The Highland Council showed the rest of Europe that they too are ready to “play the game”.

On Thursday the 23rd of April in Brussels they received the Display® Towards Class A award. The 2009 awards were presented at the Gala dinner of the Energie-Cités and Climate Alliance conference titled “3x20 – Play the Game”. More than 300 delegates from local authorities all over Europe were present to see the winners receive their awards. First prize winners, Highland Council convinced the jury with their intensive internal communication, strong external promotional activities and effective marketing strategy that allowed for the involvement of a wide variety of citizens’ groups. The second and third prizes went to Pamplona (Spain) and Lviv (Ukraine) respectively. This year’s first prize is the ecoDriverTM sustainability information management system that captures sustainability data and presents performance information in a variety of ways, for different audiences. Vincent Berutto, representing the European Commission’s EACI agency, was at hand to congratulate the winners and present them with their prizes and Anna Jaskula as representative of the award jury underlined the excellent quality of all applications received and encouraged the Display team to give the activities of the winning cities a high visibility.

The Display “TCA” Award is open to all municipalities and local authorities throughout Europe and in 2010 will be open to private sector companies. The Award recognises best municipal communication activities and will raise the awareness of building users about energy and water consumption, as well as the CO2 emissions.

The next call for applications will be in late 2009 and the information will be available on www.display-campaign.org.