Project Progress: Outreach, stakeholder engagement and dissemination

A number of dissemination and communication activities and have been conducted during the project to date, including the development of a templates, social media accounts, the project website and an engaging factsheet. A stakeholder engagement strategy was also been created to inform dissemination activities, the Blue Lab and also the knowledge transfer and exploitation activities, which begin in December 2020.

A Blue Lab has been created as part of the BIOGEARS project and this concept works at the interface between research and commercial exploitation, testing and piloting innovative products and services so that research results are brought closer to market. Knowledge transfer activities are about to commence within the project to support this. This process will use a well-defined methodology that assesses the key results and identifies specific target and end users. Targeted dissemination to these users will then take place, increasing the likelihood of biogears reaching relevant actors and becoming established in the market.

 
Due to Covid-19, a number of planned activities have been cancelled, such as the BIOGEARS networking event scheduled for June 2020, and planned visits to Irish IMTA
and seaweed sites which were to place alongside Aquaculture Europe October 2020. It is hoped that these can be rescheduled once the Covid-19 crisis passes and it is safe to travel once again. BIOGEARS partners have promoted the project at a number of virtual events, including the EMFF-organised World Circular Economy Forum 2020 side event:Innovative projects for a sustainable Blue Economy and the 15^th European Bioplastics conference.