The Talia project, part of the Interreg Med programme, aims to foster cohesion and innovation within the cultural and creative industries by connecting various stakeholders across Mediterranean regions. With six ongoing projects under its umbrella, Talia focuses on sharing experiences and promoting policy recommendations that enhance creativity and social innovation. The project, which began in 2016 and is set to conclude in 2019, emphasizes scaling results and transforming policy through community engagement and modular project frameworks.

1. TALIA MED PROJECT
“INNOVATION AND CLUSTERING IN THE CREATIVE AND CULTURAL INDUSTRIES”
By Thanos Contargyris – UHCC Expert
Athens, December 1st , 2017
TALIA National Dissemination Event in ATTIKI
“Cultural and Creative Sector and Innovation in INTERREG MED”
Athens School of Fine Arts

2. The TALIA project
• The TALIA project, is an Horizontal of Interreg MED
programme on Creativity and Social Innovation,
started in late 2016 and ending in late 2019
• The project is led by Apulia Region (IT) with 5 partners:
• Fernando de los Ríos Consortium (Spain)
• European Network of Living Labs (Belgium)
• Union of Hellenic Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Greece)
• Agency for Economic Development of City of Prijedor (Bosnia-
Herzegovina)
• National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Applied
Mathematics (France)

3. The TALIA mission
The TALIA project is aiming at building and developing the
Social & Creative community within the Interreg MED
Programme, by boosting cohesion, coherence & synergies
among Interreg-MED projects promoting creativity and
social innovation in Culture and Creative Industries (CCI).
TALIA deals currently with 6 projects involved in this field,
covering a wide part of it. TALIA supports them in
exchanging their experiences and their results, in sharing
common concerns and vision, in promoting their policy
recommendations and in unifying their local and trans-
local networks.

4. TALIA Focus – Currently 6 projects
Project Full title Keywords
CHIMERA Innovative cultural and creative clusters in the
MED area
CCI Innovation system/strategy; Innovative
tools&services; Innovative financial instruments;
Services for internationalization and
innovation;Innovation business plan
Co-Create Setting up a network of COmpetitive MED
Clusters with the contribution of CREATive
industriEs
Cross-innovation; innovative tools&services;
Innovative financial instruments; IPR instruments;
Creative cumps tools; Innovation processes and
products
CoWorkMed Social Innovation Research On Coworking
Clusters
Coworking/HuBs; Innovative ideas; Open
innovation; Innovative tools&services
CreativeWear Creative Clothing for the Mediterranean Space Cross-innovation; Coworking /HUBs; Creativity-
based business model innovation
Open DOORS Designing a network of cOOperating cReative
communities for developing a Sharing economy
Sharing Economy; Coworking/HuBs; Innovative
tools&services; Innovative financial
instruments/Crowding
Prominent
MED
Public pROcureMent of INnovation boosting
greEN growTh in MED area
Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI);
Innovative financial instruments; Innovative
ideas; Innovative products

5. Modular Projects Planning
5

6. TALIA Planning & Milestones
6
Milestone
Number
WP Activity Number Milestone Title Date of delivery
1 2_3_4 A2.1, A2.2, A3.2 and A4.1 Project set-up and launch 31/03/2017
2 4 A4.2 and A4.4 Indicators and Services 30/09/2017
3 3_4 A3.2 and A4.3 Mapping and Aggregation 31/03/2018
4 2_4 A2.2 and A4.2 Revised Vision and Indicators 30/09/2018
5 3 A3.2 Revised Thematic Domains 31/03/2019
6 2_3_4 Several Successful completion of the project 31/10/2019

7. TALIA Vision – Success criteria
(for innovation in MED)
7

8. TALIA Vision – Innovation model
8

9. Innovation Landscape & Focus
9

10. TALIA Community sharing this vision:
Already large and growing
https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1pcHJrGpDkcLznhC-RAsFbhbmfVA&ll=44.1688703812966%2C9.491878850000035&z=5

11. TALIA support to the Community
Scaling Up
Κλιμάκωση
Consolidation of results
Scaling Out
Επέκταση
Geographical extension of
results
Policy Learning
Εξαγωγή πολιτικών
συμπερασμάτων
What policy makers learn
Policy Impact
Πολιτικό Αντίκτυπο
What is (will be) used to
transform policies

12. TALIA actions to promote Scaling Up/Out
Scaling Up
Κλιμάκωση
Consolidation of results
Scaling Out
Επέκταση
Geographical extension of
results
12
❍ Georeferenced mapping of project and pilot stakeholders
❍ Creation of inter-project creativity and social innovation
communities
❍ Engagement of EU and global innovation networks and forums

13. Scaling Up - Κλιμάκωση
• Good project results, but little adoption/
deepening after the project ends – why?
• Probably:
– Think about sustainability too late..
– Insufficient degree of perfection / refinement of
proposed solutions
– Results not always really relevant to the MED space
– Sustainability measures inadequate
• Possibly: the domain of interest – too soon or to
late to look at new solutions

14. Scaling Out - Επέκταση
• If a project worked fine in X regions, why couldn’t it be
the same in the remaining (43-X, or even 271-X) ones?
• Geographical extension is only one example of transfer,
which may also involve complex processes such as
– Imitation
– Emulation
– Incubation
– Competition
• There are currently no ways to scale good project
results without reinventing the wheel or just standing
on the precursors’ shoulders. Can we do better?

15. TALIA actions to promote
Policy Learning / Policy Impact
Policy Learning
Εξαγωγή και
Εξάπλωση
Πολιτικών
Συμπερασμάτων
What goes through
Policy Impact
Δημιουργία
Πολιτικού
αντίκτυπο
What is (will be) used to
transform policies
15
❍ Framing modular project concepts into a ‘Mediterranean model’ of creativity and social innovation
❍ Promotion of triple loop learning in regional / national / EU policy makers
❍ Aggregation and mapping of modular project results to generate policy evidence

16. Policy Learning – Εξαγωγή και εξάπλωση
πολιτικών συμπερασμάτων
• If the project implications remain untapped, policy
makers are missing a great potential in terms of
discovery of insights on
– Common/replicable practices
– Key actors / tools / enablers
– Market exploitable innovations
– Usable guidelines for policy change
• A gap analysis is probably required to highlight the
learning trajectories from project results to evidence
based policy actions
• Are these transmission mechanisms domain specific or
can they be made uniform / standardised?

17. A Triple Loop Learning
Exercise
17

18. Policy Impact – Πολιτικό Αντίκτυπο
Επιρροή και πρόκληση νέων πολιτικών
• Transforming regional policies is a key goal of territorial
cooperation: making this happen depends on
– The presence of a fertile policy environment
– A strong investment in learning capacity of decision makers
• The new programme’s strategy is already acting in this
direction, however impact is mainly assessed ex post
– A process-oriented in itinere approach would help
• An interim step forward might be the creation of a
community of convergent actors and interests
– With a clear definition of goals for policy transformation
– Activating processes of formative evaluation