Users want easy and convenient ways to obtain and share information; and there isn't currently a web-platform that serves the communities of both Europe and Latin America on this topic - so opportunities for knowledge exchange and collaboration are currently limited to more 'traditional' methods (e.g. international conferences) and occasional joint EU-CELAC initiatives. Why might these communities wish to collaborate? Because it can unlock new innovations and good practice, as well as potentially new funding streams.
Websites developed by the research sector tend to have a technical focus and aren't usually the most engaging or attractive to non-specialists. There is an opportunity to challenge this stereotype and make the online knowledge-sharing experience easier and more enjoyable, which will in turn help to facilitate interactions - and thereby, innovations. It will also help us to reach new audiences that might not typically engage with nature-based solutions, but whose input would be valuable to the process. This includes involvement of the public and civil society, which has an increasingly important role to play.
We want to help improve the workflow of project partners and make tasks easier to manage. INTERLACE is a big, complex and ambitious project and some of its methods are new to some partners. Internal communication, teamwork and task management can sometimes feel complicated and time-consuming. The Hub has a role to play in reducing this complexity, helping partners to share their news and experiences, see what others are doing, and work together in simpler, more productive ways (notably in collaboration with WP1 team and the agile approach).
We want people to "see" the work of INTERLACE as it is happening. Commonly, projects fail to provide stakeholders, funders and others with a 'window' through which to view the workings of the project - instead, they focus on planning and delivery - and so instead, we enable interested parties to see and understand what we are doing at every stage. We aim to achieve this by: 1) developing the City Groups as the main communication channels for engaging and informing local stakeholders; and 2) develop the Product Lab 'dashboard' page as a regularly updated summary of each INTERLACE product's status.
We want to tell the "story" of INTERLACE, or more accurately the "stories" (especially at city level) and the Hub has an important role to play in bringing these stories together to create narratives that will engage and hopefully inspire our target audiences. We want to go far beyond measuring our impact in terms of only deliverables... we want to evidence the positive impact of our work by giving opportunity for the recipients and beneficiaries of INTERLACE outputs to tell us what difference we have made to their own lives, in their own words (using familiar media such as film, photography and spoken word).
We want to disseminate our outputs as widely as possible and in formats that can be readily used and exploited / further developed by others. To achieve this, we want to use the Hub as a way of 'amplifying' our communications by linking with other, established knowledge platforms and networks - providing them with new content in exchange for publicity and awareness-raising. We also want to ensure legacy for our work; this will be ensured by integrating the Hub within Oppla and using it to create a new 'Repository of NBS' for the CELAC region, with the involvement of INTERLACE partners.
