The third Exchange of Experience of RegionArts will be held in Porto, Portugal on 13-15 March 2019. The meeting organised by Porto Design Factory will focus on “Understating user’s needs”.

Mapping the ecosystems and analysing the policy instruments will not be enough for designing successful public policies and support programmes. Support to the creation of links between arts, ICT and entrepreneurial spirit for the promotion of successful innovations will require new policies and actions, as most of policies available today are conceived for an information and knowledge age (often even for an industrial age) that is no longer predominant.

Moreover, the success of any public intervention will also depend on understanding the specificities of the final beneficiaries. The main challenge will be to combine artistic creative freedom with rigid technology transfer processes. Artists usually have a very disruptive approach that can be difficult to integrate for an ICT expert. Several studies also pointed out to a communication problem, where artist community is not aware of the available opportunities.

Taking this into account and based the results of workshop 1 and workshop 2, partners will go further in analysing the needs of their different users — particularly ITC, artists and policy makers. Design tools, such as, personas and customer journey maps will be used to understand user’s needs. Partners will learn how to use these tools, so that they can apply them back in their territories. The workshops and the tools will be developed by PDF, with input provided by the advisory partner SERN.

The event agenda will soon be available in the 'Library' section of the website.