Against the backdrop of depopulation and Big Society, citizen initiatives in rural areas are believed to be able to mitigate service-provision inequalities between urban and peripheral regions. Factors influencing the success and failure of such citizen initiatives and their potential in providing solutions to perceived problems have thus far hardly been explored. Our previous work on potential aspects of success and failure indicates that the durability of an initiative does not necessarily define the success of the initiative. Studies have neglected the question of continuity and what will happen when the initiators put down their efforts. In what way do initiators transfer their responsibility and is there a sense of problem ownership?This paper aims to conceptualize factors influencing the continuity of citizen initiatives and provide insight in the processes that take place when initiators stop their activities. Further, the study aims to identify who claims ownership of the issue the initiative focuses on. An inventory of citizen initiatives was made in the three northern provinces of the Netherlands, where rural areas experience depopulation. Questionnaires focusing on how initiatives think about their future, especially when the initiators stop, were sent to around 600 initiatives. The results will add to future research on success and failure of citizen initiatives, but also provide insights for citizen initiatives and ways local governments try to facilitate them.
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A small group of people managing a swimming pool to prevent it from closing, or a group taking care of a next door public green area. These are examples of citizen initiatives and they are becoming more and more prevalent. Citizen initiatives are a way for citizens to organize themselves and take action to arrange those activities that otherwise would not take place but are nevertheless important to them. But how and under which circumstances do these initiatives function? And how is continuity warranted? This research will focus on the continuity and success and failure factors of citizen initiatives in depopulating rural areas.
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The connection between rural tourism and literary tourism, with a particular focus on entrepreneurship practices, lacks a deeper study in its varied intersections and dynamics. This paper considers these relations, within the limits of potentiality and inherent risks, taking as a best practice example a non-profit organization based in the north of Portugal. At stake here are concepts such as literary tourism, rural tourism, lifestyle entrepreneurship and local sustainable development, focusing specifically on the use of local resources, with local impact, to create a differentiated offer in order to target a niche market. Rural tourism entrepreneurship, highly motivated by lifestyle aspirations, born out of literary heritage, can be sustainable and result in innovative products embedded with endogenous resources, with a significant positive socio-economic impact on the local community.
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Erasmus project about training cultural workers for facilitating rural youths culture
Agriculture; Macro-Micro-Macro perspective; Public goods and Public bads; Collective action; Commons; Opposite concerns; Farmers and Peasants; Anthropology
Circular BIOmass CAScade to 100% North Sea Region (NSR) economic activity and growth are mostly found in urban areas. Rural NSR regions experience population decline and negative economic growth. The BIOCAS project expects revitalizing and greening of rural areas go hand in hand. BIOCAS will develop rural areas of the NSR into smart specialized regions for integrated and local valorization of biomass. 13 Commercial running Bio-Cascade-Alliances (BCA’s) will be piloted, evaluated and actively shared in the involved regions. These proven concepts will accelerate adoption of high to low value bio-cascading technologies and businesses in rural regions. The project connects 18 regional initiatives around technologies, processes, businesses for the conversion of biomass streams. The initiatives collaborate in a thematic approach: Through engineering, value chain assessments, BCA’s building, partners tackle challenges that are shared by rural areas. I.e. unsustainable biomass use, a mineral surplus and soil degradation, deprivation of potentially valuable resources, and limited involvement of regional businesses and SMEs in existing bio-economy developments. The 18 partners are strongly embedded in regional settings, connected to many local partners. They will align stakeholders in BCA’s that would not have cooperated without BIOCAS interventions. Triple helix, science, business and governmental input will realize inclusive lasting bio cascade businesses, transforming costly waste to resources and viable business.Interreg IVB North Sea Region Programme: €378,520.00, fEC % 50.00%1/07/17 → 30/06/21
