Novel methods for the generation and acceleration of particle beams have seen tremendous advances in the last years. The achievements include, amongst others, accelerating gradients of up to 100 GV/m, beam-driven acceleration, the advent of 500 Tera-Watt lasers for acceleration, the generation of a 1 GeV electron beam out of a plasma, small emittances, femto-second bunch lengths, energy spread in the 1.5% regime and promising reproducibility. The advances are driven by fast growing inter-disciplinary efforts that bring together plasma science, laser science, ultra-fast science and accelerator science. The European Network for Novel Accelerators was formed at CERN in May 2011, bringing together representatives from about 50 institutes. Its purpose and goals are described. In addition, proposals for experiments on novel acceleration research at CERN are discussed, with a particular focus on the research on proton-driven plasma acceleration for a future linear collider.