The COHESIFY project (COHESIFY – Understanding the Impact of EU Cohesion Policy on European Identification), supported as part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, is coming to an end. The project kept busy a good part of our section (Marcin Dąbrowski, Ana Maria Fernandez Maldonado, Roberto Rocco, Dominic Stead, Wil Zonneveld and Vincent Nadin) and of other corners of the Urbanism Department (ETD section – Bardia Mashhoodi) and the Faculty  (OTB – Marjolein Spaans) since 2016. The consortium, led by the EPRC at the University of Strathclyde, comprises 8 universities and 2 SMEs from 10 EU Member States with complementary disciplinary backgrounds and applied and creative expertise in communication, branding and citizen engagement. COHESIFY focused on four inter-related issues:

  • how European identity and perceptions of the EU and Cohesion policy vary atnational, regional and local levels (the part of the project we were most busy with, apart from a Dutch case study)
  • the impact of Cohesion policy on citizens’ perceptions of the policy and identification with the EU;
  • whether and how Cohesion policy communication strategies affect perception and identification; and
  • what is needed to make Cohesion policy more effective in terms of people’s perceptions of the policy and the EU more generally.

 

Photo: Creative Europe Desk UK

While we will be busy with the project’s outputs for months to come (watch this space for more news on that), the final dissemination event, focusing on communication of Cohesion policy, took place at the Committee of the Regions on 26 April to spread the word about the key findings of the project among the practitioners in Brussels.

Below you can find plenty of resources from the event – a summary of results and recommendations, regional factsheets, a press release and an infographic.

 

And last but not least, a video from the event:

Voices from the Regions, COHESIFY final conference

Geplaatst door Old-Continent op donderdag 26 april 2018

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