What is the SPACE Centre?

The SPACE Centre aims to promote collaboration with external stakeholders, driving sustainable societal transformation and fostering deeper connections between universities and communities, including government, NGOs and businesses. Its activities emphasize developing social solutions in diverse areas, and creating a shared cultural platform to exchange diverse experiences and expertise.
By harnessing the collective expertise of its member institutions, the Centre is well-positioned to create meaningful impact in society and inspire long-lasting transformation.

The SPACE Centre is divided into two main branches:

• The Social Impactors (SI): dynamic teams, similar to think tanks (or, more accurately, “think and do tanks”), gathering Alliance experts, practitioners and other relevant stakeholders, that mobilize the Alliance’s expertise to address socio-economic challenges and connect universities and stakeholders by developing service-to-society activities
• The Culture Hub (CH): a collaborative initiative aimed at celebrating and deepening understanding of the diverse cultures within the Alliance. By promoting integration, inclusion, multilingualism, and mutual respect, this hub fosters intercultural collaboration

Led by Ieva Zemīte from the Latvian Academy of Culture, the SPACE Centre’s co-leadership team also comprises Paula Pinto from the Santarém Polytechnic University (IPS, Portugal), Alessia Tressoldi from the University Francisco de Vitoria (UFV, Spain), and Svetlana Buko from CUAS.

Where are we, one year in?

Social Impactors (led by Marika Gruber & Mélissa Pebayle, CUAS):
In this first year, the main goals of the Social Impactors team were to reach a common framing of the four agreed-upon SI topics and identify relevant stakeholders, paving the way for the formal establishment of the Social Impactors in January 2026. To do so, the CUAS team elaborated a workshop, inviting CUAS staff and students to share their expertise and perspectives on the topics. This workshop was then replicated across all eight partner universities, and the results were gathered and analyzed by a transnational and interdisciplinary interpretation team. Following this analysis, a common basis of the concepts was agreed on, and the Social Impactors were worked out into the following topics:

• Culture & Diversity
• Social Well-Being
• Respect & Dignity
• Gender Equity

The work plans of each Social Impactor, describing their functioning, conceptual framework, common understanding of the topics, and team members, are being finalized for the official establishment at the end of the month.
Another highlight of 2025 was the co-creation and co-facilitation of a Social Impactors workshop for students at the Kaleidoscope Culture Festival in October 2025 (see below) on “The plurality of culture(s): Challenging existing stereotypes – performing new understandings”, by colleagues from the University Goce Delcev (UGD, North Macedonia), Gdansk Medical University (MUG, Poland), and CUAS.

Finally, a handbook for the Change Maker Ambassador Programme was developed. This program will provide a training framework for students and staff of the alliance to become social change agents, focusing on equipping participants with knowledge of existing best practices and innovative ways to address societal issues.

Kaleidoscope Culture Festival (led by Ieva Zemite, LAC):
Back in October, the Culture Hub organized its first Kaleidoscope Culture Festival in Ingolstadt, Germany, under the theme “The Voices of Europe today”, alongside its Annual Congress.

The first Kaleidoscope Culture Festival demonstrated the scale and potential of this initiative. Over the course of three days, the festival featured 55 cultural events, from workshops to exhibitions, performances (dance, music, theatre, skits, etc.) and a trivia quiz, engaging 118 participants from all nine universities, and reached an audience of more than 300 attendees.

Accompanied by School of Management Programme Directors Svetlana Buko and Colin Heller, CUAS’ twelve participating students worked tirelessly to offer four inspiring contributions: a multilingualism poster exhibition; a workshop on “the Voices of Europe”; a multilingual slam and an interactive video game “From Austria with… Confusion”.

The second edition of the Kaleidoscope Festival will be hosted by the University Constantin Brancusi, in Romania, in October 2026. Preparations will start shortly to determine the theme, prepare a call for student contributions, etc.

Student Volunteering Programmes (led by Paula Pinto, IPS):
These programs allow ACE students to participate in an 8-day volunteering opportunity at an external partner of one of the Alliance universities. In return, we will welcome students from ACE to volunteer in Carinthia. Both the Social Impactors and Culture Hub Volunteering Programmes are currently being set up, with external stakeholders already secured for both strands. In total, partners from the whole Alliance are offering 27 different opportunities for more than 100 students. A handbook was created to describe the principles and functioning of the programs, and a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) is being prepared to onboard students that will participate.

The volunteering opportunities proposed by CUAS’ partners in 2026 are as follows: 

• For the Culture Hub Volunteering Programme, student-volunteers will help with the organization of the races as an international event management experience in the regional context.
  • Wörthersee Gravel Race – UCI Gravel World Series (12 April) 
  • Carinthia200 bike race (31 May)
• For the Social Impactor Volunteering Programme, student-volunteers will provide support and assistance for social care activities at the:
  • Social Services of the District Nursing Home “Bezirksaltenwohnheim Ferlach/Rosental” (flexible dates)
  • Social Services of the District Nursing Home “Bezirksaltenwohnheim Tigring” (flexible dates)

Culture Traineeship Programme for Staff (led by Alessia Tressoldi, UFV):
This program from the Culture Hub, gathering four staff members from each partner university, aims to strengthen intercultural competence for academic, administrative and support staff working in an international and intercultural environment. A handbook has been written, describing the goals, methodology and structure of this training, which is based on the SUCTI (Systemic University Change Towards Internationalisation) model, an Erasmus+ initiative that ran between 2016 and 2019. The first training will take place on 23-26 February 2026 at UFV in Madrid, with Gerlinde Koppitsch (EngIT), Carolina Müller (G&S), Oana Mitrea (G&S) and Stefan Breuer (Bau) taking part for CUAS. The workshops are organized and run by Alessia Tressoldi (UFV), Ieva Zemīte (LAC) and Gerlinde Koppitsch (CUAS).

CUAS team expansion (coordinated by Svetlana Buko):
In 2025, the SPACE Centre team from CUAS welcomed new members: the core team from the Faculty of Management already present since 2024 – Svetlana Buko (WP4 coordination), Marika Gruber and Mélissa Pebayle (Social Impactors) and Colin Heller (Kaleidoscope Festival) – was joined by Gerlinde Koppitsch, from the Faculty of Engineering & IT (Volunteering Programmes & Cultural Traineeship for Staff) and Carolina Müller, from the Faculty of Health Sciences & Social Work (Volunteering Programmes & Kaleidoscope Festival). 

What to expect in 2026?

This year also promises to be a busy one at the SPACE Centre. After a first milestone with the official establishment of the four Social Impactors in January, the first series of three Social Impactors Knowledge Creation Team Workshops (SI KCTW) is planned before October, and the pilot of the Change Maker Ambassador programme will take place at LAC (Latvia) in April, accompanied by a Train-the-Trainer course in IPS (Portugal) in July.

In addition, the Volunteering Programmes will be launched across the Alliance throughout the year, and the pilot edition of the Culture Traineeship Programme for Staff is set for February at UFV (Spain), as described above. Furthermore, the Culture Hub’s first inclusion and multicultural awareness campaign has been running since December 2025.
Finally, and as mentioned above, the second Kaleidoscope Culture Festival will take place in Târgu Jiu (Romania), in October, alongside the ACE²-EU Annual Congress.

More about:

• The SPACE Centre: ACE²EU Alliance Launches first Key Operational Unit: SPACE Centre with headquarters in LAC, Riga
• The Social Impactors: Paving the way: Driving Societal Impact and partnerships across the ACE²-EU Alliance and Collaborative building of Social Impactors across the ACE²-EU Alliance
• The Kaleidoscope Culture Festival: CUAS students are fully immersing themselves in the preparation of the first ACE²-EU Kaleidoscope Festival; Massive CUAS representation during the ACE²-EU's biggest week of the year and CUAS students reflect on their contribution to ACE²-EU’s major events in Ingolstadt