MEDIA ADVISORY, 12 March 2014

BREMEN, GERMANY – European Mayors and other regional and city leaders are expressing commitment to scientific culture by signing the PLACES Declaration – a document based on the four years of dynamic work emerging from the PLACES project at the PLACES of Scientific Culture conference. Mayors and local officials from over 30 cities including Cologne, Germany, Dublin, Ireland, Granada, Spain, Jerusalem, Israel, Toulouse, France, Turin, Italy, Vienna, Austria and Warsaw, Poland, have already signed the Declaration and additional policymakers will take part in a signing ceremony today at 12:15 pm CET.

A press conference on the impact of PLACES (10:30 am CET) will feature Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission, Antonio Gomes da Costa, PLACES Coordinator, and City Partnership representatives from PLACES cities, including: Nottingham, UK, Wroclaw, Poland, Perugia, Italy and Glasgow, Scotland.

Outcomes from the four-year European-funded PLACES project are being presented and put into local, regional and European contexts at the conference. Three hundred European cities and regions drawn from 40 countries have gathered for the event.

The conference is funded by the European Commission and co-convened by the European Science Events Association (Eusea) and Ecsite, the European network of science centres and museums, which is the leading partner of the PLACES project.

For more information about the conference, including a full online programme, visit: www.openplaces.eu/conference. For information and resources about the PLACES project, visit the Press page: www.openplaces.eu/conference/press