After over a year of travel restrictions, now AGORA project is up to speed with the physical meetings. Sofia Development Association and Sofia Municipality hosted the second physical meeting, the meeting of the Steering Committee and a transnational capacity-building seminar in the Bulgarian capital on May 11 and 12, 2022. Territorial partners from Chisinau in Moldova, Cluj-Napoca in Romania, Koprivnica in Croatia, Kranj in Slovenia, Neckar-Alb Region in Germany, Prague, Czech Republic, Slavonski Brod in Croatia, Szarvas in Hungary and Zenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina convened physically and online.Scientific partners from Urbanistični inštitut Republike Slovenije, Urbasofia and Eutropian also joined in person while Pakora and Metropolitan Research Institute – Városkutatás Kft. followed online.
The consortium meeting was filled with intense partner exchange, and mutual learning about diverse co-creation processes, different cities’ Regeneration Agendas, their pilot renovation projects and initiatives to activate the stakeholders. More than a meeting, the partners visited Toplocentrala – the Sofia pilot project, met with the team there and saw the river that needs to be integrated into the usable area.
The transnational capacity-building workshop was also joined by representatives of other Bulgarian municipalities, stakeholders and other INTERREG Danube projects in the area of culture and urban regeneration. Participants worked together on the pillars of the AGORA capacity-building toolkit that will be developed later in the project, varying from financial and business models to stakeholder engagement, from fair spatial planning to sustainability.