Happiness in Practice: A Shared European Journey Comes to a Close

After more than a year of workshops, exchanges and shared learning, our Erasmus+ project Happiness in Practice — Positive Psychology & Community Resilience has reached its final chapter. And it closes just as it set out to begin: not with a single formula for wellbeing, but with a set of living tools that people and communities can use, adapt and make their own.

Developed by SOLIS SRLS together with European Social Art (ESA) and Projects for Europe, and co-funded by the European Union, the project brought together participants from Italy, Spain and Belgium around a simple but demanding question: how can wellbeing become a shared, everyday practice rather than an individual pursuit?

A final conference that became a conversation

On 7 July 2026, the project's international online conference — “Transforming Challenges into Shared Happiness” — gathered 122 registered participants from across Europe and beyond, including Ukraine, Turkey, Ireland and Norway. More than a presentation of results, it became a space for dialogue: educators, facilitators, psychologists, social workers, students and volunteers sharing experiences on resilience, inclusion, work with vulnerable young people and non-formal education.

What we built together

Three results now remain openly available for anyone to use:

• The Happiness Toolkit — a 66-page, open-access guide with 7 practical tools (from empathy circles and laughter yoga to daily micro-practices and the Community Emotional Map), available in four languages: English, Italian, Spanish and French. Its purpose is educational and preventive — it is not therapy, and participation is always voluntary.

• The Community Emotional Map (CEM) — a participatory tool that makes visible what ordinary maps leave out: the emotions, bonds, needs and care resources that shape a community.

• The European Community of Practice — launched in Valencia in March 2026 and now open to the public, a multilingual space where 40+ members continue to meet, learn and share.

In its closing phase alone, the project brought together 3 local workshops, 60 participants across three countries, 40 members in the Community of Practice and 122 people at the final conference.

A project that ends, a practice that continues

Happiness in Practice concludes, but its tools, learnings and connections stay alive. The resources remain open and free to use, adapt and share in new educational, cultural and community settings — because wellbeing, as this project showed, is not an immediate or purely individual outcome, but an everyday, collective practice cultivated through listening, empathy, creativity and participation.

Explore the resources and join the community at happinesspractice.com.

Happiness in Practice: Positive Psychology & Community Resilience

— Project no. 2025-1-IT02-KA210-ADU-000350376. Co-funded by the European Union.