The General Assembly of the LEDA-Partenariat Association (LDnet) took place online on Monday 19 February 2024. It offered an opportunity to 35 participants, members and friends of LDnet, to discuss broader issues on local development and the priorities of LDnet for 2024. In the last year, LDnet has been actively involved in capacity building and community resilience initiatives, and we have closely followed initiatives on social innovation and … Continue Reading
Events & activities
Webinar on Fostering Resilience in Rural Communities
Sharing experiences from an innovative training and capacity-building programme for voluntary and professional rural development practitioners. This EU-level webinar on Fostering Resilience in Rural Communities took place on Tuesday 23 January 2024. It was attended by some 140 active participants. The … Continue Reading
LEADER European Congress 2023: LEADER, the Rural Pact & rural-urban interaction
The 2023 European LEADER Congress took place in Brussels on 18 and 19 December 2023 at the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee. This Congress is the first event to bring together as many European LAGs as possible in more than 15 years. It brought … Continue Reading
Rural toolkit launch event
The Rural toolkit is an initiative of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) and Joint Research Centre (JRC), in collaboration with the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI). It is the first comprehensive online guide to EU funding … Continue Reading
European Landscape Forum 2024 – Tartu 24-28.6.2024
The Landscape Forum 2024 will take place in Tartu, Estonia, from 24 to 28 June, 2024. The forum is hosted by the Estonian University of Life Sciences (EMU). The focus topic of the event is The Landscape as the Container of the Bioeconomy with working groups on water, forests, fibrescapes, foodscapes, mobility … Continue Reading
EUI capacity building event on urban CLLD (Timisoara)
LDnet has been engaged by European Urban Initiative (EUI) for the preparation and delivery of an EUI Capacity building event focused on CLLD. This event took take place in Timisoara (Romania) from 7th to 9th June 2023. It was organised by EUI with help from LDnet, with a team of moderators, expert in CLLD and … Continue Reading
REBOUND – Training and capacity-building programme
REBOUND is an inter-territorial project supported by the EU through ERASMUS+. It pursues an action-research approach to promoting rural community resilience. LDnet experts participate in the project and its first report on the State of the Art and Practices of Rural Community Resilience has alredy been … Continue Reading
PARTENALIA ConferenceT (Timişoara): Cultural Catalysts
The PARTENALIA Association, the pan European network of Local Intermediate Authorities, held its 2023 annual conference on 15 November 2023 in Timişoara (RO). The conference was titled 'Cultural Catalysts: Local Intermediate Authorities Nurturing Heritage, Collaboration, and Funding for the Arts'. The … Continue Reading
Articles
How Social Enterprises can Combine Social and Economic Goals
A quarter century of experience with local community-based participatory approach in Quebec province (Canada). This initiative started about 25 years ago. In small towns, with 500 to 1000 population, there is no grocery store, no gas pump, no post office, etc. A solidarity coop, which is a multistakeholder … Continue reading
Artificial Intelligence, Collective Intelligence and Local Development
The knowledge of AI in relation to governance is at its infancy but there are signs that it could be of relevance and interest to participative approaches to local development and this makes it worth exploring it. We provide below some hints drawn from a growing pool of insights and examples of specific … Continue reading
LEADER and multi-funded CLLD
The EU CAP Network has published a highlights report of its workshop on LEADER and multi-funded CLLD which was held in Ljubljana 18-19 October 2023. The workshop provided the opportunity to exchange experiences and the main challenges for the implementation of multi-funded CLLD at the Managing Authority … Continue reading
The localisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
LocalSDGs is one of JRC projects the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs. The LocalSDGs recognises that many of the actions needed to achieve the SDGs at the global scale have to be undertaken locally and provides support and guidance to local administrators and stakeholders for localising … Continue reading
Assessing the Added Value of LEADER
On 23 and 24 November 2023, some 60 evaluators, representatives from managing and paying authorities, LEADER networks and LAG managers met at the Kirchberg in Luxembourg city, at the invitation of the European Evaluation Helpdesk for the CAP and the Ministry of Agriculture, Viticulture and Rural Development … Continue reading
Theories, tools and practical examples to decode rural community resilience
One-day showcase training offers insights into the REBOUND accredited course on fostering resilience in rural communities. The REBOUND project, supported by the EU through ERASMUS+ programme, developed and piloted an accredited (15 ECTS) training and capacity-building programme on rural community … Continue reading
PUBLICATIONS
Expert report: Delivering high quality CLLD in urban areas
LDnet was engaged by the European Urban Initiative (EUI) to prepare and deliver a capacity building event focused on CLLD which took place in Timisoara (Romania) in June 2023. It was organised by EUI with help from LDnet, with a team of moderators, expert in CLLD and EU urban initiatives. Community … Continue reading
Towards innovative, inclusive and creative hubs in European cities
Three Horizon 2020 projects, CENTRINNO, HUB-IN and T-FACTOR, have released a policy report titled 'Towards innovative, inclusive and creative hubs in European cities'. The report builds on the operational experience of the three projects in 23 pilot areas across the EU and aims to provide guidance in the … Continue reading
Rural/urban: Laying bare the controversy
In this paper, published in Geographia Polonica, Mirek Dymitrow of the University of Gothenburg examines the "rural/urban controversy". Abstract Concepts are the basic building blocks of all knowledge, while the strength of any societal project is dependent on the quality of those concepts. As two of … Continue reading
Social Innovation: The Promise and the Reality in Marginalised Rural Areas in Europe
This paper by Bill Slee, Robert Lukesch and Elisa Ravazzoli explores the idea of social innovation as both a conceptual and practical means of delivering positive social, economic and environmental outcomes in marginal rural areas. Definitions are critically appraised, and the dual contemporary origins of the … Continue reading
Social capital and short food supply chains: Evidence from Fisheries LAGs
New empirical research by Richard Freeman, Jeremy Phillipson, Matthew Gorton, Barbara Tocco uses a new methodological approach for understanding the wider impacts of CLLD and how it can be transferred to different contexts. It is presented in an article titled "Social capital and short food supply chains: … Continue reading
OECD local job creation review: ‘Unleashing Talent in Brussels’
The OECD has published in October 2023 in the Reviews on Local Job Creation series the report Unleashing Talent in Brussels, Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region has witnessed significant improvements in its labour market over the past decade. Local job creation has been driven by ample opportunities for … Continue reading
State of the Art and Practices of Rural Community Resilience
The REBOUND project (Fostering Resilience in Rural Communities) has published a report on the State of the Art and Practices of Rural Community Resilience. The aim of this report is to provide an analysis of innovative processes and patterns pertaining to rural resilience across Europe. It is the first major … Continue reading
CLLD in the 2014–2020 period: An Innovative Framework for Local Development
The World journal has published a new article entitled "CLLD in the 2014–2020 EU Programming Period: An Innovative Framework for Local Development", by Stefan Kah, Haris Martinos and Urszula Budzich-Tabor. The paper builds on the country summaries and horizontal analyses developed as part of LDnet's CLLD in … Continue reading
European Commission and Council responses to the ECA report on LEADER/CLLD
We have already published our review of the special report of the European Court of Auditors on LEADER and CLLD, in response to the overall message from the ECA that “LEADER and community-led local development facilitates local engagement but additional benefits still not sufficiently demonstrated”. We now … Continue reading
The added-value of CLLD in Interreg
This study has been carried out by Jean-Pierre Vercruysse for Directorate D, DG REGIO of the European Commission with the purpose of better understanding the added-value of cross-border CLLD in the framework of Interreg. We publish below the Executive Summary of the study. The full report is available … Continue reading