STONEHAVEN DELEGATES AT SWEDISH CONFERENCE
Stonehaven was represented at the 1st Major Conference for the Interreg111C Project - Sustaining Small Expanding Towns(SusSET) held in the Vastra Gotalands Region in Sweden from Wednesday 7th September - Saturday 10th September2005.

The SusSET project is an International Project - involving 12 towns from 4 EU nations, Scotland, Sweden, Poland and Greece.- that has been set to explore the issue of finding the best 'coping' strategies for small traditional, yet expanding, towns. The project is seeking to determine whether a single model strategy or models, can exist to help such towns deal with future issues and thus regain positions of strength.

Delegated from Inverurie and Ellon were also representing Scotland.

So far, the project partners have agreed to explore 7 sub-topic areas:
Tourism & Identity
Whole Town Strategies
Long Term Planning
Community Engagement and Dialogue
Conservation and Heritage
Partnership and Management
Marketing and Promotion

The project has a Lead Partner Team (Scotland), a Steering Group (from all towns) a Monitoring Group (from each nation) and local Town Teams. These groups are taking over the overall project process.
Nick Brown from Aberdeenshire Towns Partnership is overall project Leader.

The objectives of the Swedish Conference were

Comprehend Swedish national and regional approaches to small town support

Experience the towns of Amal, Stromstadt asn Kungalv at first hand

Further explore the overall SusSET concept and share experiences in relation to the seven sub-topics

Network participants from the 12 towns

Involve a wide range of people beyond the project's staff teams

A full report will be available within the next 2-3 weeks.

In the meantime you can read the personal report here from an attendee from Stonehaven and discover some insights which may have some effect on Stonehaven in the future.

Visit Susset Website