Cross-Border Cultural and Creative Tourism in Rural and Remote Areas

Cultural and Creative Tourism (CCT) combines the Cultural and Creative Industries with tourism by offering products that highlight both tangible and intangible aspects of cultural heritage. It often emphasises sustainability and responsibility, ensuring tourism considers its impacts on the environment, local communities, economies, and the preservation of cultural heritage. CCT can be a substantial source of economic development for Rural and Remote Areas (RRA) that are rich in cultural heritage but may also suffer from socio-economic problems such as an ageing population, out-migration, and low incomes. Cross-border collaboration of RRAs in the CCT sector can multiply the positive impact of CCT in these areas by developing and offering integrated, place-based and tailored tourism product offerings that adhere to the different types of cultural heritage and community needs of RRAs.

The project “Cross-Border Cultural and Creative Tourism in Rural and Remote Areas” (CROCUS) is a 3-year (2024-2027) project funded by the Horizon Europe programme that aims to harness CCT as a driver of sustainable innovation and economic growth in RRAs by identifying suitable business models for different types of heritage and areas, prototyping sustainable CCT business models in cross-border living labs, and developing supportive macro-regional and cross-border policy scenarios. Coordinated by the University of Aalborg (Denmark) and with the participation of 8 more partners from the Netherlands, Slovenia, Finland, Italy, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia and Denmark, the project will:

1. Generate knowledge on the CCT business models that are most appropriate for different types of heritage and rural areas,
2. Create 8 cross-border living labs in which 16 sustainable CCT business models will be prototyped,
3. Develop macro-regional and cross-border policy scenarios for each of the four EU macro-regions (Baltic Sea, Adriatic and Ionian, Alpine, and Danube), and
4. Synthesise knowledge and experience from the project to create tools and resources that RRAs across Europe and beyond can use to develop sustainable and inclusive CCT in the future.

You can find out more about the CROCUS project here.

Visit the project’s webpage here.