LDnet

Local Development Network

LDnet: a community of experts building bridges between research and practice

Local development is multi-faceted with practitioners split between the urban and rural domains, while researchers come from different academic disciplines. A community of experts dealing with local development could help harvest lessons learnt and overcome silo mentality. LDnet and the European Commission are very keen on building bridges between research and practice and on making […]

Highlights from the LEADER/CLLD 2019 Conference

ELARD and the Portuguese LEADER network Minha Terra have organised the last gathering under the Portuguese Presidency of Maria João Botelho in the beautiful town of Amarante in Northern Portugal, hosted by the LAG Dolmen. The workshop on 25.11.2020 served as an exchange platform to discuss the state of play in the member countries and […]

Implementing CLLD in the EU: Experiences so far

At the LEADER/CLLD 2019 Conference, organised by ELARD and the Portuguese LEADER network Minha Terra, Loris Servillo and Stefan Kah presented a thorough study on the implementation of multifund-CLLD across EU member states and regions. The revised version of the report (January 2020) is available here.  

LDnet 2020: State of Play in Local Development and much more …

Following on from our general assembly, we are going ahead with a number of new initiatives. We are planning a workshop on Social innovation and local development: linking urban and rural approaches. It will take place in 20 February 2020 in Brussels, on the conclusion of the SIMRA conference. Peter Ramsden will lead from the […]

A lively debate on ‘Capitalising on diversity in local development’ at EWRC2019

On 9 October 2019, as part of EWRC2019, LDnet, organised a workshop  in partnership with ELARD on ‘Capitalising on diversity in local development’ under the theme ‘A Europe Closer to Citizen’. The workshop aimed at demonstrating that bottom-up approaches to local development, like CLLD, have succeeded in engaging ‘Unusual Suspects’; people left out of mainstream […]

The LEADER Approach and Social Innovation in Rural Areas – a Liaison?

R. Lukesch, H. Gassler, B. Ecker, L. Fidlschuster, M. Fischer, S. Mair, S. Philipp, N. Said[1] Abstract –The research project SILEA aimed at exploring the significance, extent and possible effects of Social Innovation in the framework of the LEADER Measure of the Austrian Rural Development Program 2014-20. The study leaned onto a complex mix of […]

LDnet General Assembly: New initiatives for 2019-2020

This year’s general assembly of the LDnet association took place on Tuesday 8 October 2019 in Brussels, with teleconferencing facilities allowing members and friends not present in Brussels to participate remotely. In addition to the normal business of the general assembly, there was a wide-ranging debate covering several topics led by colleagues, including: Building bridges […]

Resilient Villages: “Vibrant rural communities are not afraid to take risks”

In his current research, LDnet board member, Alistair Adam-Hernández examines why some rural communities are able to adapt to change better than others. During the European Rural Sociology Conference 2019, “Rural Futures in a Complex World” in Trondheim (NO), an international group of social scientists discussed how this concept could enable rural communities to harness […]

Debating CLLD as experimental governance and task-specific space for policy action

The Community-Led Local Development (CLLD) instrument is one of the most interesting “territorial delivery mechanisms” of the current EU 2014-2020 programming period. Built on the former LEADER project, it attempts to overcome the sectorial (rural or maritime) approach of the previous instrument through a more integrated local-development policy agenda for ad-hoc sub-regional and urban areas. […]