The P-IRIS lead partner Sogn og Fjordane County Municipality attended European Week of Regions and Cities in Brussels in October 2017 and included P-IRIS information in their networking activities.
Most important was to attend the event organised at Scotland House by Northern Sparsely Populated Area (NSPA) on “Boosting smart innovation in remote regions for all Europe”. The NSPA work is very relevant for the P-IRIS ambitions. Lars Hustveit from Sogn og Fjordane County Municipality informed about our intention on developing a tool-box on how to manage a rural innovation network. This message was received with interest. Lars invited to cooperation if NSPA planned to continue their work within rural innovation systems. Representatives of OECD were also present at the event. They informed that their coming rural conference in Edinburgh 9-12 of April 2018 would be about rural innovation which is very relevant for P-IRIS project.
At an event on “Communities as change agents: local development in the EU beyond 2020” the president of ELARD (the European LEADER association for Rural Development) underlined networking and skills within networking as an important factor. Lars Hustveit reminded ELARD about possible benefits from the work within P-IRIS project.
