The project started with the kick off-meeting in Bremen in June 2018. It was the first contacts among the partners, including the ones participating in the project Astropreneurs, which started in January 2018.
In terms of communication all General Assemblies were conducted in the course of the project. The consortium also held regular telephone conferences with the full consortium every 8 weeks and smaller group calls, whenever necessary.
During the project 5 Space Academies where held successfully, whereby the Space Academy Rome hosted 20 finalists, because it was merged with SA Sevilla.
Further work has been done in parallel in WP 2, including scouting of potential applicants, positioning of the project within the space ecosystem and a cluster analysis for the regions in which the six Academies have been planned, including cross-clustering options (Helsinki/Finland, Bremen/Germany, Rome/Italy, Warsaw or Krakow/Poland, Seville/Spain and Brussels/Belgium). Also the scouting and positioning was updated.
IBS and EBAN – respectively leader of WP 3 and 4 - worked together in setting up a timeline as well as developing pre-selection and evaluation criteria for all Space Academies. The content for all frontal and one-to-one modules, and the concepts for generating individual feasibility studies, was determined by the contributions of the participating partners, and a draft agenda was put together by EBAN. After every Space Academy, Internal Evaluation Reports were produced by Fraunhofer IPK. The feedback was mostly positive and helped to improve the concept of the Space Academy.
WP 6 main task in the second half of the project was the development of sustainability assessment of the action, including the development of a Business Plan to assess the sustainability of the service. Moreover, it supported the scouting activities from WP 2.
WP 7 has been very active on the dissemination and communication strategy, producing internal and external document templates, slide shows, videos, roll-ups, postcards, newsletter and a flyer to communicate about the project and disseminate information. It is also collecting evidence of the communication and dissemination activities of all partners, several of which have been attending important space-related events like the IAC, Space Info Days, the Space Week, to name but a few. Also in 2019 and 2021 the whole consortium attended the NSE Exo Forum in 2019 in person in Rome and in 2021 digital to promote the project.
The principal dissemination elements of SpaceUp are:
1. Promotion and support of the Space Academies (via webtools, social media and videos etc).
2. Regular newsletters to key target stakeholders and other targeted promotion materials such as a roll-up and flyer
3. The Space Academy handbook
The main communication elements are
1. Print material, project videos ( project presentation and project impact) social media accounts (Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube)
2. A visually attractive website (www.space-academy.eu)
3. Promotional videos from Space Academies (Helsinki, Bremen, Rome, Paris and Europe)
