RELOCAL is a research project funded under the Horizon 2020 programme, ‘Resituating the Local in Cohesion and Territorial Development’. It is a 4 years project involving 13 partners, coordinated by the university of eastern Finland and covering 12 countries, mainly in the Northern and Eastern parts of the EU. Its budget amounts to €4.9 million. The project examines … [Read more...]
Publications
Social innovation and territorial development
In his contribution to the International Seminar Social Innovation in Public Policies in Brasilia, on 7 and 8 March 2018, Robert Lukesch discusses the essence of social innovation at the micro level and highlights the importance of governance (“the very notion of social innovation requires an institutional environment which is at least not punishing deviating behaviour”. He … [Read more...]
Leadership in place-based development
“The role of leadership in place-based development and building institutional arrangements” is a paper by L. G. Horlings, D. Roep and W. Wellbrock published in Local Economy, the journal of the Local Economic Policy Unit. In various case studies across Europe the vital role of rural place leadership in enabling a place-based approach to local and regional development has … [Read more...]
The future of local development in the EU: Where do you stand?
Already many interesting ideas and proposals are coming out on the future of local development as seen and supported by EU policies and funds. They offer reflections on both the long experience of LEADER (from the days of the ‘community initiatives’ to the mainstreaming of LEADER) and the lessons from the much shorter experience of applying CLLD in rural, urban and coastal … [Read more...]
Social innovation, CLLD and the future of rural development
The debate on the future of EU policies and budgets post-2020 is hotting up. A new policy brief from SIMRA, makes a contribution in the context of the European Commission’s Communication on the Common Agricultural Policy post-2020, “The Future of Food and Farming”. The policy brief stresses that social innovation is a powerful manifestation of the principle of Community Led … [Read more...]
Evaluation of CLLD: concerns raised by local practitioners and a practical response
Practitioners from different countries have been commenting on the new guidelines on the evaluation of LEADER/CLLD. These guidelines, published by the European Evaluation Helpdesk for Rural Development complement the legal requirements relating to LEADER/CLLD evaluations and aim to clarify the common elements related to LEADER/CLLD evaluations and to offer a wider set of … [Read more...]
What does “community led” really mean?
In the 2014-2020 programming period "community-led local development" (CLLD) has become embedded in the terminology all those working on local development. But while we are already starting debating the future of CLLD beyond 2020, there are still uncertainties about the basics of this approach, including what we mean with “community led”. This question was raised at the last … [Read more...]
Towards an inclusive and sustainable CLLD: lessons from neighbourhood management in Berlin
CLLD is more often associated with a rural or fisheries context. In this paper by Pietro Verga deals with ‘urban CLLD’, which builds on experiences, particularly, from the URBAN Initiatives and the LEADER programme. His research is based in Berlin and is within the policy context of the German Soziale Stadt programme (Socially Integrative City, SIC). Fostering both physical … [Read more...]
The Emergence of Social Innovation: A Translocal Perspective
This paper is an output of TRANSIT, an international research project that develops a theory of Transformative Social Innovation that is useful to both research and practice. TRANSIT is co-funded by the European Commission and runs for four years, from 2014 until 2017. The paper investigates how spaces and places play a role in the emergence of (transformative) social … [Read more...]
Circular economy and CLLD
This draft report has been developed as part of LDnet's cooperation with HAWK Göttingen University under Erasmus+. It outlines the main concepts and policy position, presents 20 local examples examples of circular economy experiences in urban, rural and maritime contexts, and discusses the links between the circular and the sharing economy, and the circular economy as a … [Read more...]
EURACADEMY: Resilient Rural Communities
A short participant's report on the 16th EURACADEMY Summer Academy From 4th to 8th September 2017 the 16th Summer Academy of the EURACADEMY Association was held in Midleton, County Cork, Republic of Ireland. Participants from across Europe including Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Scotland, Slovenia, Wales and Armenia worked together with local … [Read more...]
Local development and ‘localism’
The traditional paradigm of local development, of enhancing the development of its own area, has limitations. It is clear that it has positive effects in several areas, where local stakeholders, private and public, have understood that giving added value to local assets and to local resources can improve local areas’ situation and improving the welfare of local people. But, … [Read more...]