Context

The world pandemic crisis changed the way we live, communicate and behave. How this change over affected the work of the CSA projects (Coordination and Support Action) and other players involved the circular bioeconomy communication?

The European Bioeconomy Network, the alliance of nearly 70 EU funded projects dealing with Bioeconomy promotion, communication and support, promotes a Mobilisation and Mutual learning workshop to discuss and share ideas and solutions to maximise the impact of project’s activities in the current times.

The workshop, was organised in collaboration with BIOVOICES, aimed to stimulate the discussion in light of the Global Bioeconomy Summit (16-20 Nov 2020). Inspirational ideas and good practices were provided for the future EuBioNet partners’ activities and have been explored collaboration opportunities among projects and initiatives for the 2021 action plan (responding to the updated 2018 bioeconomy strategy).

Objectives 

• Facilitate the awareness and exchange of inspirational good practices
• Stimulate a problem oriented discussion on how to overcome the limitation due to safety constrains
• Improve the quality and impact of communication and stakeholders engagement activities for the next months

Expected outcomes 

• Identify collaboration opportunities among projects and initiatives for the 2021 action plan (responding to the updated 2018 bioeconomy strategy)

Discussion topics

1. CSA projects have changed the way they deploy their communication and stakeholders engagement activities to respond to the new reality. What are these new challenges (for example fatigue, competition, uniqueness of contents, new formats) and what are the opportunities (e.g. budget/time available, freedom to test new formats, more “relaxed” atmosphere)?
2. What activities, tools, messages, channels and formats have demonstrated to be effective for communication and stakeholders engagement? Lessons learnt and success stories from the last 8 months: What worked? (activities, tools, messages, channels and formats (10 Minutes); What should be re-think? 
3. How to maximize the impact of future activities? (e.g. organising knowledge exchange among EuBioNet partners, find new target audiences like TV)

Format

Mobilisation and Mutual Learning workshop:

• brief presentations of 7/8 inspirational case studies from different projects (Some EuBioNet members will share their success stories in communication and stakeholders engagement in times of Covid-19).
• interactive panel discussion supported by online collaborative tools
• collaborative definition of the 2021 action plan

Inspirational case studies

• LIFT – Alexandre Almeida – Attracting 1200 stakeholders worldwide through 4 thematic workshops (March 2020)
• BIOVOICES – Michela Cohen – Responsive Social media strategy during COVID-19
• Biobridges – Beatriz Palomo Belbel – #BioHeroes leveraging social media influencers to spread the bioeconomy to large public
• BLOOM – Norbert Steinhaus – Can you hear me? Learnings from social distancing needs for Bloom’s outreach activities
• BIOEASTsUP – Magdalena Borzęcka – How COVID-19 taught us to be more efficient in engaging stakeholders
• BE-Rural – Aleksandar Chebotarev -Bridging pandemic challenges for stakeholder engagement – the case of BE-Rural region “Strumica”
• AlpBioEco – Anna Bäuerle – Engage local stakeholders in online workshops experimenting participative approaches (e.g. Lego Serious Play)
• POWER4BIO – Christine Beusch – From offline to online: adapting our measures to enable knowledge exchange and networking between regions

How the new projects Allthings.bioPRO (Anne Warning), BIOSWITCH (Ana Martinez) and Transition2BIO (Matteo Sabini) are planning to deal with the COVID-19 situation in their communication and stakeholders engagement activities?

Finf the agenda here: EuBioNet concept workshop_2020

 

If you missed the event you can…

Access all the presentations HERE

Watch the full video of the event: