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.Continue reading
Jana Al Ayadi, a cooperative of rural women, moving from traditional to modern production, introducing the way for a healthier, natural food. It only takes special people to cook, unique women to innovate.Continue reading
In September, CTFC and FORECO hosted an event for the SIMRA project in which local actors had the chance to explain their experiences and discuss how to best implement initiatives that work in rural settings. Carmen Rodríguez reflects on the process.Continue reading
A new SIMRA brochure “From science to social innovation: connecting forests and people” aims at showcasing the diversity of social innovations based upon case studies associated with forestry. These results are extracted from the 2019 Special Issue of the scientific journal Forest Policy and Economics “‘Social Innovation to Increase the Well-Being of Forest-Dependent Communities and Promote Sustainability in Remote Rural Areas”.Continue reading
In rural areas, in particular in the most remote ones, bistros and cafes are places for local communities to meet but most of them also provide services and organise cultural events. The French government announced in September new measures to be implemented within its rural agenda, including the support to local shops and bistros. Starting such an activity from scratch is however far from being easy. A practice guide, produced by the Network of Natural Parks of Massif Central, gives you all the keys for success to build a vibrant place for a territory and its inhabitants.Continue reading
On May 23rd and 24th, 2019, the Italian region of Valle d’Aosta hosted a conference on “Smart Villages – a common perspective through different visions” in the Alps.Continue reading
The XXVIII European Society for Rural Sociology Congress took place in June in Trondheim (Norway), and SIMRA was very present with the coordination of a Working Group, a dedicated session, and several presentations by a group of members of the team.
Diana Valero (Perth College-UHI) was the leading convenor of the WG 11 – ‘Social innovation and social farming as drivers of transformations and changes in rural areas’. The WG aimed to explore the understanding of social innovation in general and social farming in particular as drivers of rural change: from examining how concrete examples of social innovation transform social practices in agriculture, forestry, and rural development to discussing the deeper meanings that those changes may have in different socio-cultural contexts. With 5 sessions and more than 20 proposals, the participation in the WG was remarkably successful, which indicates the interest that social innovation and social farming are raising in rural studies.
The first session of the WG was exclusively dedicated to SIMRA, starting with a general presentation of the project by Diana Valero, which was followed by presentations on different research themes developed by the partnership. Kamini Vicentini (University of Padova) talked about the development of the evaluation framework, which raised lots of interest from the audience. Alice Ludvig (BOKU) talked about policies for social innovation and drew on examples from social farming. And finally, Diana Valero spoke about the diversity of social innovation in rural areas and presented results of the latest analysis conductedon the examples in the SIMRA database of examples of social innovation.
The rest of the working sessions were dedicated to other approaches to social innovation in rural areas, and the participants had the opportunity to hear from other H2020 projects working on related topics. Different perspectives ofsocial farming were the mainfocus of discussionin the last sessions of the WG. Verena Gramm (EURAC) presented results from the SIMRA Case Study ‘Learning-Growing-Living with women farmers in South Tyrol, reflecting on the impacts of this social innovation in the wellbeing of women farmers.
Also, our colleague Manfred Perlik (University of Berne) gave a presentation in WG 30 about social innovations in mountain areas hosting refugees drawing on work also developed in SIMRA.
The work done in WG11 triggered the development of interesting discussions and reflections on the role of social innovation and social farming as drivers of transformation in rural areas and how it can be incentivised and monitored. In particular, a fruitful dialogue was established with the group of experts co-convening the group and who are focused on studying the development of social farming in Poland. The cooperation and dialogue established between SIMRA and other researchers working on similar topics in diverse geographies enriches the work developed in SIMRA and enhances the knowledge exchange in this field and ultimately contributes to the development of social innovation in rural Europe.
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On June 25, 2019, the Care-T-Farms project organised a conference in Brussels on “Social Agriculture and Care Farm: Work opportunity, Social Partnership and Inclusion”. Care-T-Farms is an Erasmus + programme, encouraging the use of farms as places promoting positive mental and physical health and wellbeing.Continue reading
One of the main objectives of the SIMRA project is to create collaboration and learning opportunities where local stakeholders (communities, researchers, businesses) can work together towards the implementation of social innovations, which could leave a lasting legacy in the area where they are taking place. SIMRA calls these project-supported initiatives “Innovation Actions“. Find out more about the methodology, our7 pilot Innovation Actions, and their results in this special newsletter.Continue reading
SIMRA partners and members of the Scientific Advisory Board gathered in Athens from 10th to 12th June 2019 for a productive annual project meeting and the third General Assembly, hosted by the ICRE8 research centre.
With less than one year left until the end of the project, partners focused on the steps needed to finalise the tools they created. These included a set of indicators to evaluate social innovation in rural areas, the analysis of the data collected in the case studies and Innovation Actions, and the emerging policy recommendations to be included in SIMRA’s policy and practice guides.Continue reading