2024 North Atlantic Forum

Welcome to the 2024 North Atlantic Forum!

Date: 17 - 21 June 2024

Location: Letterfrack, County Galway, Ireland

For the first time, the North Atlantic Forum (NAF) bi-annual international conference will take place in Connemara, Ireland from June 17th to 21st, 2024. Founded in 1998, the vision of NAF (https://northatlanticforum.org) is to support the improvement of public policy and practices; focusing on sustainable rural regional development, place-based identity, cultural development, and the resilience of North Atlantic islands and coastal regions.

The North Atlantic Forum is a “collegial assembly” which builds on a network established by the North Atlantic Islands Program at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. It remains an informal network of researchers, regional policy-makers, and practitioners from the North Atlantic region who share research and best practices and support community, business, and government exchanges across the North Atlantic region for increased collaboration and partnerships.

The biennial conference provides the main networking event and focal point of communication for the extensive NAF network. The conference has been hosted in various North Atlantic regions such as Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada, Hólar, Iceland, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, Bornholm, Denmark, Shetland Islands, Scotland, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, and others.

Besides the participation of policy advisers, practitioners, and researchers from Ireland, these highly participatory conferences have drawn international contributors. The event features a combination of inspiring presentations on new development policy initiatives, new and on-going research, as well as a rich array of development practices. These conferences always have a very strong applied focus, and the conference programme, developed by a local planning committee includes a number of community tours and other in-field events. These hands-on experiences provide an opportunity to explore how communities and regions advance solutions to address local issues, and to compare and share parallel experiences from other development contexts.

The multi-day conference provide a very rich and highly resourced hands-on experience for policy makers, practitioners, community organisations and activists, social enterprises and local businesses, students, researchers, and others. Conference outcomes usually include a book, other publications, a rich wave of practitioner sharing and networking, student projects, and other initiatives.