Visiting the Margins. INnovative CULtural ToUrisM in European peripheries (INCULTUM)

Abstract:

Tourism is more than travelling and consumption; it has great potential when it comes to culture, nature, knowledge andpersonal experiences. Travelling is a way to learn and improve oneself, to enrich one’s vision and improve mutualunderstanding. The INCULTUM project deals with the challenges and opportunities of cultural tourism with the aim offurthering sustainable social, cultural and economic development. It will explore the full potential of marginal and peripheralareas when managed by local communities and stakeholders. Innovative participatory approaches will be adopted,transforming locals into protagonists, able to reduce negative impacts, learning from and improving good practices to bereplicated and translated into strategies and policies. Furthermore, INCULTUM fosters intercultural understanding throughthe implementation of bottom-up strategies that can have positive effects for both, locals and tourists. Ten pilot cases ofliving territories and communities will be investigated and on the basis of the findings innovative customised solutions will beco-created. Additionally, pilots will be used to identify and compare drivers and barriers that account for the success orfailure of participatory models. Pilots will also enable us to assess outcomes and analyse the pre-conditions needed for afuture full implementation and scaling up of potential solutions. Pilots will provide new quantitative and qualitative data thatwill be combined with official statistics and novel data gathered by the use of self-developed IT applications and theexploitation of previously untapped data sources. The implementation of advanced econometric methods and the pioneeringintroduction of machine-learning tools into tourism research will push the boundaries of our knowledge. Findings will enableus to suggest recommendations for effective and sustainable policies, create new synergies among public and privatestakeholders and new investments, including Structural Funds