The 19-20 July the IC board had the second meeting this year. All the results of the past period since the meeting in Trakai in February this year were discussed which brought the Network into new level with more project ideas. Entire Network board except the Polish representative attended the meeting. Generally, the ways of expanding the Network to more countries were considered. The meeting built a background for the IC Annual conference for this year.

Europe 2020 is the EU’s strategic response to the economic crisis. Ten years ago the Lisbon Agenda set the target that the EU would becomes the world’s leading knowledge economy by 2010. That did not happen. Average growth rates were actually lower than those of global competitors. Then the economic crisis wiped out the growth that had been achieved. Europe 2020 tries to set out the road to follow for the coming decade. Though it says that we must ‘escape the reflex of trying to return to the pre-crisis situation’, its main prescriptions echo those of the Lisbon Agenda with a rhetoric about globalization and innovation. What’s new is that it contains seven ‘flagship initiatives’ to point the way ahead. These are:

Suwałki invites you to the Blues Festival again! This time it takes place from the 15th to 17th July 2010. It is expected to have bands representing the USA, Great Britain, Norway, Brazil, Hungary, Austria, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Poland. Two big out-door stages and three smaller ones in the town centre will be built. In addition a number of activities for event visitors will be suggested such as blues breakfasts, club concerts, acoustic evening concerts, night jam sessions, and many others!

The organisation ”The Yellow House in Uddebo” does not only repair an old industrial building in the small village Uddebo in Tranemo municipality. To repair a building is not enough for those creative people. They want to arrange activities in the village and municipality to show that small places can be attractive and compete with the world. The latest event happened on May 15th. The goal was to gather a lot of people as artist, painting the same motive at the same time. The motive was the yellow house in Uddebo. The big city Peking in China has got the Guinnes World Record with 300 persons painting the same motive at the same time.

Tomorrow the Trans in Form project holds a meeting in Potsdam on Scenario planning and benchmarking attractiveness. This is one of the 3 basic methodology workshops in the project. The seminar on New narratives and story telling has already taken place in Latvia and was covering the work-package 4. There is also one methodology event to be held in Poland on investments and technical documentation in May.

Let’s start with a trend scenario that tries to look ahead to 2030. This sees Europe’s economic growth continuing to lag behind that of its global competitors, most notably those from Asia. Within the Baltic Sea Region recovery from economic crisis was slow and uneven in the period 2010-2015. Norway with its natural resource base and sustained investment in infrastructure and education remained very prosperous. Russia, also blessed with abundant energy supplies at a time of steadily increasing energy prices also rode out the recession and became an increasingly sought-after ally by the EU. In Sweden, recovery was more uneven, with more and more questions being asked about the costs to the taxpayer of supporting the very sparsely populated regions in the north of the country.