On 29th January 2019, Marie Clotteau, Director of Euromontana, presented SIMRA to the NAT (Commission for Natural Resources) members of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) during a debate on “Smart Villages: integrated strategic approaches to innovation in rural areas”.Continue reading
SIMRA’s Scientific Coordinator, Dr. Maria Nijnik, has been honoured with the Scientific Achievement Award given by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), organisation that gathers more than 15,000 scientists in 700 member organizations from 125 countries. Nijnik wishes to thank IUFRO for the prize and has stated that she feels “truly happy bringing this award to the James Hutton Institute and to the SIMRA team”.
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A one-week training course will be organised in the framework of the H2020 EU-funded project Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas (SIMRA) (www.simra-h2020.eu) at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Zaragoza (IAMZ-CIHEAM) on 18-22 November 2019 to address the importance of social innovation in less-favoured rural areas.
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Molina de Aragón is located at the heart of the biggest European demographic desert. Re-named as ‘Serranía Celtibérica’, this desert unites rural territories from different Spanish provinces, such as Saragossa, Teruel, Cuenca, Soria or Guadalajara. Having an area double that of Belgium, this desert hosts only 487,417 inhabitants at a density of 7.72 hab/km2. Moreover, this area has the largest ageing index and the lowest birth rate of the European Union, with a population density lower than Lapland.
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SIMRA project has passed its half-way point! And over these two years we have been working hard: we have agreed on a definition for social innovation, characterised marginalised rural areas across Europe and the Mediterranean region and collected hundreds of examples of social initiatives, 50 of which are public in our database. We have also launched 12 case studies and 6 innovation actions that will activate rural territories and disseminate new knowledge to policy-makers and practitioners.
The Forum Carpaticum brings together the science community interested in social and biophysical sciences in the Carpathians every two years. In the programme notes it is stated that “the 5th Forum Carpaticum will specially highlight prioritized topics on biodiversity conservation and sustainable tourism development and education for sustainable development (ESD).” Overall, there was an emphasis on the biophysical sciences, especially ecology, forestry and fluvial geomorphology, but there was a range of social scientists represented and some of the natural scientists are now moving towards interdisciplinary work with social scientists and also transdisciplinary work.
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Tourism and cultural heritage are two strong vectors of local development, which was explained at length during a session of the European Week of Cities and Regions 2018. The European Commission, a Greek regional authority and a social entrepreneur participated in this session to share their experiences and the solutions they try to implement each at their own scale.
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Welcome back to SIMRA’s newsletter, where you will discover plenty of examples of social innovation from throughout Europe, whether through the researcher’s perspective with the example of refugee inclusion in Norway, or through the eye of local implementers with our new brochures on the Balkans and mountain areas.
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What’s the perfect recipe for a successful Rural Hackathon? Here are the secrets to a memorable experience: the Rural Hackathon “SIparte”, held on the 4th and 5th October 2018 in Feltre (northeastern Italy).
Ingredients: a beautiful, lively historical building, six teams – 24 future entrepreneurs – that aim to value and contribute to the local development of their territory in the province of Belluno, a group of experts to mentor them, the warmth of the sun, fresh mountain air, and great food.
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The social innovation research conducted under the Horizon 2020 project SIMRA – standing for Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas – is coordinated by the James Hutton Institute, complementary to the delivery of the ecosystem services based social innovation research for Scotland, carried out under the Scottish Government Strategic Research Programme. The research on social innovation in rural areas has seen some broad media coverage in recent months with its recognition at an international level due to the organisation of sessions in several conferences.