inshore fishing – Greenwich Maritime Centre

FREE Conference Places – Food, Fisheries and Tourism: New Opportunities for Sustainable Development

INVITATION

The INTERREG 2 Seas Programme Authorities and the TourFish (Tourism for Food, Inshore Fishing and Sustainability) cluster partners have the pleasure of inviting you to:

Food, Fisheries and Tourism: New Opportunities for Sustainable Development

This two-day European event on 23^rd and 24^th June 2014 will focus on how agro-food, fisheries and responsible tourism can work together to deliver new opportunities for sustainable development along the coast and in the towns and countryside in the 2 Seas area.

Are you are a producer (farmer or fisher), tourism professional or provider, a planner or an educationalist? Would you like to learn more about new opportunities for sustainable development by bringing together food, fisheries and responsible tourism? Would you like to share your experiences and ideas with others who could work with you to develop a sustainable future for all three sectors?

If so, then do not miss this opportunity!

Programme

Day One: Monday 23^rd June 2014, 10:00 – 17:30

Registration will be followed by the following activities:

Indoor and outdoor TourFish photographic exhibition
A guided tour of the working fishing beach
Fishmongery and Hawking educational session
Chef demonstrations

Welcome and Introduction to TourFish

The GIFS Project

The Fish & Chip Project

Keynote Address – Responsible Tourism, Sense of Place and Local Economic Development, Professor Harold Goodwin, Manchester Metropolitan University and Director of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism

Session 1 Boosting your regional identity: Discover how regional branding can stimulate regional development, entrepreneurship and innovation – led by Vlaams Huis van de Voeding (Flanders House of Food)

Session 2 The Taste of Place: A curious journey to the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands – led by the Municipality of Middelburg with Dr Gerard van Keken

Day One will conclude with a networking reception.

Day Two: Tuesday 24^th June 2014, 09:30 – 15:00

Keynote Address Clare Devereux, Food Matters

Session 3 Fish, Food and Festivals: Responsible tourism and fishing- led community regeneration – led by Sidmouth Trawlers, Hastings Fishermen’s Protection Society and University of Brighton

Session 4 Education, fish and food: Raising awareness of food, sustainability and responsible tourism– led by University of Brighton, Hastings Fishermen’s Protection Society, Flanders House of Food and Nausicaa

Session 5 From Catch to Plate & Plough to Plate: Sustainable seafood and local land products for today and tomorrow– led by Nausicaa and Taste South East

Conclusion: Interactive conference summary

This conference will be translated into French and Dutch

Delegates are also invited to attend the Hastings Mid-Summer Fish-Fest on the weekend of 21^st-22^nd June and will also receive a FREE ticket to a folk concert on the evening of Sunday 22^nd June at St Mary in the Castle, Hastings. Please see our website for more details.

General Information

Conference Venue

St Mary in the Castle

7 Pelham Crescent

Hastings

East Sussex TN34 3AF

England

Registration

Free Registration at www.gre.ac.uk/gmi/tourfish

For more information please contact:

TourFish Communications Team

University of Greenwich

Tourfish@gre.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)20 8331 7688

EU Maritime Day Public Seminar – People, Place and Fish: towards understanding the importance of inshore fishing to communities in the English Channel and southern North Sea

ABSTRACT
Fishing is important not just for economic livelihoods, but plays an important socio-cultural role in terms of heritage, sense of place, local identity and social cohesion. This presentation will report on work carried out in two EU Interreg funded projects GIFS (Geography of inshore fishing and sustainability) and CHARM III (Channel Integrated Approach for Marine Resource Management). In CHARM III sense of place was used as a framework to explore the cultural ecosystem services that marine fishing provides. In the GIFS project this work has been developed. Firstly, through a survey across fishing places in southern/eastern England, northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands, where people’s attachments to fishing places will be measured. Secondly, community, researcher and professional photography will be used to understand the diverse landscapes of fishing across the region and how these landscapes are shaping the practice of fishing and the character of those places. Alongside this sense of place research GIFS is now addressing numerous other ways that the importance of marine fishing can be felt in coastal communities. This presentation will include report on the role of women in fisheries and their contribution to the social cohesion of coastal communities focusing in particular on three countries: Belgium, England and the Netherlands.

Presented by Dr Tim Acott, Dr Julie Urquhart (School of Science) and Dr Minghua Zhao (Greenwich Maritime Institute), University of Greenwich

VENUE: Royal George Room (180), Queen Anne Court, University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London, SE10 9LS

TIME: 18:00

DATE: Monday 20th May 2013

There will be time for questions and answers and a drinks reception will follow.

FURTHER ENQUIRIES & BOOKINGS
Places are free but please book a place in advance by contacting:
Greenwich Maritime Institute, University of Greenwich
Email: (gmi@gre.ac.uk) Tel: 020 8331 7688

For more information about the London Universities Maritime Law and Policy Research Group please see our website: http://tinyurl.com/c73bs2w

The European Maritime Day is celebrated annually across Europe on 20 May.
It shows the importance of the sea and oceans for everyday life, both in coastal communities and in landlocked areas across Europe. It also highlights the opportunities and challenges currently facing maritime regions and sectors.

Public Lecture on Marine Fishing, 28th March 2012

The importance of the marine fishing industry to English and French coastal communities is the subject of a free public lecture at the University of Greenwich’s Medway Campus on 28 March.

The lecture will examine the social and cultural importance of marine fishing to coastal communities along the English Channel. Audio recordings and photographs will be used to provide a colourful glimpse of the contribution that marine fishing makes to the identity of coastal places.

People, plaice and chips: Marine fishing and coastal communities along the English Channel will be presented by two academics from the university’s School of Science: Dr Tim Acott, Principal Lecturer in Environmental Geography, and Dr Julie Urquhart, Research Fellow. Both are involved in the English-French collaborative project CHARM (Channel Integrated Approach to Marine Resource Management), co-funded by the INTERREG 4a Channel Programme.

The pair are also leading a €4.6 million project, called the Geography of Inshore Fishing and Sustainability (co-funded by the INTERREG 4a 2 Seas Programme), exploring the social, cultural and economic importance of marine fishing for the development of sustainable coastal communities.

Dr Acott says: “Many coastal communities have strong links to fishing that span generations and fishing is a way of life that goes beyond the means to earning a living. Fishing’s influence is not confined to those activities that take place at sea, but spills over onto land to create a particular identity and sense of place in coastal towns inherently linked to fishing.

“Many people enjoy the spectacle of fishing while on holiday, the bright boats, the atmosphere of a real fishing place and the heritage taking us back to simpler times when villages and towns grew up on the back of the fishing industry.”

Last year the University of Greenwich hosted a major international conference about the cultural and social impacts of marine fishing on coastal communities, titled It’s Not Just About The Fish.

The lecture takes place in the Pembroke Building, Medway Campus, at 6.30pm and will be followed by light refreshments. If you would like to attend, please email science-public-lectures@gre.ac.uk and register your name.

For more details on the School of Science’s conferences and events, please visit www.gre.ac.uk/about/schools/science/about/events

University of Greenwich leads €4.6 million project to help regenerate fishing communities

Researchers at the University of Greenwich are leading a €4.6 million project helping to regenerate coastal fishing communities on both sides of the English Channel and the southern North Sea.

Focussing on towns and villages with traditional small scale fishing fleets, they will look at the ways local inshore fishing contributes to the identity of places and their communities, as well as seeking new sustainable opportunities to boost regeneration and economic growth.

The University of Greenwich team is headed by environmental geographers Dr Tim Acott and Dr Julie Urquhart, from the School of Science and social scientist Dr Minghua Zhao from the Greenwich Maritime Institute. They joined forces with research colleagues in France and Flanders to secure co-funding from the European Interreg IVa 2 Seas programme for the three-year project, Geography of Inshore Fishing and Sustainability.

Dr Urquhart says: “Inshore marine fishing is at the heart of so many places, whether they have just a few small fishing boats pulled up on a shingle beach or a harbour that is the centre of activity for a larger fishing fleet.

“You cannot think about places like Whitstable, Brixham or Newlyn without recalling fishing and local seafood. Inshore marine fishing is central to their identity as communities and places.”

The project was one of just 12 successful bids out of a total of 49 applications to the most recent European Regional Development Fund 2 Seas cross-border programme.

Project leader Dr Acott says: “We will be building on valuable research we have already been doing in fishing communities.

“Working with researchers in France and Flanders gives us a cross-cultural perspective and opportunities to share ideas and solutions to common problems – not least how the sense of identity within fishing communities can make a significant contribution to regeneration and sustainable economic growth.

“Our findings will help to provide the information people need to develop new activities on the ground to regenerate their communities and feed into policy decisions which will ensure a sustainable future. We are hoping to help to create a sense of shared identity in fishing places across the region.”

Plans include photographic exhibitions exploring life in fishing communities and a demonstration project of fishing heritage-led regeneration at the fishing village of Arnemuiden, in The Netherlands.

For further information contact Project Manager, Suzanne Louail. s.louail@gre.ac.uk