Tourism and cultural heritage are two strong vectors of local development, which was explained at length during a session of the European Week of Cities and Regions 2018. The European Commission, a Greek regional authority and a social entrepreneur participated in this session to share their experiences and the solutions they try to implement each at their own scale.
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Welcome back to SIMRA’s newsletter, where you will discover plenty of examples of social innovation from throughout Europe, whether through the researcher’s perspective with the example of refugee inclusion in Norway, or through the eye of local implementers with our new brochures on the Balkans and mountain areas.
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What’s the perfect recipe for a successful Rural Hackathon? Here are the secrets to a memorable experience: the Rural Hackathon “SIparte”, held on the 4th and 5th October 2018 in Feltre (northeastern Italy).
Ingredients: a beautiful, lively historical building, six teams – 24 future entrepreneurs – that aim to value and contribute to the local development of their territory in the province of Belluno, a group of experts to mentor them, the warmth of the sun, fresh mountain air, and great food.
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The social innovation research conducted under the Horizon 2020 project SIMRA – standing for Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas – is coordinated by the James Hutton Institute, complementary to the delivery of the ecosystem services based social innovation research for Scotland, carried out under the Scottish Government Strategic Research Programme. The research on social innovation in rural areas has seen some broad media coverage in recent months with its recognition at an international level due to the organisation of sessions in several conferences.
In early September a group of SIMRA researchers participated at the International Social Innovation Research Conference 2018, which was held in Heidelberg, Germany, where findings and advances within SIMRA were discussed with international experts in the field.
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Why do we have in the Teleno mountain, our land and natural resources, a Heritage that allows us to live, work and enjoy a great quality of life?
For thousands of years in the foothills of Monte Teleno, the highest peak of the Montes de León in Spain (2,188m), men and women have lived and coexisted in harmony with a natural environment that allowed them to eat, live and develop taking advantage of the nearest resources. Hunting, fishing, fertile land with wild edible species and even autochthonous pine forests have guaranteed the permanence of the human being in the Teleno Mountains area, although in the 21st century we talk about the fact that the human being is almost “in danger of extinction” in many rural territories of our country.
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SIMRA’s fourth brochure collecting examples of social innovation in marginalised rural areas has just been published. This collection of brochures aims at concretely illustrating social innovation through the presentation of local on-going initiatives throughout Europe and the Mediterranean basin, taking turns addressing different marginalized rural areas. This brochure addresses mountain areas.