The third SMART4Food Transnational Partners Meeting (TPM) took place in Ireland on February 26th and 27th. The meeting was hosted by project partner Momentum Educate and Innovate (MEI) at The Food Hub in Drumshambo, Co. Leitrim.
The meeting opened with a short welcome and orientation from Denise Callan of MEI, who then introduced Fergal McPartland from The Food Hub. Fergal outlined how the closing of a significant food processing employer in the town 20 years ago led to a community buyout of the factory building and the establishment of the Food Hub as a multi-tenant production facility, providing a route to market for local farmers and producers as well as generating much-needed employment in a rural area.
Ivana Kardum Goleš, from Lead Partner Veleučilište u Šibeniku (Šibenik University of Applied Sciences) then got the formal business of the meeting underway. She gave the consortium an update on Project Management activities, progress to date on key deliverables and noted upcoming deadlines for delivery of project outputs and results.
The Partners responsible for each Work Package outlined progress to date. The consortium had a detailed discussion on the final preparation and presentation of the project learning materials to ensure they could be uploaded to the project website as efficiently as possible and that they would also be engaging and accessible to the target audiences of learners, educators and policy makers.
The meeting was a hybrid meeting, with three partners represented on site in Ireland, and three attending online. For those attending in person, Thursday finished with a guided tour of The Shed Distillery, which is located in the Food Hub. Here, Partners learned about the history of the area, Ireland’s tradition of whiskey making and the relationship the distillery has with local farmers.
Other visits included a ‘walk on water’ on the Acres Lake Floating Boardwalk and along the Shannon Blueway, as well as a visit to Honestly Farm Kitchen in nearby Carrick on Shannon. This organic restaurant was set up by local farmers Liam and Justina Gavin and provides a route to market for several local producers. The business features as one of the Case Studies used in the SMART4Food learning.
