Two Azoreans are among the 100 most creative European youngsters that will participate next April, in Brussels, in the Forum about Europe's Creative Regions and Municipalities.

The Forum will gather creative youngsters from 27 Member-States of the European Union. The Azoreans Rodolfo Botelho Vieira, 28 years old, and Maria Beatriz Oliveira, 24 years old, were selected to attend the Forum.

Rodolfo Botelho Vieira, violinist, is presently concluding his Doctor of Philosophy at Northwestern University in Chicago and Maria Beatriz Oliveira, who holds a BA by the Escola Superior de Dança in Lisbon, is an accomplished choreographer of modern dance.

The Forum is Scheduled for the 20-21 April and it is a part of the celebrations of the European Year for Innovation and Creativity. Its aim is to highlight the contributions of European regions and municipalities in this domain by judiciously choosing European youngsters from the regions that are creative and innovative.

The two Azorean creatives were chosen from a pool of 267 applications that were submitted to the EU Committee for the Regions and are part of a restricted group of European youngsters that in this event will be able to exchange experiences in the domains of art, culture, science, research, innovation, development, urban creativity and social innovations.

Their application to the Forum was promoted by the Regional Government of the Azores as a way of demonstrating, at the European level, the capacities and excellence of Azorean youngsters, much like their European counterparts.

With this in mind, the Regional Secretary for the Presidency, André Bradford, expressed the satisfaction of the Regional Government for the recognition of the potential of these two Azoreans and said that "it is once again demonstrated that Azorean youth today has the capacities, resources and means to achieve national and  international notoriety and that it does not have to fear comparisons with other cases that once seemed incomparable or unattainable."