The deadline for bidding for the first annual European Region of Gastronomy award closed on Monday 19 January 2015. The shortlisted regions will be announced on Friday 6 February 2015 at 11:00am, during a public presentation of their candidate proposals at the Palacete Villa Moraes in Ponte de Lima, in the Portuguese region of Minho.
The shortlisted regions will then be selected by a jury chaired by Professor Greg Richards, who has championed the award since its conception with fellow European experts Diane Dodd and Robert Palmer. The regulations for the award have been developed as bottom-up initiative with nine European regions working together over the past year and a half to design the concept. Representatives from the nine founding member regions – Minho (Portugal); North East Brabant (Netherlands); Aarhus/Central Region Denmark; Marseille Provence (France); Riga/Gauja Region (Latvia); Malta; Sibiu/Transylvania (Romania); Catalonia (Spain) and Lombardy (Italy), along with the operative body for the award – the International Institute of Gastronomy, Culture, Arts and Tourism (IGCAT), will also meet in Minho and be present for the press conference.
The European Region of Gastronomy award will be officially launched in May 2015, with the selection and announcement of the final winning regions. ‘We are hugely excited by the interest in the European Region of Gastronomy award and by the quality of the candidacies’, said Prof. Richards, ‘this confirms the demand for such an initiative within Europe’, he added.
The award seeks to link food, tourism, culture, identity, health and sustainability to support regional development, whether at an economic, social, environmental or cultural level. It will be bestowed each year to a European region which combines innovation and sustainability to local culinary and cultural identity. For more information and to find out how to bid for the 2017 award, please visit: europeanregionofgastronomy.org