Living: Innovation action plan

1. CRFS vision 2030 and challenge statements

Region: Iasi CRFS System: Iași, the main urban centre of the North-East Development Region, with a population of 500,000 inhabitants (including the metropolitan area), poses a rather challenging CRF. At the same time, the North-East Region is an important agricultural area of Romania. Accordingly, Iași city is a huge marketplace for the producers from the region. 

Food for Iasi Living Lab (FILL) short description: Food for Iași Living Lab (FILL) is based on the idea of an innovative workshop that is at the core of the Living Lab concept and runs its activities through an innovation hub in the urban food systems of Iași city. FILL addresses the urban food system of Iași city, including the metropolitan area and local producers in close vicinity of the city, especially producers who run their business activities in rural areas. 

CRFS 2030 vision: Improving the quality of life in Iași by encouraging healthy food, short food supply chains, production and consumption of organic food, waste management and last but not least, by increasing the level of trust between local producers and consumers.

Challenges: 

FILL will organise more joint events for stakeholders of Iași CRFS, by encouraging the joint identification of issues and by developing a unitary set of intervention tools, such as actions, methods, models, policies, and strategies designed to address and hopefully solve these issues. FILL objectives: 

1. Developing the collaborative framework between the actors and agents of the urban food system,

2. Identifying the particular features of their own urban food system,

3. Identifying the particular issues of their own urban food system,

4. Analysing the identified particular issues,

5. Identifying the possible solutions for coming up with answers to the identified particular issues,

6. Generating models of good practices,

7. Knowledge transfer to direct and indirect beneficiaries. 

2. Collaboration with stakeholders

Multi-actor, participatory, open, gendered and responsible innovation: FILL collaborates with a group of stakeholders built on the quadruple helix system (business environment, governance, academia, and public, as in citizens/civil society). The methodology used is basically relying on the following: (1) systems thinking model for data gathering (model developed within D3.3 Systems Thinking Methodology), (2) collaboration with stakeholders as actors of the system (entities maintaining the system in its current shape) and agents (entities forcing the change of the system). The cooperation with stakeholders started long before this project and, accordingly, is based on effective communication and teamwork. The group of FILL stakeholders is approximately the same group employed in other projects, which provides a series of significant synergies with other activities. 

Open and responsible innovation, and Gender: The implementing team of the project (P28 IASI and P29ARFI) is a gender-balanced team. The research team publishes the results obtained within the project in an open access system only, in accordance with the specific deontology and European values. The stakeholder group is also gender-balanced. 

3. Living Lab resources

Resources: (1) The constant collaboration between Iași City Hall and Iași Branch of the Romanian Academy, (2) Food for Iasi Living Iasi website is an umbrella for the activities run within the project and also provides synergies with other activities related to other projects, (3) qualified staff with experience in administration, projects, organisation of events, scientific research in food domain, public communication, (4) at least 32.500 EUR (salaries are not included). 

Innovation Facilitators’ role and contribution: The activities of Food for Iasi Living Lab have the following objectives: (1) encouraging stakeholders to implement models of good practices from other food systems that were presented by project partners (as light innovation), (2) encouraging local producers to collaborate with academia and thus come up with innovative ideas, as in novel products for the local market. 

Durability and Sustainability: (1) collaboration with stakeholders extended over the post-implementation period, (2) Food for Iasi Living Iasi as an umbrella platform for the activities during the post-implementation period, (3) “Iasul în bucate” fair (Iași fair of traditional dishes), “Piața verde de weekend” fair (The Green Market Weekend) as permanent events organised in Iași city and financially sustained by Iasi City Hall. 

Possible investments outside the Cities2030 grant: In the next period of implementation, we will try to identify and describe possible investments outside the Cities2030 grant. 

4. Living Lab experiments

5. Other Living Lab's measures 

Capacity building actions: (1) Food for Iasi Living Lab website: www.fill.rdrp.ro, (2) Organise conferences, (3) Communicators Community Training, (4) CRFS videoclips. 

6. SMART Goals

7. Communication, dissemination and exploitation

Communication is provided through the following channels: (1) project website (cities2030.eu), (2) platform supporting the Project Forum, (3) various working groups from WP3, WP4, WP5 WP7, (4) Communicators Community, (5) website of Food for Iasi Living Lab (fill.rdrp.ro), (6) permanent events (The food fair, as in Iașul în bucate aka Iași fair of traditional dishes, Piața verde de weekend aka the Green Market Weekend), (7) stakeholders workshops. 

Dissemination is delivered through the following channels: (1) social media and web-based dissemination, (2) academia through communications presented on scientific events and papers published in scientific journals, (3) printed informative materials (flyers with organic, mountain, and traditional food products, flyers about the project, flyers about Food for Iasi Living Lab), (4) educational workshops for children within the Fair of Iașul în bucate (Iași fair of traditional dishes). 

Exploitation is provided through the following actions: (1) taking part in making the methodology of Systems Thinking as pilot methodology employed for data collection through meetings/workshops/events with stakeholders, (2) models of good practice related to the Communicators Community as a communication tool within projects. 

8. Continuity- and scale-up measures

1. During the post-implementation period we will attract fundings to support FILL from the following sources: local, regional, and national financing,
2. FILL infrastructure will be used as a resource for other projects in the post-implementation period,
3. The scientific deliverables will be used as items of relevant published literature in the research projects conducted in Iași Branch of the Romanian Academy. 

9. Risk assessment