Around 70 persons from practice, administration, NGOs, research joined the seminar of BAB with the topic “Social Innovations in Rural Regions”, celebrated at the Austrian Federal Institute of Agricultural Economics, Rural and Mountain Research in Vienna on 7 November 2019.
The Austrian SIMRA partners BOKU (A. Ludvig, I. Zivojinovic, G. Weiß), ÖAR (R. Lukesch), BAB (S. Egartner, J. Niedermayr, K.Wagner) as well as the operators of the Austrian case study (R. Hoheneder, G. Meyer) presented results of the SIMRA project and experience with social innovations. The focus was especially on the positive effects and the challenges of social innovations.
On the one hand, social innovations need special measures of support to raise their chance of sustainable implementation on the other hand, they influence policy development and force adaptations in policy measures. A mix of bottom up and top down activities is necessary then the social innovations can enrich rural regions and care for new chances for small enterprises.
A second block of presentations, ÖAR (R. Lukesch) und BAB (Th. Dax), covered the topic of the social innovations in the framework of the LEADER or CLLD program. The fruitful discussions gave new hints to support social innovations, which will be integrated in the research reports. Presentations are available below (German only).
Soziale Innovationen im ländlichen Raum
Präsentation der Ergebnisse aus dem Horizon 2020 Projekt SIMRA und der LEADER Evaluierung. Thomas Dax und Theresia Oedl-Wieser