North Sea Commission

INNOVATION AND EDUCATION GROUP

Kick-off seminar in Perth, Scotland – 11^th / 12^th February 2007

Draft minutes

Meeting venue

The Murrayshall House Hotel, Scone, Perth, Scotland

Attendees

Cllr. Audrey Findlay, vice-president NSC	Aberdeenshire Council	Scotland
Cllr. Alan Livingstone, IEG chair	Perth and Kinross Council	Scotland
Cllr. Stella Duneufjardin, IEG vice-chair	Nord-pas-de-Calais Council	France
Cllr. Ole B. Sørensen, IEG vice-chair	Region North Jutland	Denmark
Erik Lindboe, IEG co-ordinator	Rogaland County Council	Norway
Runa Coxeter	Region North Jutland	Denmark
David Brown	Hertfordshire Adult Learning Partnership	England
Karen Gibson	Norfolk County Council	England
Thomas Petit	Nord-pas-de-Calais Council	France
Cllr. Gotfred Rygh	Buskerud County Council	Norway
Hilde Ballière	Buskerud County Council	Norway
Kjell Arnestad	Sogn og Fjordane County Council	Norway
Thrond Kjellevold	Telemark County Council	Norway
Robert Vik	Møre og Romsdal County Council	Norway
Carmen Inga Dahl	Møre og Romsdal County Council	Norway
Fiona Jurk	Dundee College	Scotland
Cllr. Kay Lamb		Scotland
Elisabeth Drew	Fife Council	Scotland
Bruce Manson	Fife Council	Scotland
Susan Kyle	Invergowrie Primary School, Dundee	Scotland
Jeff Condliffe	Perth and Kinross Council	Scotland
Paul Kyle	Perth and Kinross Council	Scotland
Neil Prentice	Angus Council	Scotland
James Knowles	Aberdeenshire Council	Scotland
Eddie Craig	Napier University, Edinburgh	Scotland
Alan Scott	Scottish Border Council	Scotland
Julie Craik	Tayscreen Scotland	Scotland
Marja-Leena Lampinen	Region Västra Götaland	Sweden

Apologies

Ray Kirtley, Hull, England

Jim Goodall, Clackmannanshire Council, Scotland

Anrita Michel-van der Schors, The Netherlands

Cllr. Ellen Solheim, Rogaland County Council, Norway

Beate Bjørge, The Heyerdal Institute, Norway

Siri Nedland, Sogn og Fjordane County Council, Norway

Helena Nilsson, Västra Götaland region, Sweden

Hilde Donkert, The Netherlands

Judith Robinson, Educational Centres Association, UK

Martyn Livermore, Norfolk County Council, England

Sunday 11^th February 2007

Sunday evening Councillor Alan Livingstone, Chair of the Innovation and Education Group, welcomed us to an evening dinner in the Murrayshall House Hotel, hosted by Perth and Kinross County. The dinner opened with a real Scottish piper, who played a couple of Scottish trad. tunes for us. Indeed a very pleasant dinner and networking evening.

Monday 12^th February

1) 09:30 Welcome

- Cllr. Alan Livingstone welcomed everybody to the first group kick-off seminar of the new group. A special welcome to Cllr. Audrey Findlay, vice-president of the North Sea Commission. Thereafter there was a short round around the table to present all the attendees.

- Paul Kyle from the Economic Development Unit, Perth and Kinross County Council, gave a presentation of the Perth and Kinross area.

- Vice-president of the North Sea Commission, Cllr. Audrey Findlay, Aberdeenshire, gave an overview of the North Sea Commission and the umbrella organisation CPMR – Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe. CPMR covers around 176 million people from 150 regions in 27 countries, and is one of the largest networking organisations in Europe.

2) Introduction to the new Innovation and Education Group

Cllr. Alan Livingstone gave a brief presentation of the group structure, introduced Chair, Vice-chairs, Co-ordinator/Adviser, and outlined the work with the group’s Terms of Reference and the proposed Work Plan, which were to be discussed after the lunch break.

3) Presentations from regions

- Vice-chair of the IEG, Cllr. Stella Duneufjardin, France, gave a presentation of the Region Nor-pas-de-Calais.

- Lis Drew from Dunfermline Business Centre, Fife, Scotland, presented the “Energy Park”. This site is owned by Scottish Enterprise. Read more here: http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/sedotcom_home.htm

4) Challenges facing the new group.

Presented by IE Group vice-chair Cllr. Ole B. Sørensen, Denmark.

• Energy (a common issue for all the thematic groups)

• Food

• Innovation

• Co-operation with the Baltic Sea Commission

Re. the Renewable Energy Subgroup: This subgroup has been on-off for some length of time. It is requested that the Sustainable Development Group takes over the main responsibility for Energy. Still, the NSC wants energy to be a common issue for all the thematic groups.

The participants were divided into four workshops to discuss these items, and the results from the talks were presented in plenary:

ENERGY:

NSC has indicated that Energy is one of the main priorities that will run across all thematic activity of the Commission, this is supported by the expressed opnion of the EC. In addition, energy is a main subject for CPMR as well as EU.

There needs to be a common understanding of what each participant country means when using the terminology of Energy, replacement of existing energy/energy creation/R&d etc.

Demonstration models and interesting practise could be promoted as setting standards (bio-mass, passive building)

- Education on energy, is it implicit or is it forgotten, awareness raising need so be considered

- Example of best practise

- Examples of reducing energy

-Education - business, local political stakeholders, (both bottom-up and top-down)

FOOD

As a follow-up to the NSC Food Event in Dundee last year, the work with Food could be continued as a project with realistic outputs, linked to the following four strands (could also be less than 4):

- Health

- Tourism

- Innovation

- Tradition.

A triple helix model can be a useful method, i.e. a triangle between Education / Industry (Business) / Public bodies (Politics).

Other suggestions:

- 2 workshops a year

- kick-off event

- a final conference

- Education could be the overarching theme.

NB: We need people who take a leading role in this project.

INNOVATION

It was agreed that we need a definition of “innovation” that will be used for the group as this is at the very core of the groups work. The proposal is to use the term related to the Lisbon Agenda (job creation) and also covering the higher education/research aspect.

In the discussion, the following question was raised: Can we use some of our twinning connections to learn more from outside the EU-area on how to achieve innovation? Background: The US has a better rate of innovation and this is by the group considered largely to be an issue of attitude on a wide range of areas; how are our attitudes towards taking risk? How are the general attitudes towards the ones that try to innovate and fail? Do we educate young people to become employees only and not to become employers? In any event, the right attitudes need to be developed early and it needs to be an integrated part of education.

The program “Young Entrepreneurship” is such a program that involves practical training in school and is well incorporated in the school-system in some countries. The statistics show that when graduating, a substantially larger number of these people create their own jobs and companies.

Proposed actions from the group:

• Survey the different initiatives that promote innovation in our regions and make a database to promote exchange of best practice and to make it easier to take part in each others activities.
• The program “Young Entrepreneurship” to be presented at one of our first meetings or even as an idea for the GA in Norway later this year.

CO-OPERATION WITH THE BALTIC SEA COMMISSION

Co-operation could be on subjects like Education, Transport, Engineering and Health care, we could also have a joint conference and a joint GA.

The IEG co-ordinator has written to the BSC, and there will be a joint meeting between NSC and BSC executives in April.

Other possibilities regarding co-operation:

- Interreg-programs

- Baltic Development Forum

12.30 – 13.30 Lunch

5) 13:30 Terms of Reference

- IEG chair Cllr. Alan Livingstone went through the Terms of Reference. ToR was adopted by the meeting, and will be sent to the NSC Executive Committee for final approval.

- The chair also went through the structure of the IEG – the Strategic group, which gets together when necessary to plan future meetings and activities.

- The were some remarks on whether to have a full day meeting - starting early in the morning, or have a meeting which goes from lunch to lunch. Sometimes a lunch to lunch meeting will be suitable. However, this may depend on where the meeting is held and how good flight / other transport connections are.

- Future IEG meetings

• June 2007: Innovation and Education Group meeting will be held in the Brunstad Conference Centre (close to Torp Airport in Vestfold County, Norway) in connection with the North Sea Commission general assembly 20^th – 22^nd June. Accommodation in walking distance from the meeting venue. More information about the group meeting and the GA will be circulated later.

Read more about the conference centre here: http://www.bcc.no/EN/

• October 2007: Group meeting 30^th October in Lille, France.

• February 2008: Group meeting 12^th February 2008 in Ålborg, Denmark.

6) The IEG Work Plan

- Cllr Alan Livingstone went through the proposed IEG Work Plan.

The co-ordinator will utdate the WP and circulate it to all group members. The WP will also be sent to the NSC Executive Committee for approval. Both ToR and the WP will be published on the NSC website.

- Bruce Manson (Scotland) and Robert Vik (Norway) will look into the matter of job shadowing. They will make a paper on this subject this spring.

- Ms Julie Craik presented the socalled Pipeline interreg project proposal, a program on media production and business.

- Co-ordinator Erik Lindboe presented the proposed interreg project “The Passive House” in Västra Götaland in Sweden, plus the The North Sea Schools Sustainability Network Project.

7) 15:30 Conclusions

• There is support for a food project and the strategic group will move ahead and work with the ideas generated at the kick-off meeting. This may be a joint project between NSC thematic groups.

• There is an opportunity for a media industry project as proposed by Julie Craik at TayScreen, and interested members should contact Julie Craik or Paul Kyle.

• There was a call for partners for a Passive House project. Members interested in participating should contact Erik Lindboe. We also identified a possible project which would develop a common set of standards for a passive house – “The North Sea House”. The Strategic Group will work on the idea. There will be a common meeting between NSC and the North Sea Region Programme Secretariat (interreg programmes) in connection with the NSC GA in Norway in June. There will be exhibitions, presentations and partner search. More info about this event will be circulated later.

• The North Sea Schools' Sustainability Network project is moving ahead. The deadline for participating in the project is coming up in March. Interested partner schools must submit their application to their local Comenius agency within 30^th March. For information, please contact Ann Brown – ann.brown@northsea.org or Erik Lindboe.

• Co-ordinator will send the IEG e-mail address book to all group members.

• Co-ordinator will circulate the minutes from this kick-off seminar, including the presenters’ PowerPoint files.

Cllr. Alan Livingstone closed the kick-off seminar and thanked all attendees for making this a good and worthwhile event, by being ”alive, alert and breathing”. Special thanks goes to NSC vice-president Audrey Findlay and all the speakers for their contributions.

The Innovation and Education Group wants to give thanks to Cllr. Alan Livingstone, supporting officers and the Perth and Kinross Council for hosting the meeting.