INCULTUM and rurAllure projects recently established a collaboration agreement due to common themes, aims and actions. While rurAllure is more specifically focused on historical pilgrimage routes and INCULTUM expands to other types of lesser-known tourism, the promotion of cultural heritage in rural areas is a common thematic framework of both projects, This sets the basis for big opportunities for collaboration, synergies and cross-dissemination actions in the two projects.
The principal aim in INCULTUM is to foster bottom-up local strategies for sustainable cultural tourism, focusing, on the one hand, on hidden potentials in remote, peripheral or deindustrialized areas usually not taken into account and, on the other hand, on the experience, knowledge and participation of visitors. This is a value that rurAllure shares in the promotion of lesser-known areas, so that visitors can discover hidden heritage sites, rural museums and heritage stories, generating benefits to the local enviroment in terms of tourism and economic development.
The rurAllure project is focused on the promotion of rural museums and heritage sites in the vicinity of European pilgrimage routes, which have undoubtedly become a significant economic and political asset for Europe, but their impact is almost exclusively perceived in the places located directly on the paths, rarely permeating into the surrounding rural areas. Thus, entire provinces and regions of a predominantly rural nature, which are facing significant economic and demographic challenges all over Europe become passive witnesses of the flows of pilgrims, whereas they could actually add much of content and value to the experiences.
The rurAllure pilgrims’ portal allows walkers and travellers build customised travel itineraries, planning their trips along the historic routes according to their interests and learn more about the surrounding heritage. The portal also provides local economic actors with a space to share their services to the world-wide pilgrim community.
Read more on rurAllure website: https://rurallure.eu/
