Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CULTURALITY (CULTUral heritage in RurAL remote areas for creative tourism and sustainabilITY)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2024-04-01 al 2025-06-30
The main objective of the CULTURALITY project is to promote and revitalise rural and remote areas through cultural tourism, by leveraging their endogenous potential and rich cultural heritage to create new business models that foster job creation. The project focuses on harnessing both tangible and intangible artisan traditions as assets for sustainable development. To achieve this, CULTURALITY brings together an international network of 13 organisations from 9 countries, combining expertise from diverse fields to address the social, cultural, economic, and environmental challenges of rural and remote regions. It raises awareness of the potential of cultural tourism and empowers local communities as agents of change through training, peer-to-peer learning, and knowledge exchange.
Rural and remote areas across Europe face multiple challenges threatening their cultural identity and heritage. Traditional crafts—key expressions of community knowledge, creativity, and resilience—are rapidly disappearing due to youth outmigration, ageing populations, and the lack of economic opportunities.
CULTURALITY responds by recognising that rural heritage is dynamic, embedded in landscapes, economies, and daily lives. By focusing on crafts and intangible heritage, it aims both to safeguard traditions and to reimagine them for the future. Its approach combines ethnographic research, digital innovation, community participation, and sustainable business modelling to ensure relevance and long-term impact.
The project pursues five main objectives:
- Documentation and analysis: build a comprehensive knowledge base on traditional crafts, artisanal knowledge, and cultural landscapes in selected pilot regions.
- Digital preservation and innovation: use tools such as 3D digitisation, immersive storytelling, and virtual exhibitions to create durable, open-access repositories of cultural heritage.
- Community engagement and co-creation: empower artisans and local communities through participatory workshops, storytelling activities, and Living Labs.
- Knowledge dissemination and visibility: create platforms like the Virtual European Rural Artisans Platform (VERAP) and the Artefact Gallery, supported by an active communication strategy, to reach diverse audiences.
- Economic resilience and sustainability: explore innovative business models and market opportunities for rural crafts, positioning them as drivers of cultural tourism, sustainable development, and green economies.
The pathway to impact integrates these objectives in four steps. First, ethnographic fieldwork ensures a solid knowledge base that keeps artisans’ voices central. Second, digital tools make this heritage accessible and visible at European and international scales. Third, participatory approaches such as Living Labs transform heritage into a living resource with social and economic relevance. Finally, dissemination and exploitation activities guarantee that outputs endure beyond the project’s lifetime, reinforcing policy frameworks and inspiring future initiatives.
By integrating research, technology, and community participation, CULTURALITY is creating a dynamic ecosystem where rural heritage is safeguarded and revalorised as a driver of cultural pride, social cohesion, and sustainable development. This holistic approach ensures lasting cultural, societal, scientific, and economic impacts, strengthening the resilience and attractiveness of rural areas across Europe.
Rural and remote areas across Europe face multiple challenges threatening their cultural identity and heritage. Traditional crafts—key expressions of community knowledge, creativity, and resilience—are rapidly disappearing due to youth outmigration, ageing populations, and the lack of economic opportunities.
CULTURALITY responds by recognising that rural heritage is dynamic, embedded in landscapes, economies, and daily lives. By focusing on crafts and intangible heritage, it aims both to safeguard traditions and to reimagine them for the future. Its approach combines ethnographic research, digital innovation, community participation, and sustainable business modelling to ensure relevance and long-term impact.
The project pursues five main objectives:
- Documentation and analysis: build a comprehensive knowledge base on traditional crafts, artisanal knowledge, and cultural landscapes in selected pilot regions.
- Digital preservation and innovation: use tools such as 3D digitisation, immersive storytelling, and virtual exhibitions to create durable, open-access repositories of cultural heritage.
- Community engagement and co-creation: empower artisans and local communities through participatory workshops, storytelling activities, and Living Labs.
- Knowledge dissemination and visibility: create platforms like the Virtual European Rural Artisans Platform (VERAP) and the Artefact Gallery, supported by an active communication strategy, to reach diverse audiences.
- Economic resilience and sustainability: explore innovative business models and market opportunities for rural crafts, positioning them as drivers of cultural tourism, sustainable development, and green economies.
The pathway to impact integrates these objectives in four steps. First, ethnographic fieldwork ensures a solid knowledge base that keeps artisans’ voices central. Second, digital tools make this heritage accessible and visible at European and international scales. Third, participatory approaches such as Living Labs transform heritage into a living resource with social and economic relevance. Finally, dissemination and exploitation activities guarantee that outputs endure beyond the project’s lifetime, reinforcing policy frameworks and inspiring future initiatives.
By integrating research, technology, and community participation, CULTURALITY is creating a dynamic ecosystem where rural heritage is safeguarded and revalorised as a driver of cultural pride, social cohesion, and sustainable development. This holistic approach ensures lasting cultural, societal, scientific, and economic impacts, strengthening the resilience and attractiveness of rural areas across Europe.
During its first year, CULTURALITY has successfully advanced its objectives of preserving, promoting, and reactivating rural cultural heritage across Europe through a combination of fieldwork, digital innovation, and community engagement. Significant progress has been made in the documentation and analysis of traditional crafts and cultural practices, ensuring the creation of a comprehensive knowledge base that supports both research and local development.
At the same time, the project has invested strongly in digital tools and platforms, most notably the development of the Virtual European Rural Artisans Platform (VERAP), which provides an innovative framework for showcasing cultural landscapes, artisans, and heritage assets. Complementary efforts include the creation of high-quality digital assets through 3D scanning, photography, and audiovisual documentation, now forming part of an expanding Rural Crafting Archive.
CULTURALITY has also strengthened its outreach and visibility. A coherent visual identity and a dynamic project website were established early on, serving as key instruments to disseminate results, engage stakeholders, and ensure open access to the project’s outputs. The launch of initiatives such as the Artefact Gallery, featuring curated contributions from all partners, highlights the collaborative dimension of the project while increasing the visibility of rural craftsmanship at European and international levels.
Through workshops, conferences, and storytelling activities, the project has fostered direct interaction with rural communities, policy makers, cultural heritage institutions, and the research community. These achievements lay a solid foundation for the upcoming phases, where CULTURALITY will continue to expand its impact across cultural, societal, scientific, and economic dimensions.
At the same time, the project has invested strongly in digital tools and platforms, most notably the development of the Virtual European Rural Artisans Platform (VERAP), which provides an innovative framework for showcasing cultural landscapes, artisans, and heritage assets. Complementary efforts include the creation of high-quality digital assets through 3D scanning, photography, and audiovisual documentation, now forming part of an expanding Rural Crafting Archive.
CULTURALITY has also strengthened its outreach and visibility. A coherent visual identity and a dynamic project website were established early on, serving as key instruments to disseminate results, engage stakeholders, and ensure open access to the project’s outputs. The launch of initiatives such as the Artefact Gallery, featuring curated contributions from all partners, highlights the collaborative dimension of the project while increasing the visibility of rural craftsmanship at European and international levels.
Through workshops, conferences, and storytelling activities, the project has fostered direct interaction with rural communities, policy makers, cultural heritage institutions, and the research community. These achievements lay a solid foundation for the upcoming phases, where CULTURALITY will continue to expand its impact across cultural, societal, scientific, and economic dimensions.
CULTURALITY has already delivered results that go beyond the state of the art in several domains. By combining ethnographic research with advanced digital technologies, the project is creating innovative tools such as the Virtual European Rural Artisans Platform (VERAP), immersive digital exhibitions, and new forms of storytelling that integrate tangible and intangible heritage. These initiatives not only preserve fragile cultural practices but also make them widely accessible to diverse audiences, offering a participatory model of heritage management that is both socially inclusive and technologically forward-looking.
Beyond technical achievements, the project is setting a precedent in demonstrating how heritage preservation can be linked to broader societal challenges, such as climate change awareness, rural revitalisation, and sustainable tourism. The integration of cultural landscapes with artisan practices has resulted in a multi-layered framework that can serve as a model for similar initiatives across Europe and beyond.
For further uptake and success, CULTURALITY identifies several key needs: continued investment in digital innovation to scale up and refine tools; demonstration activities that engage artisans, local communities, and policymakers; and support for internationalisation to ensure that the digital platforms and resources developed can reach wider networks, including European and global heritage infrastructures. Access to markets and financial mechanisms will also be critical, particularly for the project’s work on craft-related business models, enabling artisans to translate cultural value into sustainable livelihoods. Finally, ensuring alignment with existing regulatory and standardisation frameworks in areas such as open data, digital preservation, and intellectual property rights will be essential for the long-term usability and impact of the project’s outputs.
Beyond technical achievements, the project is setting a precedent in demonstrating how heritage preservation can be linked to broader societal challenges, such as climate change awareness, rural revitalisation, and sustainable tourism. The integration of cultural landscapes with artisan practices has resulted in a multi-layered framework that can serve as a model for similar initiatives across Europe and beyond.
For further uptake and success, CULTURALITY identifies several key needs: continued investment in digital innovation to scale up and refine tools; demonstration activities that engage artisans, local communities, and policymakers; and support for internationalisation to ensure that the digital platforms and resources developed can reach wider networks, including European and global heritage infrastructures. Access to markets and financial mechanisms will also be critical, particularly for the project’s work on craft-related business models, enabling artisans to translate cultural value into sustainable livelihoods. Finally, ensuring alignment with existing regulatory and standardisation frameworks in areas such as open data, digital preservation, and intellectual property rights will be essential for the long-term usability and impact of the project’s outputs.