Tourism = Rural Renewal?

Across Europe, many rural and remote areas face shrinking populations, declining services, and fading cultural life. CROCUS, a multi-country initiative funded by Horizon Europe, set out to take on this issue: to use cultural and creative tourism (CCT) as a vehicle for rural regeneration in Europe’s most remote and overlooked regions. Through a network of eight cross-border Living Labs, the project brought together local citizens, entrepreneurs, and public actors to co-design tourism experiences that are rooted in identity and built for inclusion. At its heart, CROCUS aimed to develop 16 business model prototypes that reflect the realities of rural areas, grounded in community knowledge, responsive to local challenges, and designed to be tested, adapted, and owned on the ground through 8 different work packages. As a member of the consortium, Group NAO co-led Work Package 4, creating a facilitation model that travels well across borders, is adaptable, easy to use, and designed to build real capacity within communities working to shape their own tourism futures.