It seems it has been pretty much six weeks since I last made an entry here. I got very tied up writing new funding applications - an activity which I think kills off any creativity!

Any way I'm back and hopefully the blog will be updated a little more often in coming days and weeks. Today also marks the start of the 2022 travel season for transnational meetings. Although there was a couple of meetings in late autumn, most international project face to face meetings have been suspended due to the Covid 19 epidemic. But with mass vaccination and the improvement in the situation in most European countries, face to face meetings are back on the agenda. I have mixed feelings about this. We have managed pretty well with online project meetings during the Covid 199 crisis. But having said that online is much trickier if you want to collaborate in developing ideas. And there is no doubt that in the Mobilities for All project in which we managed to hold a face to face meeting in Valencia last November, there is a tangible sense of being involved in something together which wasn't there before that meeting.

Hopefully though, we will realise that we need to achieve added value form face to face meet8ings, rather than just going through the motions of an agenda. That should mean I hope proper working meetings where we explore issues and do things together - more workshops than business meetings.

And I don't think we will ever return to the volume of face to face meetings in European projects that was the norm prior to Covid 19. The European Commission seems to be slowly waking up to the contradiction between its environmental policies and priorities and the ridiculous effect of all the air miles their projects are supporting.

Anyway, I am off to Braga in Portugal this afternoon. And tomorrow we are going to be talking about how to identify green skills for green jobs and to develop tools and roadmaps to help people develop their careers in the green sector. I will report back in a few days.