While implementing RURALISM4.EU project, a Small Scale partnership project funded under the ERASMUS+ Programme aimed at enhancing European rural areas and participated by 5 organisations EXO (Italy); Fundacion Monte Mediterraneo (Spain); AGROM-Ro (Romania), Lizov Muzeum (Slovakia) and HUAP (Austria), an innovative approach has been experimented, namely: the HumanLab approach.

This is a design methodology that supports local stakeholders and public administrations in social innovation processes, promoting interaction and teamwork through a strategy based on creativity, listening, and sharing. 

The RURALISM4.EU partners experimented this innovative methodology during one of the project’s international workshops, as a way to address the most urgent challenges for rural areas' renaissance through twin transition (Digital and Green), while sensitizing and actively engaging policy-makers and other relevant stakeholders in the field of rural areas development. 

This approach proved to be an essential resource, representing the starting point for the definition of practical interventions,  while strengthening teamwork, facilitating knowledge exchange, and working on common challenges, considering local actors' empowerment and community building as the key elements for activating effective co-creation processes.

The co-design experience served as an inspiration for the definition of two toolkits. The RURALISM4.EU partners committed themselves to preparing dedicated guidelines for implementing the toolkits in their respective contexts, where they will be working as facilitators, for simplifying their use with the local stakeholders they will involve in future collaborations.

The two toolkits follow an involving and gaming approach, and they foresee the use of playing cards and other tools to liven up a series of different activities, involving the participants in individual and team working moments. In a first step, participants are requested to perform an individual activity aimed at identifying useful tools and ideas, that will then be facilitating, in a second group activity, the development of the main ideas to foster rural areas renaissance.

Not only do the toolkits function as tools for public decision-makers to promote an inclusive approach to co-design rural development actively involving communities in the decision-making processes, but they can also be used for different purposes and in multiple contexts: design, education, recreational activities, serving as a tool that promotes collective and direct learning for diverse groups.

The two toolkits can be downloaded  at the following links: 

KIT 1 

https://exo-ricerca.it/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/KIT-1-RURALISM4.EU_.pdf 

KIT 2 

https://exo-ricerca.it/en/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/KIT-2-RURALISM4.EU_.pdf