A closer look at Local Stakeholder Groups - Part 1

The role of the Local Stakeholder Group is to identify the key success elements and the bottlenecks of the implementation of the creative hubs in Wallonia.

Who does your Local Stakeholder Group consist of?

At the beginning of the RCIA project, the Walloon Local Stakeholder Group (LSG) was composed of the main actors of the WECD (Wallonia European Creative District) project and Creative Wallonia programme. Already involved in the policy learning dynamic about the creative economy, it was quite easy to continue to work with them in this new interregional cooperation project. Those actors are Wallonie Design, St’Art Invest, ID Campus, Creative Wallonia Engine, the Agence pour l’Entreprise et l’Innovation and of course members of the Public Service of Wallonia (Economic Policy Directorate) and representatives of the Minister of the Economy.

Other relevant actors were also contacted such as the Comptoir des Ressources Créatives (they did a presentation during the RCIA study visit in Wallonia), Wallimage and the Walloon Creative hubs (including therefore universities, local development agencies, cities, business centres...).

After a year of implementation of the RCIA project, it was decided to open the doors of our LSG to new actors. This decision is an opportunity to take into account the cross-sectoral collaboration potential developed by RCIA and to integrate the governance dimension of CREADIS3 project. Therefore, the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, who holds the culture competences was contacted and integrated in the LSG. For more information on this subject, read about the second LSG meeting in Wallonia.

The LSG is now meant to extend and include both clusters TWIST and Infopole ICT. TWIST is a media cluster that works to strengthen innovation and growth within Wallonia media industries.

Therefore, it will cover all levels of governance (regional, communitarian, local) and a good panel of institutions (government, administrations, public and private agencies, private actors through clusters, universities, cities, innovation & business centres etc.).

In a practical way, meetings are organized twice a year but information, newsletter and day-to-day works are managed through emails. In addition, some discussions could be lead during the “Agora” of the creative hubs which is the monthly meeting of the creative hubs.

How are you involving your LSG in your work with the project?

Our stakeholder group is involved throughout the entire project. They are aware of the policy instrument that we want to improve thanks to the RCIA project.

In the first place, the stakeholders participate in the exchanges of good practices by attending the organized study visits. Stakeholders are selected according to their expertise, interest and the thematic focus of the study visit so that they benefit as much as possible from the knowledge existing in other regions. They are also looking forward, developing good relationships with the members of the partners’ stakeholders groups in order to create opportunities for collaboration beyond the RCIA project. We know that one of our stakeholders already contacted a Latvian stakeholder.

At each LSG meeting, the participants of the study visit sum up 3 things that they learnt abroad and present it to the other stakeholders. This process allows the LSG to analyze which good practices could be interesting for Wallonia. In the close future, they will also contribute with their input to the development and implementation of the Local Action Plan.

After that, we seek their opinion and experience on the project itself. For example, at the next meeting, we will ask them to validate the theme of the roundtable of experts that we would like to hold in Wallonia soon. Another example of stakeholder involvement is the preparation of the Wallonia study visit in May 2017.

In the meantime, we tried to stay as close as possible to our stakeholders by sending them the minutes of the study visit. We realized our own minutes in French with pictures. It is a good way to raise interest and perhaps to deepen some themes during the LSG meeting.