With a sunny forecast and an action-packed agenda on 16-17 April, our Romanian, Polish and Greek partners participated in a staff exchange in the South Tyrol region of Italy. Here’s a short summary of the two days from the participants.

At dinner on the first day, the tone was already set to exchange ideas. The morning after, we started with a short introduction round and everyone defined their expectations and questions.

The participants had sent us their interests and questions before the beginning of the Staff Exchange. Based on these, some stakeholders prepared their presentations. Federica Viganò (Free University of /Bolzano), for example, presented the quantitative analysis of the situation of creative industries (CI) in South Tyrol and discussed in detail Romania's questions regarding the NACE codes. As IDM Creative Industries is currently carrying out an analysis of the creative industries in South Tyrol, their most important stakeholders were invited. In addition to the quantitative analysis of the CI, the qualitative analysis was presented by Eleonora Psenner (Eurac Research).

In the course of these presentations, the participants asked several questions and had the opportunity to hear more from the stakeholders.

Each of the participating partner countries presented the current situation in their region and gathered input through joint discussions.

Beside the topics mentioned above, our Greek partner was particularly interested in how to set up a successful cluster in the agriculture sector. As EURAC Research Academy has similar interests and challenges in this direction, the Greek Partners had the possibility to meet the researchers from EURAC and share best practices. In addition, IDM Film Fund & Commission was presented, and we discussed how in the case of Central Region Greece, a regional Film Fund could be set up.  

This was followed by presentations from local stakeholders from the Province of Bolzano Office for Italian Culture and Youth Policies and the Department of innovation, research and university of the Autonomous Province Bolza-no. In particular, the RIS3 strategy and the various projects of the Office for Italian Culture and Youth Policies were discussed.

In order to satisfy the interests of our guests from the partner countries, we concentrated on their questions and topics on the second day. Together we looked for solutions to obstacles and exchanged important experiences.

It was a very successful staff exchange and left us all inspired towards unlocking the transformative power of the creative and cultural industries!