Successful DC NOISE Final Conference
The impressive Provincial Court in Brugge, Flanders was bustling with 150 visitors Tuesday, September 27th. Participants from more than 9 regions around the North Sea got themselves informed upon the results from more than 3 years of DC NOISE. The DC NOISE Final Conference, hosted by the Provinces of West- and East-Flanders is the culmination of 28 pilotprojects related to demographic change. Read more about the projects, here on our site, or download the comprehensive DC NOISE TOWN to explore the results of the partnerships yourself.
The exhibition hall featured an overview of the DC NOISE themes labour market, housing and service provision, monitoring and awareness in four corners. The conference was introduced by deputee Naeyeart of the Province of West Flanders (BE) and mayor Kerckhaert of the municipality of Hengelo (lead partner, NL). Keynote speaker Professor Philip McCann stressed the importance of recognizing the character of demographic change, being context dependent and varying from region to region. He convincingly linked the processes of demographic change to globalization, leaving the conference participants impressed by his surprising contribution. Hauke Siemens, project leader of Best Agers project of the Baltic Sea Regio, reflected on the Strategic Paper on EU Labour Market as developed by DC NOISE to create demographic proof labour market policies.
The Interreg IVB project has raised the topic of demographic change to several political agendas and has been recognized as an example project by the North Sea Region secretariat in Viborg. DC NOISE contributed to the process of understanding population change in Europe and its consequences, for instance by delivering input for the EU presidency of Hungary during the EUKN conference in Budapest. DC NOISE delivered tangible results such as a transnational housing atlas <link> to show demographic sensible housing concepts and the logbook for the monitoring of demographic transition as developed by the VUB University Brussels with input from all project partners.
DC NOISE has been very successful and is scheduled to end in 2011. All outputs will be available after the project by downloading the DC NOISE Town.
