The project methodology consists of a combination of elements and strategies meant to tackle the project challenges from a variety of perspectives. They can be summed up as:
A) Cultural territorial mapping in 2 declinations
- - detailed mapping of cultural stakeholders to identify all the existing actors in the cultural and creative sectors active in the territory;
- - mapping of tangible & intangible cultural heritage elements in each Pilot Case, to have a clearer overview of the entire regions’ key features and identities and build solid pilot cases for each of them.
B) Setup of a solid cultural network for collaboration on 2 main pillars:
- - Local Cultural Creative Hubs-LCCHs as aggregation places for entire cultural communities involved in the project; they will act to facilitate co-creation and co-authoring processes; to empower local actors at many levels and make them active agents in the local cultural sphere; to gather and stimulate local artists.
- A Transnational Cultural and Creative Network, aimed to provide the four LCCHs with new opportunities derived from international coordination and networking. This approach is expected to create synergies and bring new chances of collaboration visibility.
C) Upskilling of cultural operators through tailored training. PPs will activate a specific training process in 2 main steps:
- A general section in online format for PPs’ staff to acquire awareness and enlarged competences on territory storytelling, heritage marketing, territorial cultural marketing, techniques for territorial branding;
- A second section to be carried out locally in each project territory in laboratorial format and through peer collaboration. All cultural actors from LCCHs will intervene and cooperate to assess the most useful strategies to promote the cultural imagery of their territory.
D) Use of specific audience engagement activities for co-creation and promotion processes. Each PP will focus on collecting citizens’ testimonies in focus groups to co-identify and reconstruct elements of intangible heritage at the core of the local cultural imagery. Social media will also be activated through a crowdsourcing campaign for identity, aimed to extract further local knowledge and folklore elements.
E) International artistic exchange through 4 residencies. This element is meant to identify those cultural elements and local identities features to be communicated to the public through original works. Artistic creation in visual artwork is incorporated in the project as a means to help define and promote the regional cultural imageries.
F) Use of digital technologies to reach wide audiences, to make peripheral places more accessible, to pursue a more direct fruition and dissemination of the produced artworks. This digital element also includes the integration of social media into the project dissemination purposes. 2 influencers of bloggers as itinerary ambassadors will travel around the 4 pilot cases to share their direct experiences.