The Central Baltic Showcase Conference gathered over 130 participants at Kulturhuset in Stockholm on September 15, 2009. The organisers received a lot of positive feedback for the somewhat different approach towards how to build a conference day and to make EU funding a lively subject of discussion.

The conference showed the participants how an idea can be made into a cross-border project funded by the Central Baltic INTERREG IV A Programme 2007-2013. The speakers illustrating the different aspects of this path included Susanne Rittedal-Söderblom (Drivhuset) and Daniel Sköld (Eurosolutions). The participants were invited to visit four running projects and their activities and to interview them on running a cross-border project.

The day started off with Susanne Rittedal-Söderblom's visions and insipiration. She encouraged the audience to believe in their dreams and try to make them happen (download presentation). Many project ideas may first seem difficult to carry out but still many turn out well in the end! With these visions in their mind, the participants then got to see four running projects of the Programme in action. They saw a movie by the Caddies project and got to play musical instruments in the supervision of a music student from the Music for all project. Projects Minwa and Cobweb presented their proceedings and future perspectives with an animation among other things.

Towards the end of the day the programme moved even more towards the concrete possibilities the Programme provides for the Central Baltic region. After lunch the participants got to listen to an active kitchen table (panel) discussion reflecting the morning sessions against the future. The panel, as well as the whole conference day, was moderated by Per Lagerström from The Council for the Stokcholm-Mälar Region. The panellists were Kaja Hinno (Estonian Ministry of the Interior), Matti Lipsanen (Regional Council of Häme, Finland), Philipp Schwartz (Central Baltic Joint Technical Secretariat), Lidija Skolnija (Europrojects Ltd, Latvia) and Carl-Bertil Tauler (Archipelago Co-operation) thanks to whom many interesting visions were presented.

Although the Joint Technical Secretariat (JTS) of the Programme continuously offers different types of support for the interested in creating a project and applying for funding from the Programme, the last part of the day was a consultation simulation covering the key concepts of a good project (application). This training session was carried out by Daniel Sköld from Eurosolutions together with Merike Niitepõld from the JTS (download presentation).

Throughout the day there were several opportunities for contact making and mingling which was, according to the received feed-back, strongly appreciated by the participants. The art exhibition by school students from Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Sweden and Åland displayed in the 3rd floor lobby of Kulturhuset showed all participants how the young people in our countries would like to see the region in the year 2020. Hopefully the lessons learned during the conference will help us in fulfilling some, if not all, of their wishes and visions!

The Joint Technical Secretariat thanks all participants as well as the speakers and the projects for their well appreciated contribution to the event! More pictures can be viewed here.