CCRI researchers Damian Maye, Matt Reed and Dan Keech attended the 3rd project partnership meeting of ROBUST, which took place in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana between 1st – 4th October 2018.
ROBUST, which is an acronym for ‘Rural – Urban Outlooks: Unlocking Synergies’, is funded by the European Commission’s H2020 fund for research and innovation (grant agreement 727988; www.rural-urban.eu). The project examines how the relationship between urban, rural, and urban fringe areas are organised and governed, with special attention to business and labour, culture, ecosystems services, sustainable food systems and public infrastructure. A distinctive feature of the project is that the research teams (of which there are 11 stretching from Lisbon to Helsinki) work in partnership with local authority counter-parts to plan and execute a research and innovation agenda through a process called a Living Lab. In our case, CCRI is working with Gloucestershire County Council.
At the meeting, Damian and the CCRI team outlined the initial methodology for developing a Living Lab. This will be refined in the New Year after which work can start in practice in the 11 Living Lab regions.
The Ljubljana meeting was organised by the Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana City-Region and held at in the splendid council chamber of Ljubljana’s City Hall. Delegates also enjoyed a boat trip on the Ljubljana River into the Ljubljana Marshes, a wetland nature reserve a short distance from the city.
For more details about the project, please contact Dan Keech – dkeech@glos.ac.uk
