Innovation Circle Network wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Innovative New Year. Be happy, creative and stay with Innovation Circle Network in 2010!

Innovation Circle Network partner Notodden municipality together with Motril (ES), Ancona (IT), Medias (RO) and Leoben (AT) as a lead partner were granted for a new project call OP-ACT. The project is addressing challenges faced by shrinking cities, coping with demographic change in small and medium sized cities, advanced reindustrialization and the crisis. The project duration is about 6 months and it consists of 4 work packages.

Innovation Circle Network was holding an annual conference in Cesis this week. The new board was elected and the plan for the coming year confirmed. At the same days Trans-in-Form pre kick-off event was taking place which gathered all the project partners together for the first time after the application was confirmed. The event was filled with expectations for the coming challenges within the three years of Trans in Form project. The conference focused on new governance in the perpective of regional reforms and also at attractivity. Urban design,attractive job market and migration issues were addressed.

Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments (LALRG) has recently joined the Innovation Circle Network. General Secretary for the Association is Ms. Mudite Priede who is not a new person to Innovation Circle Network anymore. She has already been involved into Network activities while working in Jelgava District Council. IC asks Ms. Priede what were the reasons to continue friendship with the Network, especially in the very hard circumstances Latvia is facing these days.

I arrived in Lagos in the sultry heat of early morning, on a flight from dark, chill Northern winter. It is places like this rapidly growing mega-city that the history of the coming decades is being made. Lagos is home to maybe 18 million today. Research that I have been doing that will be presented to a Commonwealth meeting in Trinidad later this month found that the urban population of Nigeria is expected to double by 2050. While the Baltic States and rural Scandinavia are challenged by population decline, it is rapid urbanisation and the urbanisation of poverty that will define the trajectory of places like Nigeria.

The Trans-in-Form project implemented the first event in Poland 5th November. Representatives from Suwalki City Municipality, Kraznosamensk Municipality, Grodno City Municipality,Alytus County Governor Administration were gathered. Lead partner Notoddden Municipality in Norway was represented by project manager Bjørn Frode Moen and communication manager Alf S. Johansen.

Thursday the 22nd October a new cooperation agreement between Aremark and Marker Municipalities in Norway and Vecpiebalga Municipality in Latvia was signed.The agreement is focusing on several issues like culture, education, youths, business and healt. Also political cooperation is mentioned as well as tourism. The cooperation is a continuation of the previous cooperation between Taurene and Marker and Dzerbene and Aremark. The agreement was signed by the mayors Stein Erik Lauvås, Tore Johansen and Ella Fridvalde-Andersone.

Notodden Municipality as the lead partner for the new Trans-in-Form project is announcing competition for project logo. The award for the best logo is set to 1000 Euro = 8.000 NOK. Everyone can take part in the competition. The suggestion for logo has to be submitted to the management unil 15th November. Get more info and participate!

The success of the proposal for a new INTERREG project, Trans-in-form (TiF), is great news. Congratulations to the Innovation Circle network, and to the project partners in particular, especially those from Notodden who did the hard work as Lead Partner. However, as we all know, this is only the beginning. The challenge now is to make the new project a success, like its predecessors, PIPE and the Innovation Circle (IC) itself.