Berlin was the place to be for the latest Innovation Circle Board Meeting. This week ten IC members went for a flying visit to Germany’s capital. The program included a visit to the Bundestag as well as a comprehensive agenda for the Board Meeting. New contacts are made to spread the word about ICN.

About 50 young people from eight different countries made this year’s ICN Summer Youth Camp another successful and beneficial event. Together they showed the potential of youths. “We had a tremendous camp, with a lot of important discussions”, resumed Camp leader Anders Sølve Strand.

Members of Innovation Circle Network in cooperation with Lithuanian initiative “Future city” gathered for the Annual conference in Vilnius, Lithuania. Conference brought together over 70 people from 7 different countries – Belarus, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russian Federation and Sweden. Specialists, municipality members and public activists joined their efforts to discuss the future of attractive cities in their countries.

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.

The kick off conference gathered Trans-in-Form partners from 6 countries and co-partners from Belarus and Russia. Experts highlighted how regional development is driven by population changes, growth or decline, and how attractivity plays a key role. Job creation is no guarantee for growth itself. Alternative development scenarios will be drawn up for the different regions during the project.