Co-creation is completed!

We completed our co-creation workshops! Here are some facts about the entire process:

• We run the co-creation process from July 2018 to March 2019.
• Our workshops gathered over 120 people from different backgrounds – NGOs, universities, clusters, business, farmers, administration and consumers environment.
• We have reached over a hundred students, who were observing some parts of co-creation process
• We have presented the project during several events including:
• IV Green Smart City Forum, Cracow
• LifeScience Open Space, Cracow
• 167th EAAE Seminar and Conference on bioeconomy, Pulawy
• 12th International Conference Methods of sewage sludge management, Pozna
• The workshops took a place in Cracow and in Warsaw

We based the co-creation process on the scheme of 4 meetings, which were to answer the following questions:

WORKSHOP ‘zero’:

• Who are the bio-economy stakeholders?
• What do they know?
• How they see the bio-economy trends?
• What are bio-economy products in Malopolska region?

WORSHOP 1:

• What shall we communicate about te bio-economy?
• Who should recive our communicate?

WORKSHOP 2:

• How deeply can our recipient get involved?
• How much time and attention is s/he ready to give to communicate with BLOOM?
• What are bio-economy products?
• Why / in what scope are they interesting for different recipients?

WORKSHOP 3:

• Which communication format should we use for different groups of recipients?

…And the workshop effects broadened our knowledge in the following areas and had following effects:

We learned about the barriers to the implementation of bioeconomy, misunderstanding of the term and problems in communication between bioeconomy stakeholders. But we also got to know interesting examples of bioeconomy-based business in the region – from using wooden waste to create an ecological kindling, using dog fur from groomers’ salons to deter some animals, through plant protection agents in the form of colonies of microorganisms applied to soil and on the biopolymers from edible oils.

Workshop participants created portraits of four model, significant recipients:

* women with young families – in Poland it is women who decide about the form of consumption. Their awareness and attitude determines the consumption of the whole family and, indirectly, subsequent generations.

* young-ambitious – a group with high social and environmental awareness, in need of grounding and deepening knowledge – future leaders in the society

* administration employees, for whom the basic problem turned out to be not the lack of knowledge about the bioeconomy but a way to reach its stakeholders

* farmers – the creators of the primary biomass.

Workshop participants created communication schemes for each person, determined time constraints, the degree of readiness to engage and finally developed 4 original communication formats: outdoor game for women with families, educational program of bioeconomy ambassadors associated with a series of events engaging participants in specific creative activities, ‘blind date’ for bioeconomy stakeholders organized by administration entities and an entertainment and educational event for farmers, based on the exchange of knowledge between the interested parties themselves. At least two of the worked out ideas will be used in outreach activities planned for 2019/2020.