Europe INNOVA - Partnerships for better innovation support

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Official Opening

The newly opened museum in the Bethlehem Gate
The official opening of the Partnering Event will take place at the newly opened museum in the Bethlehem Gate, which is one of the original seven gates or bastions in the Venetian Walls of Heraklion. Participants at the event will have the opportunity to wander around inside this very typical example of the Venetians' fortification architecture and at the same time to peruse the 'El Greco: Return home' exhibition. The exhibition includes examples of the work of the famous Cretan artist Domenicos Theotokopoulos, also known as El Greco, who was born in Heraklion in 1541 and died in Toledo in 1614. The exhibition does not include original paintings, as these are housed in various museums all over the world, but instead it features copies from his Spanish period made by three modern artists.
The museum also houses costumes from the movie 'El Greco' that premi?red in 2007 and was directed by Greek film-maker Iannis Smaragdis. The Lala Huete, who has just received the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Goya Award for 'Best Costume Design', created these costumes.

Innovation Tour

Crete Wine Industry: Tradition meets Innovation and Clustering
The optional innovation tour during this Annual Partnering Event will focus on the efforts of the winemaking sector in Crete to transform itself into a cluster and also to enhance its innovative capacities. This has involved establishing a network of winemaking firms in the prefecture of Heraklion to promote public awareness about the importance of the products of Cretan viniculture and to support the sustainable development of some of Crete's rural areas.
To enhance its innovation, the network has participated in an ambitious project, under the umbrella of the Regional Innovation Pole of Crete.
This involved the purification and re-engineering of the whole of the Cretan Wine Industry to map the traditional wine varieties through DNA extraction and molecular marker analyses. The overall intention has been to create a recognised and certified label for Crete's Quality Wine, whilst also developing, and in certain instances even reviving, some of the varieties of local wine.
In addition, to support sustainable rural development, the network created the 'Cretan Wine Road.' This is an integrated web of routes covering the entire wine-producing zone of the island, which is promoting wine-tourism as an additional attraction for visitors to Crete.
During the innovation tour, the participants in the Partnering Event will have the opportunity to travel through the traditional rural landscape of Crete and visit one of the wineries along the Cretan Wine Road. At this winery, the clustering efforts of the winemaking sector will be explained by Mr. Miliarakis Nikos, the President of the Network, and there will also be an opportunity to discuss the benefits of clustering for the winemaking sector. Then, the innovation tour will make its way to Archanes where the Gala Dinner will be held.

The Gala Dinner

Cretan village of Archanes
The setting for the dinner will be the traditional Cretan village of Archanes http://www.archanes.gr/wow/archanes.asp, which is an excellent example of how European funds can be used to promote local rural development. By making optimal use of European, national and regional funds, this quaint market town of Archanes now has many fully restored sandstone houses and other buildings, which date from the Turkish period.
Through the use of the funds, Archanes has also succeeded in transforming itself from a traditional winemaking village into a well-known destination for agro-tourism that champions the concepts of eco-innovation and sustainable development.