  Chern-Simons theories in three dimensions are topological field theories that
may have a holographic interpretation for suitable chosen gauge groups and
boundary conditions on the fields. Conformal Chern-Simons gravity is a
topological model of 3-dimensional gravity that exhibits Weyl invariance and
allows various holographic descriptions, including Anti-de Sitter, Lobachevsky
and flat space holography. The same model also allows to address some aspects
that arise in higher spin gravity in a considerably simplified setup, since
both types of models have gauge symmetries other than diffeomorphisms. In these
lectures we summarize briefly recent results.
