanotechnologies (and emerging technologies more broadly). The explorative review of 49 engagement initiatives in this report resulted in the following findings:

• The bulk of public engagement initiatives on emerging technologies in the sample are from EU projects funded under the NM(B)P and Science in Society programmes.
• Relatively few engagement initiatives focus exclusively on nanotechnologies; those that do are predominantly EU-funded (86%).
• The majority of engagement initiatives reviewed (78%) are organised in a top-down fashion; they are carried out by technology ‘enactors’ or engagement professionals, often in return for payment or other forms of compensation.
• There is significant variation in the types of public engagement offered by the different initiatives.
• The different types of engagement activities are unevenly distributed: 45 initiatives (92%) have engagement activities that fall within the ‘Inform’ category. Relatively few initiatives aim to empower citizens and stakeholders.
• Only 3 out of the 49 initiatives reviewed currently offer concrete opportunities for citizens and CSOs to engage specifically with nanotechnologies.

These findings suggest that concrete opportunities for citizens and CSOs to actively engage with nanotechnology research and innovation processes are relatively scarce, despite a plethora of public engagement initiatives. The overall conclusion from this review is that the current engagement landscape does not fully address recent policy objectives to actively involve citizens and civil society in the development of research and innovation missions and projects. To strengthen the role of civil society in European research, there should be more attention to the active involvement of citizens and CSOs in shaping the research and innovation agenda. Public engagement needs to focus on the empowerment of citizens and CSOs, moving beyond the conception of societal stakeholders as passive recipients of information. Better alignment of research and innovation with the values, needs and expectations of society requires that the responsive capacity of research and innovation is enhanced.

The findings from this report have been used as input for the online resource database and the ‘How to.. ‘ guide for citizens and other stakeholders who would like to engage with nanotechnologies.

Read the full report here: Subtask 6.2 – Information and guides for citizens and CSOs

The public engagement database

The public engagement database lists organisations and projects that are currently looking for feedback from citizens and civil society organisations. The list is not meant to be exhaustive, but it is a good base and gives an indication of what is out there and how to get involved.

The database lists three types of initiatives;

• EU-projects,
• Networks or platforms,
• Local projects and organisations.

How-to guide on participating in the nanodebate

GoNano also developed a “How- to” guide to support citizens who would like to engage with nanotechnologies to express their own needs and concerns and ensure that their thoughts are taken into account in future developments. The guide offers a five-step approach which aims to help define your interests, identify the right opportunity and shares how to become involved in nanotechnology research and development.

For more information about nanotechnology, please visit the join the nanodebate webpage

A complete overview of the content developed in deliverable 6.2 can be here: D6.2 – Guidelines and information for citizens and CSOs

*The document may not be seen as an official subtask report of the GoNano project as it has not yet been approved by the European Commission

The GoNano project established an iterative, four-step co-creation process to integrate societal considerations in nanotechnologies, from which a wealth of creative ideas for future nanotechnologies have been produced. These 92 suggestions vary wildly in scope and nature. The co-creation process was not just intended to generate wild ideas, however. It was also meant to produce concrete ‘responsive’ design suggestions which can be fed back in ongoing research and innovation activities. This report presents five narratives from the different pilot studies that suggest how key suggestions evolved over time, maturing from an initial suggestion made in the expert interviews at the beginning of the project into a highly specific proposition towards the end. These cases suggest that focused, guided interactions between different stakeholders can in principle lead to novel suggestions on how to integrate broader considerations in research and innovation decisions.

Read the full report here GoNano D4.5 – Concrete product suggestions for future nanotechnologies

In summary

GoNano established an iterative, four-step co-creation process to integrate societal considerations in nanotechnologies: the first step consisted of a series of citizen workshops (one in each of the three pilot countries: the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Spain) where citizens expressed their wishes and concerns with respect to each of the application areas (health, food and energy, respectively). In the second step, the pilot partners organised co-creation workshops with stakeholders to explore ways to take the wishes and concerns of citizens into account in nanotechnology research and innovation. The results from this first stakeholder workshop were subsequently discussed in the third step of the co-creation process: an online citizen consultation to get responses from citizens from various European countries to the product suggestions of the first round of stakeholder workshops. The fourth and final step of the co-creation process consisted of a second round of stakeholder workshops organised in October and November 2019 in each of the pilot countries. These workshops explored how the product suggestions derived from the first workshops and subsequent input from the online consultation could be integrated in concrete research and innovation decisions.

The GoNano co-creation process has produced a wealth of creative ideas for future nanotechnologies. Some 92 product suggestions have been collected over the course of the project. These suggestions vary wildly in scope and nature. Some of these suggestions were discarded or amalgamated during the workshops themselves through brainstorming, focussing and selection procedures. The suggestions were also categorised by GoNano partners after each step in order to produce viable options for workshop participants in subsequent steps. Given the specific objectives and limited timeframes of the project, it was impossible to follow up on every single suggestion. Still, each of the 92 ideas could in principle serve as the start of a new cycle of co-creation – provided that one of the participants sees merit in the idea**

The co-creation process was not just intended to generate wild ideas, however. It was also meant to produce concrete ‘responsive’ design suggestions which can be fed back in ongoing research and innovation activities. This is why the product suggestions became more focused and directed towards concrete suggestions over the course of the events. This report presents five narratives from the different pilot studies that suggest how key suggestions evolved over time, maturing from an initial suggestion made in the expert interviews at the beginning of the project into a highly specific proposition towards the end:

1. Developing a data management plan for the artificial pancreas.
2. Strengthening user-producer interactions in the development of new diagnostic tools for cancer detection.
3. Designing a packaging system for perishable foods.
4. Defining safety measures for the use of nanomaterials in food.
5. Capturing energy from the environment and converting it to electrical energy for clean storage and use.

These cases suggest that focused, guided interactions between different stakeholders can in principle lead to novel suggestions on how to integrate broader considerations in research and innovation decisions.

The product suggestions are not the “concrete” products we ambitiously envisaged at the outset of the project; however, they are the truest reflection of the GoNano co-creation process that produced them (deliverable D4.4. will consider the extent to which the workshops succeeded in promoting changes in research and innovation decisions, and will review the preconditions for enabling concrete change through co-creation).

Read the full report here GoNano D4.5 – Concrete product suggestions for future nanotechnologies

*The document may not be seen as an official deliverable of the GoNano project as it has not yet been approved by the European Commission

** Deliverable 4.4 provides a more elaborate assessment of the engagement process as a whole. It also considers in further detail why some ideas were taken up and others were not, with the aim to shed further light on the preconditions for co-creation

The aim of the information material was to:
1) present the citizen participants with short and easy-to-understand information about nanotechnology
2) align the discussion in the meetings with the research and innovation priorities with professional stakeholders
3) introduce visions of future nanotechnology in Health, Energy and Food
4) introduce societal, cultural, legal and ethical questions and uncertainties
5) and finally to illustrate dilemmas of use in relation to everyday life situations in 2030 (please see the future scenario posters)

The report describes the process of developing the information materials, and it contains the print versions of material in English language versions, and the print versions translated into the national language of the pilot countries.

Read more about the report in D3.1- R&I background production for pilot studies

During the autumn of 2018, three thematic deliberative and envisioning citizen workshops in the areas food (Czech Republic), energy (Spain) and health (the Netherlands) formed the first step of the co-creation process. The goal of the workshops was to inform citizens on nanotechnologies and possible future application areas in order to facilitate their reflection on wishes, needs and concerns. The citizens’ inputs formed the basis for understanding social needs and values, and for working with professional stakeholders to align future nanotechnology applications with these societal values and needs.

Video impressions of the workshops are available on the project website and on YouTube.

Read the full GoNano report- D3.2 Briefing report from the citizen workshops

In summary

The three pilot partners organised a series of face-to-face citizen workshops in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Spain in October/November 2018. The goal of the workshops wasto inform citizens on nanotechnologies and possible future application areas in orderto facilitate their reflection on wishes, needs and concerns. The citizens’ inputs form the basis for understanding social needs and values, and for working with professional stakeholders to align future nanotechnology applications with these societal values and needs.

Workshop design

The participants of the citizen workshops were guided in a process of envisioning and co-creating suggestions for the early stage of nanotechnology research and innovation that would live up to their needs.The aim of the workshop was to enable the citizens to come together, to consider and commonly reflect on specific nanotechnology applications. The outcome would thus be an overview of citizens’ needs, values and concerns related to future nanotechnologies and their application in the areas of food,energy and health. The figure below shows the pahses guiding the organisation of the citizen workshops.

Prior to the workshop,all participants received an information package. Participants worked in small groups and with the help of a moderator throughout the day. The moderator’s role was to make sure every participant wa sable to contribute to the debates at the tables, to take notes, and to make sure key points of discussions were recorded in the online tool. In terms of the composition of participants, organisersworked with the aim of collecting 48 participants from different backgrounds based on various demographic criteria (gender, age, education, economic activity, place of residence).

Workshop findings

In general, the discourse from the citizen workshops reproduced well-known repertoires of optimism and concern: public perception studies consistently show that European citizens are cautiously optimistic about nanotechnologies.They have positive expectations; however, they also have concerns about the risks to human and environmental health and to societal well-being ingeneral. Throughout the three workshops, citizens highlighted the need to engage in dialogue on the impacts of nanotechnologies. A number of characteristics of the technology application correlated with the strength of the need to engage in dialogue:

1) The more widespread or the closer to a person’s body a technologyapplicationwould be, the stronger theneed the citizens expressed for dialogueand information

2) The less obvious a technology application’scontribution was to solvinga societal need or challenge, the more questions the citizens would have about the application. E.g. participants could understand nanotechnologies in health applications as a solution to aspecificdiseasemore easily than the preventative benefits of modified food

The results from the citizen workshops point both to desirable ends (reduce the use of food and energy; increase health and well-being; make water more available to more people, especially people in the third world) and to important needs that should be safeguarded in implementation (avoid harm to environment and humans; avoid polarisation in society;ensure accessibility and affordability; ensure nanotechnologies develop under public scrutiny and in dialogue with societal stakeholders and publics; support a circular economy; reduce waste;increase recycling;ensure sustainability;safeguard privacy and security, ease of use and maintenance).

Read the full GoNano report- D3.2 Briefing report from the citizen workshops

What is nanotechnology? And why does it matter?

Nanotechnology in a nutshell

Nano originates from the Greek word nanos, which means dwarf and refers to something very small. Nanotechnology is defined not by its subject matter, but by the scale at which it operates: the nanometer, or one billionth of a meter. Nanotechnology seeks to manipulate and control matter in a size range of 100 nanometer down to the size of atoms (approximately 0.2nm).

Not all nano-sized objects are man made. Many nanostructures occur naturally. They can be found in sea salt and volcanic ashes, among others. However, it is only in recent years that sophisticated tools have been developed to investigate and manipulate matter at the nanoscale. This has greatly enhanced our understanding of the nanoscale world. We now know that by rearranging or restructuring the atoms and molecules of a particle, the properties and behaviour (such as melting point, conductivity or chemical reactivity) of the particle change. For instance, gold particles at the nanoscale are not yellow as we know them, but can appear red or purple. Because of these changes in their optical properties, gold nanoparticles can be used for medical imaging. Nanomaterials may differ significantly from their larger scale relatives, opening doors for new technological opportunities. Read more about nanotechnology.

Why might you care about nanotechnology?

Nanotechnology is already a part of our lives. Nanomaterials are used to enhance the properties of consumer products like some toothpaste, sunscreen, food packaging, and smartphones. Proponents of nanotechnology claim that this is just a glimpse of the possible future benefits for consumers. But others are concerned that nanomaterials may harm human and environmental health. So, even though applications of nanotechnologies are developed to provide better products to consumers, there may be unforeseen consequences.

To what extent can we anticipate the future impacts of the use of nanomaterials? How should the potential benefits of nanotechnology be weighed against the possible unforeseen consequences? And who gets to decide? In recent years, a wide range of projects has been initiated to assess nanotechnology, measuring the effects of nanoparticles on human and environmental health and exploring possible future scenarios with citizens and stakeholders. Read more about the governance of nanotechnologies.

Join in: engagement opportunities

Nanotechnology, like all novel scientific advances, introduces new opportunities and uncertainties. This invites important questions about what products citizens may or may not want, and about the risks we are prepared to tolerate. These are questions which affect us all. As a stakeholder, you may also want to become involved in what happens next.

To help you get started, GoNano did some exploratory research and developed a public engagement database, listing organizations and projects that are currently out there looking for your feedback. These initiatives would like to find out about your concerns, needs and wishes on nanotechnology-related topics. Some directly invite you to join their discussion, others offer guidance on how to become involved in the nanodebate . Click here for the public engagement database.

GoNano also developed a ‘How to..’ guide for citizens on public participation. With this guide, we would like to share our lessons learned. Hopefully it will support citizens who would like to engage with nanotechnologies to express their own needs and concerns and ensure that their thoughts are taken into account in future developments. The guide offers a five-step approach which aims to help you define your interests, identify the right opportunity and become involved in nanotechnology research and development. It’s an invitation for citizens to express their own needs and concerns and help shape the future directions of nanotechnologies. Click here for the ‘How to..’ guide.

The GoNano approach

GoNano believes that research and innovation can benefit from being more open to societal needs and concerns. Over the course of three years (2017-2020), GoNano enabled collaborative development (co-creation) in three nanotechnology application areas: food, energy and health. We first consulted citizens about their wishes, needs and concerns regarding future nanotechnology applications. This was used as input for the first and second stakeholder workshops, which aimed to stimulate citizens, civil society organisations, industry, researchers and policy makers across Europe to co-create research aims and think about concrete (product) suggestions for future nanotechnologies. Read more about the GoNano approach and results. 

During summer 2019, nearly 900 participants from five European countries answered GoNano online questionnaire, which aimed to find out more about people´s understanding of nanotechnology and its application areas in Food, Energy and Health.

For this aim, a set of questions turning around the perception of the nanotechnology without any prior knowledge was used. The questionnaire was divided into two parts. In the first part, questions were related to the involvement and knowledge of nanotechnologies in general. In the second part, questions were related to the product suggestions. These product suggestions were the result of meetings with citizens and stakeholders in the Czech Republic, Spain and the Netherlands. These specific questions dealt with the desirability and subjectively perceived unsafety of the product suggestions.

32 % of all respondents connect nanotechnology to its specific characteristics – advanced size properties that enable the manipulation of materials on a nanoscale level. Other respondents perceive it more vaguely as something rather advanced (15 %), or connected to the future (9 %), often using examples from sci-fi movies. Others perceive nanotechnology as something advanced and at the same time connected to science and research (5 %). Quite a few respondents (11 %) see nanotechnology as a parallel to IT, Robotics or small machines that work on a molecular scale. Over 7 % of all respondents tend not to know anything clear about nanotechnology and its applications.

The Czech respondents were the most specific ones, when it comes to their representation of various shapes of nanotechnology – they often understood nanotubes and nanofibers as the main “design” of nanomaterials (13 %).

When asking respondents about the sentiment they express when talking about nanotechnology, only about 8 % of all participants tend to connect it with something rather or completely negative. About 38 % of people tend not to be positive nor negative about it, and the majority, about 55 %, of respondents tend to think moderately positive or positive about the technology.

In Energy applications, respondents put special emphasis on renewable resources and sustainable development as the main needs or values that the future developers of the technology should bear in mind. When it comes to Health and Food applications, both topics are being dominated by respondents´ concerns about safety. In the case of Food, this was further supported by the need for standardization and an effective control system for food products. In the Health application, safety concerns were supported by the well-being of customers.

Safety concerns were also connected to the desirability of specific product suggestions in general. The more desirable product, the less safety concerns respondents would have. Interestingly, the least safe and the least desirable product of all fifteen ideas from the three application areas was “A food that contains a balanced mix of nutrients”. Interestingly, the balanced super-food suggestion was voted the most popular idea at the citizen workshop during the October 2018. Curiously the second most unsafe idea in Food application area became the “Analytical methods for the detection of nanoparticles in Food”. In other words, what was meant to be the solution for many concerns about the safety of nano in Food, was perceived as unsafe itself.

In the Health application, also quite curiously and contrary to expectations, privacy and safety of the data used was perceived the least important of all the needs and values. In addition, of all the three application areas, the Health ones were the most desirable with the “Improvement of diagnoses of cancer through monitoring proteins” and “Early diagnostics devices for diabetes” being the most favoured of all the ideas.

To conclude, although respondents in general tend to perceive nanotechnology in a positive way, they hold some safety concerns connected to food and health applications. This is especially stressed by the concerns that were expressed both for the possible nano-food products and interestingly to the solution on how to guarantee their safety as well. However, concerns seem to be outweighed when the benefits are apparent – especially in case of such diseases as cancer or diabetes.

Read the whole report (D3.3)*

* The document may not be seen as an official deliverable of the GoNano project as it has not yet been approved by the European Commission

The artificial pancreas, a closed loop system that continuously monitors health data and injects insulin when needed, was one of the technologies that was discussed. Stakeholders related to diabetes (including patients) regarded it as a promising technology that can take away a large burden of the disease, but the technology is still in its development. Interestingly, some of the participants posed concerns that the closed loop system might take away too much control of patients, and argued that users should have insights in their health data and get the possibility to take back the control of regulating their insulin levels when they prefer to. It was also discussed who else (e.g., caregiver, company that develops the devices) should have access to the health data. One of the members of the ‘we are not waiting’ community, who was also present at the workshop, emphasized that an open source platform where patients voluntarily share their data could help to improve the algorithms that regulate the glucose levels.

At another table, stakeholders related to sensor technologies, responsible research and innovation, policy making and industry, elaborated on how to involve industry in research on nanotechnology and health. Researchers who are at the beginning of their career and who work on novel healthcare technologies, for example better detection of cancer for personalized medicines, face challenges. They need funding to develop their technologies, but in order to attract funding they need to have private actors on board. However, industry and businesses are interested in applicable technologies, and less in technologies at an early stage of development. During the workshop various strategies for researchers were discussed, including: build a reputation as a researcher through media attention, strategically choose the application of the technology, involve users in an early stage to get know their needs and demands, and create long-term relationships with business partners through network activities.