CLAY project – Interreg Europe: The intermediate event to discuss CLAY results: Taking Stock

The Interreg Europe CLAY project (Cross Sector support for Innovative and Competitive Artistic Ceramic SMEs) has reached the middle of its course and the intermediate event, which will be held online during the last week of May 2021, marks the transition from the interregional exchange and learning phase to the implementation of action plans.

CLAY is an Interreg Europe project launched in June 2018, which aims to support the ceramic sector by giving priority to new technologies, strengthening brands and developing new services to maintain a competitive advantage and face the challenge of globalization.

[Online meeting 24-02-2021]

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[Online meeting 24-02-2021]

The interregional exchange will help CLAY partners to improve regional programs and tools that can strengthen tradition and promote innovation in the artistic ceramics sector.

The CLAY project brings together 5 regions that have both important ceramic traditions and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises, and uses interregional exchange to identify solutions to the challenge of combining tradition and innovation, improving regional programs for innovation.

The main objective of the project is therefore to show that with product, process and marketing innovation it is possible to make tradition competitive in a globalized world.

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[Kick off meeting, Italy – 26-29 June 2018 – pre Covid-19 pandemic]

The overall goal is to ensure that the selected policy instruments are adapted to support the ceramic sector to thrive in the contemporary global environment. This will benefit the artistic ceramic sector and other sectors of the regional economy involved in the innovation of industrial processes.

The concrete result expected by Interreg projects is to develop action plans. Hence, each CLAY region is activating and will discuss during the intermediate event its own plan, which aims at implementing regional actions to support the artistic and artisan ceramic sector.

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[Kick off meeting, Italy – 26-29 June 2018 – pre Covid-19 pandemic]

Regione Umbria (Italy), CLAY project lead partner, is developing an action plan to link ceramics businesses and University, in order to boost innovation in product and design quality, processes and marketing.

Pole Céramique (France) addresses the need to access information about support for ceramic SMEs in order to innovate design and know how, answering to new trends.

Regional Council of South Ostrobothnia (Finland) is creating a service path description and a networking structure to provide ceramics and craft SMEs with information to access funds and advisory, but also tackling the need for public visibility.

CTCV (Portugal) is working on extending a voucher scheme to support artistic and artisanal ceramic business to promote innovation, internationalization and R&D.

South West Oltenia (Romania) is fostering interdisciplinary and intersectoral cooperation through the preservation and innovation of craft ceramics, the integration of product and services and consumer education.

The key words of the intermediate event will be innovation and resilience. The objectives, actions and results expected from this project are certainly of general interest for all territorial areas, European and extra-European, involved in traditional artistic ceramics, because, mutatis mutandis, the basic problems (and the related actions to overcome them and reaching solutions) are common, interrelated and assimilable.

The CLAY intermediate event will be an occasion to share and comment on such problems and solutions, with a focus on innovation and the resilience needed to overcome the recent worldly situation.

Covid-19, indeed, has upset the ways of life and work and therefore the CLAY intermediate event will be held online, aiming to apply all that resilience, but also that positive reaction that most private operators and public institutions were able to implement in this difficult moment.

The problems and solutions of the artistic and traditional ceramics sector are such that all individuals, private and public, operating in the sector, will be able to find useful elements for their work in participating in the event.

The entire audience of participants will be actively involved, stimulated to submit questions, comment and answer questions proposed on the online platform where the event will take place.

The event will take place over a day, in virtual form, during the last week of May 2021. The final agenda and registration link will be available on the official communication channels of the CLAY project (www.interregeurope.eu/clay/) and AEuCC website.

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