3rd Local Stakeholder Group Meeting, Austria

Following the invitations addressed by Austria Wirtschaftsservice, lead partner of the RCIA project, the members of the Austrian local stakeholder group got together on 16th April 2018 in Vienna.

The Local Stakeholders met to learn about the progress of the RCIA project and the next planned steps, followed by a discussion around the exchanged good practices that led to some suggestions for the development of activities to be integrated into the Austrian Action Plan. This time there were also two special guests attending; the South Tyrolian partners from IDM Südtirol/Alto Adige, who took part at the meeting as part of their staff exchange visit to Austria.

After an introductory tour-de-table, Christina Koch, the RCIA coordinator reminded the participants of the project’s objectives. This was followed by a joint presentation with the Italian colleagues from IDM Südtirol/Alto Adige with a selection of good practices from the last study visit in Bolzano in March 2018. Then Christina gave a deeper insight to the workshops that are planned in Riga in June focusing on the four topics: development of creative industries strategies, financing, internationalization and film funding. She also explained the concept of staff exchanges and policy roundtables that will start next semester.

The group had a fruitful discussion about what the Local Action Plan for Austria could or should contain, based on the inspiration from the good practices related to the partners’ policy instruments, such as the Walloon training on “How and why to invest in CCI” dedicated to financiers focusing on highlighting the potential and specific characteristics of the CCI sector. Austria is highly interested in this topic and would possibly want to implement such a training as well.

Michael Hofegger, head of the CCI department at aws informed about the starting process of developing program aiming to enhance the involvement of a creative service provider right from the beginning of an innovation process. Such a program could be financed through the Austrian National Foundation and is aligned with RCIA’s objective, to use the transformative power of creative SMEs in order to boost the overall economy.

The next Local Stakeholder Group meeting will take place in autumn 2018.