The Second Local Stakeholder Group Meeting of Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH
More than 20 actors from the Austrian creative ecosystems participated on 6 Dec 2017 at the second Local Stakeholder Meeting organised within the framework of the RCIA project.
Most of them attended the first meeting as well and looked forward to going into further details in the discussions. There were also a few newcomers and for them the coordinator of the project, Christina Koch from aws, made a short introduction in the project’s objectives and activities. She continued with the presentation of the good practices shared and discussed during the project meetings in Wallonia, Lublin and Barcelona. It was particularly interesting to see the how members of the Local Stakeholder Group shared their own experiences and learnings from their participation at the study visits in the respective partners regions/cities, what they found relevant and interesting and ignited in this way discussions with colleagues around various examples of policy instruments.
The Creative Wallonia Programme raised a particular interest because of the way it integrates creativity through a holistic approach in the regional development strategy, addressing in a participatory and open innovation 2.0 approach the
- Industry (enterprises, SMEs) through clusters - putting a priority focus on unlocking the economic value
- Public services - transformation potential of public bodies in relation with SMEs
- Citizens – their inclusion as actors of change
Although Austria Wirtschaftsservice is addressing national policy instruments, the idea of approaching the industry via clusters – and looking into ways of potentially adapting the regional funding (for example cluster collaboration projects that could include also a creativity component) was caught up in the discussions. Also the experience the Wallonian partner made in the field of capacity building for financial institutions (banks) sparkled the idea to look into the banking ratings for the granting of loans to SMEs and adapt the scheme for the needs of creative service providers.
