Workshopping in Werfenweng
In October, we held two workshops in connection with the Central Mountains project, which brought together various stakeholders. On the one hand, our members – representatives of municipalities and tourism associations – were present, but also external experts and speakers to work on joint projects and future opportunities.
The first workshop focused on the central theme of:
‘𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗚𝗧𝗖 𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲-𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀’.
Taking the Challenges and Running with them
Since the restructuring in 2022, we as EGTC have already been able to implement very good cooperation projects, but there are challenges too.
It was extremely interesting that Pavel Branda (member of the European Committee of the Regions and chair of the interest group for cross-border cooperation) was on site to provide insights and was available for questions and discussion. He shared his experience with cross-border cooperation, structures and programmes.
The presentations and panel discussion with Chiara Fabbro and Roberta Maccari (GECT "Euregio Senza Confini") and Michael Luther (Eurac Research), who presented several projects and best practices, also broadened our horizons in terms of future possibilities. The EGTCnet project (Interreg Italy Austria), in which we are project partners, was presented and served as a further opportunity for in-depth dialogue. The objective of this project is tackling the main hurdles experienced by EGTCs alike.
The exchange and the ideas generated created a helpful starting point for deepening the discussion on specific, practice-oriented project ideas and their implementation – the topic of the second workshop. More on this in a separate LinkedIn post.
Letting the Inspiration flow
The afternoon was all about taking inspiration from the ideas presented before, expanding our own project ideas in innovative and creative ways, AND taking the first step towards putting them into action.
Due to Alpine Pearls' focus on ‘sustainable mobility’, we first welcomed Prof. Markus Mailer from the CENTRE FOR MOBILITY CHANGE at the Universität Innsbruck and joined him in looking beyond the horizon at the latest best practices and learnings. We then moved on to the specific situation in the member destinations and focused on the results of an analysis of the roadmaps from the member destinations, which was carried out with external expertise by QueSiTe srl.
The question was: what are the common areas of challenge that we can resolve? Mattia Cortese (ETM Services) then introduced the topic of project development in the context of EU funding. Many thanks also to Gennaro Ciccarelli from inBlenda for his input presentation on sustainable, user-oriented transport and mobility.
Ideation
And then it was time to put our heads together. In a joint brainstorming session, the members collected and discussed ideas that will be further developed in a newly formed working group.
We look forward to seeing the further results and, above all, to implementing them. We are also very excited to share them with you. You can count on it!