Food 2030 (EU food innovation policy) highlights boosting innovation and empowering communities as a key priority. It wants value-added products to meet the needs, values and expectations of society in a responsible and ethical way. However, the food service market (caterers, cafes, takeaways, pubs/restaurants, café, food trucks, contract caterers, hospitals, schools etc.) is challenged by a lack of growth ( just 5%in three years in the UK), price pressure from food retailers and changing consumer behaviour. Obesity is a public health time bomb but as consumer interest in healthy and sustainable food continues to rise, European food service businesses face a win-win opportunity: they can grow their businesses AND empower consumers to make healthier choices. Stimulating Healthy Food Service Innovation (SUSTAIN) seeks to empower food service SMEs with the innovation knowledge and skills to introduce healthy, affordable products to market, thus boosting their competitiveness and contribution to a healthier society. To ensure our approach seeks maximum reach and impact, we will provide enterprise support centres - the main source of training and support for small businesses –with the resources they need to radically improve the innovation training they provide to small food service firms. Our SMART objectives are closely linked to our project outputs:i. Provide SMEs, VET trainers and policymakers with rigorously researched, up-to-date knowledge on the business opportunities arising from the healthy food agenda. (IO1: Good practice healthy food service compendium)ii. Provide food sector trainers with new resources to introduce healthy food innovation courses for their client base reaching 2,000 food service SMEs (IO2: OERs)iii. Boost the effectiveness of the aforementioned courses and widen access to food service SME owners and employees by developing an online platform, “Healthy Food Innovation and Digitization for the Food Service Sector” (IO3).iv. Widely disseminate our resources, particularly with VET and food sector policymakers to maximise uptake in the short to medium term.SUSTAIN will impact the following participants:-1 Organisations linked to target groups: organizations providing VET to food service companies and representative bodies for food service companies 2 Policy makers in terms of public health and economic development 3 Partners’ links to associates, peers, stakeholders and policy makers at regional, national and EU (e.g. the Regions of Gastronomy network, the Balkans sustainability development network).In terms of results, SUSTAIN will - Provide 500 SMEs, VET trainers and policymakers with rigorously researched, up-to-date knowledge on the business opportunities arising from the healthy food agenda. (IO1: Good practice healthy food service compendium)- Provide 100 food sector trainers with new resources to introduce healthy food innovation courses for their client base reaching 2,000 food service SMEs (IO2: OERs)- Benefit 1,000 food service SME owners and employees through the online platform, “Healthy Food Innovation and Digitization for the Food Service Sector” (IO3).SUSTAIN partners will : - gain distinctive insights and strategies into food service innovation that arise from the unique combination of perspectives and types of organizations involved in the knowledge sharing process. Their new expertise will help their positioning and competitive advantage in their respectivespheres of work.- acquire new didactic strategies and will improve their own competences in knowledge sharing and strategic relationship building and have a clear understanding of how to sustain and grow the project in the long termSUSTAIN has been designed to impact positively in the long term to build the capacity of food service SMEs to introduce healthier options leading to more growth in the SME sector, greater choices of healthier food service offerings for the consumer and ultimately, improved health in communities and reduced health care costs. Such an initiative has never been more important. Obesity is rising at an alarming rate with estimates indicating over 51% of EU adults are overweight and 20% are obese.

"""CULTURE UP – Capacity building of Cultural Institutions and Local Authorities in non–urban and peripheral areas"" project sets out to share and exchange knowledge and practices of cultural development across the public, private and civil sector in five European non–urban and peripheral areas. The project includes five European partners that have been engaged in former, coming or aspiring European Capitals of Culture (ECOC), both as host city or as neighboring cultural institutions and local authorities in the region, working with diverse age groups of children, youth and adults.The project partners more specifically represents: Tampere 2026/Finland, Novi Sad 2021/Serbia, Galway 2020/Ireland, Leeuwarden 2018/The Netherlands and Aarhus 2017/Denmark.The goal is to build capacity on best-conducted practices and transfer experiences, knowledge and know-how through European networking amongst cultural institutions, civil society organisations and local authorities working in the cultural field in non-urban and peripheral areas, Through the diverse experiences, strategies, learning and perspectives from an artistic, cultural, institutional and local authority level, all lead and associated partners will work towards exchanging and developing an outline strategy with a European partnership mind-set and values. Setting an active future plan that functions as an institutionalized new learning model of operation, and a catalyst for sustainable cultural development in non–urban areas. Thus bridging technical and know how inequality of opportunities in these peripheral areas.In a rotational mode, individual partners exchange job shadowing opportunities both on location and online. In the same mode, each partner is responsible for creating a local host program in her/his local area to host all other partners. The host program will organise visits to the different stakeholders in these non–urban areas, through induction meetings, TOT training of trainers sessions, seminars, cultural activities, networking and exchanges. All rotational exchange programs end with a debrief and an evaluation session with all participants led by the Project Coordinators and Communication Coordinators. The main purpose of the evaluation session is to ensure progress in the project and that each exchange visit has reached its goals. The outcome results in an outline strategy on how to operate together in future European projects addressing present non-urban challenges in sustainable cultural development. Results of the project CULTURE UP will be of a diverse nature and consist of both (tangible) results as well as (intangible results) like skills and personal experiences. Some of the intangible results will be measured by the use of interviews, questionnaires, tests, observations or self-assessment mechanisms that may help to record these types of results. Those results that will be disseminated more widely as e.g. experiences, strategies or processes, programs and activities will be documented.Number of participants: There are 9 project partners representing cultural institutions or organisations and local authorities. A total of 27 European participants plus relevant national participants will be included in the LTTA. The project has defined the following specific objectives: 1. Exchange and knowledge-sharing of concrete experiences to strengthen capacity of cultural development in non–urban areas both on an artistic, and institutional and local authority level (by exploring best practices, participatory and bottom-up approaches, peer-to-peer methodology of hands on training).2. Create awareness on cultural development in non–urban areas and support existing initiatives3. Develop European partnerships on cultural development in non–urban areas and show the way for a stronger European awareness in smaller cultural institutions and newcomers as a potential path for innovative development and solutions to local challenges4. Create an outline strategy for an institutionalised new learning model of operating European cultural development in non–urban areasEnvisaged long term impact:1.Inspired and motivated cultural newcomers to work on a European level as a way of developing local practices and strengthen their cultural capacity and hereby accommodate rural challenges.2. Regenerated ways for local authorities in being a cultural sector catalyst, creating opportunities in non–urban areas.3. Platforms for future non–urban partnerships are identified with specific types of exchanges for future collaborations between smaller cultural institutions, artists and organizations.4. Raised visibility of cultural narrative in non–urban areasThe potential longer term benefits of the project CULTURE UP is to show and promote that rural areas can as much be laboratories for exploration of possibilities within culture and forward culture as drivers for habitation, social gatherings and rural development in general."