Talent North - Attracting and Anchoring Global Talent in the Arctic

The Arctic region faces a common territorial challenge of stagnating or declining populations juxtaposed with growing economic sectors, leading to a critical shortage of skilled labour and as well as a mismatch of skills and demand. This mismatch threatens the sustainable development, well-being, and competitiveness of the region. While initiatives exist to address parts of this issue, a fragmented approach often limits their impact.

The TalentNorth project tackles this challenge by creating a cohesive, cross-border concept and network for talent attraction and retention. Our approach is novel in its focus on building a unified Arctic concept for talent, moving beyond national and institutional silos in building educational, training and marketing activities. The project will develop and implement a joint model that integrates the efforts of universities, municipalities, and regional agencies across the borders. This multiactor model and cross-border collaboration builds directly on available knowledge and ongoing initiatives, such as the insights from the small-scale project StayInNorth, the broader AURC-initiative, the Arctic Mayors Forum, and is an upscaling of the strong Arctic Six collaboration and Arctic Six Extended initiative.

TalentNorth distinguishes itself by focusing specifically on creating a sustainable, operational structure and concrete tools for cross-border collaboration, ensuring that efforts to attract talent and develop education and training are not isolated but part of a coordinated, knowledge-based and demand-based long-term strategy. By leveraging the combined strengths and learnings of the partnership, the project aims to transform the current ad-hoc efforts into a systematic and durable framework for developing educational, training and marketing activities and lifelong learning for securing a skilled workforce in the North.

The project is coordinated by Luleå University of Technology. Geography Resech Unit leads the work package 1 Diagnosis and readiness mapping. The work package activities generate evidence-based knowledge and shared understanding of the skills needs and existing talent attraction and retainment practices in the Aurora region. The research activities include a cross-border baseline study, focus groups and surveys, and stakeholder workshops, creating a foundational knowledge base for targeted action.