INTERREG EUROPE Local Flavours Project

With the partnership of 9 institutions in 8 countries, the Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg has started the implementation of the INTERREG EUROPE project Local Flavours (Spicing up authentic tourism in towns with rich heritage through reviving local cultural flavours) on 1^st August 2019.

Project duration: 36 months in 2 phases

Project total budget: 1,816,879.00 EUR

iASK share from total budget: 274,963.00 EUR

Participating Partners (9 institutions from 8 countries):

• iASK             HU
• Harghita County Council                                                   RO
• Municipality of ‘s-Hertogenbosch                                        NL
• Waterford City and County Council                                     IE
• Savonlinna Development Services Ltd.        FI
• Municipality of Vittorio Veneto                                            IT
• Riga Planning Region       LV
• Institute for Tourism                               HR
• Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna      IT

Project Abstract:

Local Cultural Flavours’ objective is to improve policies supporting places unable to utilize their cultural legacies due to disadvantaged locations. The project will help partners meet the challenge of identifying the most effective ways to support unique local sites with an innovative analysis toolkit, extensive knowledge sharing, and assisted interaction with local public and private stakeholders. This way, the specific local and regional potentials and bottlenecks can be adequately explored and used to elaborate the right policy frameworks, which will elevate and position new authentic destinations. As a result of the cooperation of the international partnership, 8 Action Plans will be produced as the main outcomes. Targeting various policy instruments (ERDF Operational Programmes, development and marketing strategies) supporting the addressed locations in their pursuit to become more integrated and integral players in regional tourism, based on their recognized and properly used authentic cultural assets.

Policy Instrument Addressed by iASK:

The KRAFT Program is one of three pilot regional development policies of the Hungarian government and aims to focus on the sustainable development of small and medium-sized border towns. In contrast to conventional regional and city development practices, the approach of the KRAFT Program integrates so-called “soft” factors (culture, identity, heritage) and their efficient management with “hard factors” such as infrastructure, energy, communication networks, and economic sustainability. Another novelty of KRAFT is to identify and utilize synergies of interdependencies among rural and city development factors, thus accurately revealing the full range of conditions required for the implementation of new and complex regional development strategies of cities and their rural environment. The government holds iASK responsible for the preparation of the KRAFT Program and its adaptation to other border regions in Hungary. In the course of Local Cultural Flavours, iASK aims to improve the KRAFT Program to correctly build on cultural heritage based urban development, often the most promising development asset of small/medium cities, and an intervention area providing economic, job creation, business/tourism attractiveness, workforce/inhabitant retention benefits, all at the same time.