European priorities
Development of rural and remote areas is a strategic priority for the EU, as can be seen from the the European Commission’s long-term Vision for the EU’s Rural Areas (2021). The vision recognises that many rural and remote areas suffer from problems such as an ageing population, out-migration, poor skills, and low incomes – but at the same time these areas are also rich in cultural heritage. In line with the Commission’s strategy for making tourism more sustainable (2022), cultural and creative tourism is seen as a possible means to address the challenges of rural and remote areas. This resulted in a topic within the Horizon Europe programme, Fostering socio-economic development and job creation in rural and remote areas through cultural tourism (HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-01-05) which also put particular emphasis on the importance cross-border collaboration and the possible role of the four EU macro-regions. CROCUS is funded on the basis of this call for project proposals.
Coordinator
AALBORG UNIVERSITET
Denmark
Participants
ASSOCIATION FOR TOURISM AND LEISURE EDUCATION
Netherlands
UNIVERZA V MARIBORU
Slovenia
OULUN YLIOPISTO
Finland
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI BERGAMO
Italy
IZSLEDOVATELSKI INSTITUT V ZANGADOR
Bulgaria
SVEUCILISTE U RIJECI, FAKULTET ZA MENADZMENT U TURIZMU I UGOSTITELJSTVU
Croatia
TALLINN UNIVERSITY
Estonia
Partners
PANNON EGYETEM - UNIVERSITY OF PANNONIA
Hungary
GROUP NAO
Denmark
CROCUS: Why and how?
CROCUS argues that if cultural and creative tourism are to play a bigger role in making rural and remote areas more resilient, three key challenges and associated knowledge gaps must be overcome:
place-specific business models that suit different types of cultural heritage and community needs must be created
tourism development must be balanced and sustainable
policies at different scales should support cooperation between rural and remote areas.
CROCUS addresses these knowledge gaps by:
generating knowledge about which CCT business models are most appropriate for different types of heritage and rural areas
creating eight cross-border living labs in which sustainable CCT business models will be prototyped (16 business models in total)
developing macro-regional and cross-border policy scenarios for each of the four EU macro-regions (Baltic Sea, Adriatic and Ionian, Alpine, and Danube)
synthesising knowledge and experience from the project to create tools and resources that RRA across Europe and beyond can use to develop sustainable and inclusive CCT in the future.
CROCUS will achieve this through its ambitious multi-scalar research design, innovative cross-border living labs, and participatory processes of sustainable business model prototyping.
The consortium brings together leading scholars and practitioners that have extensive experience with cross-border tourism development projects, stakeholder engagement, and policy analysis. It will be the first systematic study of different types of cross-border cooperation around cultural and creative tourism in rural and remote areas.
The impact of CROCUS will be to increase sustainable and inclusive cultural and creative tourism and cross-border cooperation, thus unleashing the potential of cultural heritage as a driver of sustainable innovation in rural and remote areas across Europe.
CROCUS & CO
CROCUS is part of a concerted effort by the European Commission to build a stronger knowledge-base for the development of cultural and creative tourism in rural and remote areas.
Previous generations of projects have focused on exploring forms of tourism that entail socially environmentally sustainable use of local cultural resources.
The current generation of Horizon Europe projects is particularly concerned with innovative business models and collaboration between localities, and CROCUS will cooperate closely with our colleagues in: