LDnet’s ‘discuss and debate’ session at the RSA conference in Ljubljana

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic this event has been cancelled. The next RSA Annual Conference will be in Florence, 25-28 May 2021. Then, the 2022 Annual Conference will be in Ljubljana.

Elena Pisani and Stefan Kah LDnet are joining Urszula Budzich-Tabor and Robert Lukesch as speakers at the ‘discuss and debate’ session that LDnet is organising on 19 June 2020 at the 2020 RSA Annual Conference in Ljubljana, on the theme of ‘Researchers and practitioners working together to evaluate territorial instruments’. 

Following two ‘special sessions’ at RSA conferences aiming to strengthen the links between research and practice in local development (in June 2018 in Lugano and June 2019 in Santiago de Compostela), LDnet is proposing a new challenge to the research community: a special session on evaluating territorial instruments, in particular Community-Led Local Development (CLLD).

As the current period of EU cohesion policy is coming to an end, evaluating what has been achieved and demonstrating impacts becomes a priority, especially since CLLD and other territorial instruments are expected to continue to play an important role in the EU cohesion policy 2021-2027. For example, assessing the achievements of over 3000 local CLLD strategies implemented across the EU in 2014-2020 requires close cooperation between policy makers, local development practitioners and researchers.

The discussion at the special session will start with a few examples of on-going and past evaluation exercises and studies looking at the results and impacts of territorial instruments. The potential of these instruments contributing to the new European Commission’s priorities (e.g. the European Green Deal, the new push for European democracy…) will be discussed, and proposals for joint activities between practitioners and researchers will be explored.

Speakers:

– Robert Lukesch, CLLD expert and evaluator, LDnet board member

– Urszula Budzich-Tabor, LDnet President and CLLD expert

– Elena Pisani, University of Padova

– Stefan Kah, EPRC, LDnet member

Following the experience of 2019, this session will be linked with the special session focusing on CLLD as an instrument to address fragile territories proposed by Loris Servillo: click on SS42 for more information.