25 Years Anniversary Event Workshop Summaries
Idea Lab: Making your project idea a reality
Project ideation for a transnational cooperation programme such as Interreg Alpine Space is a complex process, revolving around many factors.
On May 13, the Programme launched Call 3 for classic projects, the last one for the programming period 2021-2027. The Terms of Reference for this Call, released on April 22nd, outline the programme’s Specific Objectives that project proposals should address. To clarify these objectives and define the intervention areas for new, innovative project ideas aimed at tackling the multiple crises affecting our region, as well as to explore the expected intervention logic and project structure, our Project Officers organised the workshop session “Idea Lab: Making your project idea a reality” following the Call opening at the 25 Years anniversary event held in Salzburg.
The session, introduced by the Heads of the Managing Authority and Joint Secretariat, Christina Bauer and Thomas Fleury, began with a presentation and developed into a guided exercise, to end in a Q&A.
Project Officer Matteo Decostanzi opened the presentation with an overview of the expectations for Call 3. He specifically outlined the required thematic focus as well as general programme expectations. These include addressing the policy cycle, engaging with and contributing to EUSALP and other EU or Alpine-wide policies, and ensuring a consistent communication effort by the project. Lastly, he highlighted the project application assessment criteria for step 1, namely project relevance, partnership relevance, intervention logic and cooperation character.
Project Officer Aleš Kegl then took over, focusing on the concept of intervention logic and providing some programme-specific insights. Key takeaways included the distinction between intervention logic elements—such as objectives, target groups, results, and outputs—and operational elements, such as partner roles, budget, timeline, and work plan. This portion of the presentation also elaborated on the concepts of the project’s overall objective, specific objectives, results, and outputs. Finally, he highlighted the importance of aligning the project’s intervention logic with that of the programme and emphasised the crucial role of project communication.
After the presentation, Project Officer Adina Schmid led an exercise on project design with the help of Managing Authority colleagues and Alpine Contact Points. Participants were asked to think about target groups, specific objectives, work packages, output indicators and values of a fictional project.
Finally, our POs answered the questions that participants asked throughout the session via Slido.
Session materials
- Session Slides
- Guide to project idea generation
- Intervention logic glossary
- Exercise
- Q&A, Characteristics of a good proposal & Checklist
If you also have questions on Call 3, join our Q&A session on June 5. You can sign up and submit your questions in advance here.
