VERVE · co-creative Visioning procEsses for tRansformative social innoVation in rural arEas
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-09-01 → 2025-01-31
- EU contribution
- €183,473
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
co-creative Visioning procEsses for tRansformative social innoVation in rural arEas
VERVE, an acronym for "Co-creative visioning processes for transformative social innovation in rural areas" (September 2022 - January 2025), is a participatory action-research project dedicated to European rural regions, with a specific study area in the Italian North-Eastern Prealps. Key partners in the project included the Fondazione G. Angelini – Centro Studi sulla Montagna and the Local Action Group GAL Prealpi e Dolomiti, organizations operating within the case study area. VERVE’s primary objective is to explore and facilitate transformative social innovation (TSI) by working with local communities, to imagine and build regenerative future visions. Recognizing the urgent need for transformative change, VERVE aims to move away from unsustainable ways of living and create futures where people's well-being and the health of the environment go hand-in-hand. To achieve this, it develops and uses creative and visual methods, empowering diverse groups of people to actively participate in shaping their future. VERVE looks at new ways to think about and implement cultural and societal shifts that address complex sustainability issues. By focusing on people's values, beliefs, and worldviews—the "inner dimensions" of change—through collaborative visioning, it challenges the idea that humans are separate from nature and bridges the gap between theoretical understandings and practical applications of transformative change. Addressing the complex socio-ecological challenges faced by marginalized rural communities, VERVE highlights the importance of sustainable development and protecting the diversity of nature and culture (i.e. “biocultural diversity”), which helps build stronger, more resilient societies. The project pursued its overall goal through four key objectives: developing the theory behind transformative social innovation, creating practical methods for collaborative visioning, using evidence to guide practice, and fostering learning for scientists, practitioners, and the community. The outcomes of this project hold significant relevance for key European Union policy initiatives, particularly the EU Rural Vision 2040, the European Green Deal, and EU Social Cohesion policy.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
VERVE aims to explore and enable transformative social innovation (TSI) in European rural areas. Transformative change is urgently needed to break free of unsustainable development paradigms and to build regenerative futures where both socio-economic wellbeing and ecosystem health can thrive. To address this challenge, VERVE seeks to: 1) develop a transdisciplinary framework that broadens the concept of TSI to incorporate place-based socio-ecological regeneration; 2) prototype and test a novel methodology for co-creative place-based visioning, to shape future regenerative pathways for local governance processes. VERVE employs an action-oriented approach, engaging multi-sectoral and multi-level stakeholders, and empowering youth and women. It does so in partnership with a Local Action Group (LAG), a bridging organization acting as a social innovation catalyst in the case study area. This, like many rural areas, faces pressing sustainability challenges, while showing potential for innovative bottom-up experimentation. VERVE yields impacts at multiple dimensions: it activates synergies across different scientific disciplines (e.g. political science, rural sociology, human geography, future studies) and develops cutting-edge visual and arts-based techniques for sustainability science; it fosters community deep learning through inclusive deliberation and co-creation of solutions; it supports locally-led innovation pathways, empowering key players (i.e. LAGs) with new collaborative tools and sustainability narratives; it provides empirical insights and a portfolio of instruments on TSI (papers, toolkit, policy brief), contributing to the relevance and effectiveness of EU policies (e.g. CAP, Green Deal, Social Cohesion). VERVE matches the fellow’s experience in action-oriented place-based sustainability approaches with the host’s expertise in social innovation and rural governance (UNIPD), and with the secondment host’s excellence in transdisciplinary research (UBERN).
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA · PadovaCoordinatorItaly
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union