Creating spaces for innovation

Main beneficiary

• Miranta Athanasakou, Municipality of Keratsini-Drapetsona, Greece

Peer experts

• Susy Silva, Lisbon Municipality, Portugal
• Joanne Attard Mallia, Valletta Cultural Agency, Malta

Policy learning platform experts

• Marc Pattinson, Policy Learning Platform
• Arnault Morisson, Policy Learning Platform
• Laura Varisco, Policy Learning Platform

The peers discussed the importance of creating a strong starting point analysis before engaging the building construction and renovation.

• Building spaces for innovation is a long-term process. The Valletta Design Cluster conception took almost 10 years, starting from informal consultations. It is of extreme importance to start engaging the community at the early stages of the design process.
• Designing the spaces is a bottom-up and comprehensive approach, where all relevant city actors should be involved, from city administrators to companies and citizens.
• Political support is important to secure funds but also to discuss how to build a coherent long-term strategy on how to use the spaces.
• Mapping what already exists is fundamental to better define the needs and the target groups. The City of Lisbon did a complete mapping also to identify potential partners and make connections. In Malta, the Hatchery Initiative helped to identify the users.
• Testing and scalability is also useful: start small to adapt to further developments.
• Another suggestion is to make the spaces unique to stand out and become a reference for the city, contributing to improving the territorial attractiveness.

The peers and moderators discussed good practices coming from Interreg Europe projects (see also the Interreg Europe good practice database), namely