LEADER 2012_First European Social Festival “ACT”

It is a common obstacle in regional development to actively enable people in their region to take their destiny in their own hands and make them commit themselves to regional development. The Austrian “social festival” (which took place its 1st time in 2011 and is on-going in 2012) shows new ways of how to involve people on the very bottom-up level and to use their creative or idealistic potential. Based on our initial experience we would be pleased to start a know-how transfer of this festival and to further develop this rather unusual festival-idea in a transnational context jointly with partners of other European countries. Info: www.tu-was.at (festival website in German language)

Our region “Styrian Iron Route” / Austria / is a typical “post-mining”-region set in the countryside with substantial problems in the sector of demography (over-aged population etc.). The “social festival” has in its first steps shown new and successful ways of how to involve people (from the very bottom-up base) and use their intellectual + financial potential to set accents in the fields of “living together well” (young & old, rich & poor, enterprises & people/employees etc.), of “improving regional business circuits / good working conditions etc.” and of “good measures” in the field of fighting poverty

Continue and further develop the idea of this festival with 3-4 partners (on the base of “best practice”). A certain budget to help low-scale-projects to get on the way und to do some initial “promotion” would be helpful. In the last year we could help about 50 small projects to get on their way. We would like to continue this process and in addition spread this idea to other European regions and refine it through transnational cooperation.

Country: doesn´t matter. Profil of Partner: region with maximum 50.000 inhabitants. A strong rural context would be preferable (no city more than 20.000 inhabitants). A certain budget to help low-scale micro-projects to get on their way would be essential – the idea is: not only activate people to give intellectual or idealistic input, but help them from the start to realize the projects (budget per project: 200 – 10.000 Euro). These budgets could also come from regional industry / enterprises / sponsors.

Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, United Kingdom, Greece, Ireland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Malta, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Spain, Slovakia, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Romania, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Lithuania, Latvia

Culture, Demography, social issues

22/04/2012