Looking into the black box: local contexts and development policies, in time of crisis – Working Seminar – Roma Tre University, 27 April 2016

The social and economic crisis faced in last years challenged European countries and territories, in many ways: welfare systems, European identities, relations between regions and generations became more fragile.
The crisis challenges our tools for understanding reality, the possibility to build meanings and representations. In some cases, such as in some Italian areas, “crisis” is something durable: the prolonged inability to reverse the decline.
The “local” is still the ground where communities and policies mainly face the crisis, in positive or negative ways.
During the working seminar, three different research experiences will be presented and debated, in order to exchange methodologies and results concerning the role of policies in local development strategies.

The starting point will be the project HORIZON2020 – RE.CRI.RE. – Between the representation of the crisis and the crisis of the representation. RE.CRI.RE. explores the changes occurred in local cultures in Europe, in order to produce tools for policy-makers.
The premise of RE.CRI.RE. project is that local cultures may highly affect the effectiveness of policy implementation. Nevertheless, they are often a hidden field, unexplored or even totally ignored. Local cultures mediate the construction of meanings: which tools we have to know them and to include this knowledge in policy-making? RE.CRI.RE. project will be presented as a tool to approach public policies taking into account territorial analysis and local cultures analysis.

Secondly, during the seminar will be discussed the evaluation phase of policies, paying special attention to the ways in which “localities” build their own development path, interacting with higher levels of governance (regional, national and European). The project R.EV.E.S. – Reverse EValuation to Enhance local Strategies is part of the national strategy “Actions of support of the National System of Evaluation and of the Evaluation Teams” for the Cohesion Programme 2007-2013, implemented by FORMEZ PA.
Special focus will be devoted to Melpignano (LE, Italy) a Municipality in which policy-makers developed an effective strategy related to commons.
Thirdly, two members of GSSI (Gran Sasso Science Institute) will present the National Strategy for Inner Areas, in which they are involved as evaluators. The implementation of the strategy, goals definition and involved actors will be presented, together with local strategic documents.

The seminar is devoted to researchers, professors, students, PhD students interested in urban and regional studies, territorial policies, local cultures analysis and interdisciplinary approaches.

Useful links:
Playbill and Presentation