Maybe your project deserves an Arctic Award this year?

The 4th edition of the Arctic Awards project competition is open! 

Arctic Awards – project competition  highlights good practice projects focused on topics of particular relevance to the Arctic area. The competition is open to projects funded by the NPA, Interreg Botnia-Atlantica, Interreg Nord, Kolarctic CBC and Karelia CBC programmes. The deadline for competition entries has been extended until 22nd May 2020 23:59 CET.

The objective of the Arctic Award is to identify good practice, promote Arctic cross-border collaboration, and raise awareness among projects of each other. The awards aim to highlight innovative projects with a clear Arctic dimension, which are viewed as inspirational in their participating regions as well as being seen as creating real, measurable impacts on the ground, and being of direct benefit to Arctic communities.

Kolarctic CBC projects did not participate last year because they had hardly started, but now Kolarctic CBC projects have good chances!

PHOTO: An Arctic Award 2019 winner of theír Category: Interreg Nord project Our stories  — at North Atlantic House, Copenhagen

This year, the Arctic Awards focus on the following award categories:

CATEGORY 1: Arctic entrepreneurial spirit

• Supporting core entrepreneurial skills required for people with multiple incomes (employment/self-employment/micro companies), support to business clusters fostering critical mass in demand, assisting in the strengthening of entrepreneurial diversity.
• The project supports businesses based on Arctic opportunities and cultural heritage (food innovation, tourism, creative and cultural industries, indigenous cultural businesses); as well as the assisting of niche industries’ move to commercialisation
• The project has a focus on boosting young entrepreneurs’ abilities to create successful business opportunities in remote and rural areas, such as establishing networks, providing new skills, offering an enabling environment in high north regions.

CATEGORY 2: Overcoming critical mass

• Distance spanning technology (eHealth, education, governmental services, culture)
• Match making and clustering for SMEs in Arctic sectors (cross-sector collaboration, export, business incubation). Pooling resources to meet (external) market demands (supply chain innovation, branding, combined portfolio of competences).
• Improving connectivity and accessibility across borders, with a focus on young people opportunities for mobility, creating more resilient communities.
• Increasing opportunities to exchange knowledge and skills within a community of experts through mechanisms for overcoming isolation, such as peer-to-peer, hubs as well as mentoring services

One main prize is awarded per category. This is a trophy and a project infographic.
All winners are invited to the Award Ceremony.
For more information, please read the Applicants Guide carefully.

How to participate?
In order to participate in the competition, applicants need to complete an online competition entry form in SurveyMonkey. You can preview the questions in this PDF version. The deadline for submitting your application is 22nd May 2020 23:59 CET.

Award Ceremony
The ceremony is planned to to be part of the evening programme of the Northern Periphery and Arctic Annual Conference, 23rd September, Oulu, Finland

Contact Information
All enquiries should be sent to Rachel Burn, rachel.burn@interreg-npa.eu or the contact person of your project in Kolarctic CBC. For more information about the collaboration, please visit the Arctic Cooperation page and follow the Facebook page @ArcticCooperation 

PHOTO: A winner of Arctic Award 2017: the Interreg Nord Project Visit Arctic Europe