Communicating Interreg
by Ariane Sept, Pietro Elisei

To communicate five interreg IIIC projects of the Progresdec initiative (www.progresdec.org) has been one of the mayor challenges of Planum.net's editoral past. Eight years of experience in communicating and disseminating urban and regional policies and plans have been the pillars where to rest this problematic and complex communication operation.

The Operation Progresdec aimed at verifying whether the policies under the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) have been implemented at regional and local level and/or how the local authorities have built and translated into practical tools the guidelines set out in the European document. A first consideration to do, maybe a sour one, is that very likely the ESDP leave the stage, in favour of the Territorial Strategic Agenda and more "fresh" benchmark documents, without a clear impact in many minor cities and provinces.

The single sub-projects considered different topics from landscape management to sustainable urban renewal. Partners were more than 20 local administrations and institutions from the Mediterranean countries Italy, Spain and Greece. The very added value of all these projects has been in the hybridization of practices and planning tools. Territories having a complex and rich box of territorial tools have shared their experiences with other regions having difficulties in planning questions. Moreover, it has been of great interest to discuss about important territorial matters in arenas including the mayor of a small village in Macedonia and political representative of major European Cities: a creative and very democratic short-circuit! A real and positive exchange of ideas. Results of these projects are not always brilliant or innovative (it depends on projects, and it's up to the reader to discover the not hidden best of these Progresdec's projects), but surely negotiated and shared.

Disseminating an Interreg project means of-fact creating a website, realizing brochures and posters, connecting internal partners (for instance with the help of an intranet area) and create an interest for externals. All these very usual and practical communication procedures have been enriched through the attempt of proposing always a critical meta-reading of the projects.

In order to continue the work we now decided to open a space on Planum.net presenting these projects and hoping that in this way the experience does not get lost. On the long run this room might be a chance to connect different projects, give them a stable window to make the projects more sustainable and open them to a wider public, the whole Planum community.

But disseminating Interreg also means difficulties. We had to learn that our ideas are sometimes different from those ones of the partners and also the single partners of one project do not always agree: a good bath of reality and humility! As also Planum is only met by human beings (real and not virtual) we made our mistakes and it was not always easy to communicate everything in time and a satisfying way for all the involved partners: we are working to learn from our mistakes! In spite of these difficulties it was a good experience for Planum which we hopefully can continue.
At the same time we hope that also the partners see it as a positive gain in experience and we would like to thank everyone for the work done together. …and now enjoy the reading of COLORE, SSTILE, SURPRISE, CULTISM and LAMCODE.