RurInno acknowledges social enterprises as promising but often neglected drivers of social innovations in structurally weak rural regions that tackle social problems and stabilise and improve the living conditions in these regions. But reports show that social entrepreneurs still lack specialised trainings and education, a supporting infrastructure and recognition. Against this background, RurInno aims at 1) strengthening the skills and the innovative capacity of social entrepreneurs operating in rural regions, 2) improving the knowledge of how social innovations are implemented in rural regions and 3) raising awareness of social entrepreneurship in rural regions in order to foster enabling environments for their activities. The successful implementation will be enabled by the close collaboration of two outstanding research institutes and four award winning social enterprises with complementary expertise - including ERs, ESRs and administrative staff. The short project duration of 26 months will generate rapid outcomes that increase the competitiveness of social enterprises. We will strengthen the innovative skills of social entrepreneurs with a structured training programme and knowledge exchange. Both will be enabled during innovation secondments, taking place in the research institutes. Multifaceted training modules like workshops, field inspections, research-practice labs and joint analyses sessions foster skills enhancement in different ways: knowledge sharing and applying, best practice learning, learning by doing and learning from comparisons. We will enhance the knowledge about the innovative capacity of social enterprises in rural regions by field research in the four participating social enterprises and their respective rural regions. We will integrate the social enterprises into the research process as objects of investigation. Thus, we will enhance the perspective from doing research on social entrepreneurs to doing research with social entrepreneurs.

CORAL aims to unpack the latent dynamics and impacts of collaborative workspaces (CWS) in rural and peripheral areas and integrate them as development tools in local and regional policies to open up new potentials for socio-economic development. Whereas we have observed the rapid rise of CWS in urban agglomerations the past 15 years, there is now a gradual rise of CWS in rural and peripheral areas too. However, there is no clear evidence about their functions, impacts and the ways that policymaking should promote the rural CWS wave and assist in linking the development of CWS with processes of local socio-economic development. In fact, that policy link is much needed for those disadvantaged places (places that don’t matter) , as only a few EU policies (e.g. Interreg) have assisted, in a fragmented way, the development of CWS in peripheral and rural areas. At the same time, there is an urgent need for qualified professionals in academia and the policy arena, in order to effectively promote CWS in the lagging parts of the EU and by that, open up new development futures. CORAL envisages to provide specialized and tailor-made training to 15 young researchers to better understand and support the development processes of CWS in rural and peripheral areas, their wider impacts at the local and regional level, as well as at the level of the individual worker and the enterprise. Moreover, through different means of dissemination and exploitation (knowledge exchange days, CORAL schools, digital platform), the impacts of CORAL aim to reach a wider audience ranging from public policymakers to private stakeholders and CWS communities across the EU. The CORAL consortium consists of nine beneficiaries (five academic and four non-academic) and 6 partner organisations (four academic and two non-academic) from six EU Member States.

Structurally weak rural regions are faced with major social and economic problems. In comparison to urban or intermediate regions, predominantly rural regions are economically less productive and they provide a less extensive scope of desired goods and services. As a consequence, the regions experience a loss of inhabitants, especially of young and highly skilled people. Thus, downward spirals are set in motion that further reduce economic opportunities and prevent rural regions from overcoming their structural deficits. The proposed RURACTION research and training network focuses on socially innovative solutions to these rural problems developed by social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs are understood as practitioners who create and implement social innovations by entrepreneurial means. The question arises under which conditions they operate, how they organise solutions, how they network and empower residents, which impacts they actually have on rural development, and how they can be supported in their problem-solving activities. The European Commission identifies the subject of social innovation in rural regions as a research gap. RURACTION intends to fill this gap. The research and training network brings together highly acknowledged academics and very experienced practitioners from social enterprises to contribute their expertise in this field (e.g. with spring schools, autumn skills seminars and cross-sectoral secondments). It strives to achieve excellent research results and aims at qualifying early stage researcher as equally scientifically and practically skilled experts for social entrepreneurship and social innovations in rural regions – be it in order to conduct further research in this complex scientific field, to professionally support and promote initiatives of existing social entrepreneurial organisations, and/or to professionally start their own initiatives and social enterprises.

Today, RW is mostly conceived as an arrangement enabling flexible work organization. However, REMAKING contends that RW can be more than that. If the multiple effects induced by RW on individuals, business models and the socio-economic sphere are properly understood and addressed by policymakers, it might become a lever contributing to shaping ongoing social, economic, and spatial structural changes. At the basis of REMAKING there is a profound consideration of the ongoing megatrends (i.e., digital transformation, flexibilization of production models) that have initiated RW and of the recent shocks (i.e., the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine) that have consolidated the diffusion of different forms of RW. Through this angle, the multiple effects induced by RW call for rigorous analyses to support decision-makers in balancing opportunities and problems linked to RW for a potential rethinking of territories, namely in rural areas. REMAKING aims at delivering a policy-oriented framework reflecting the new and multi-faceted realities of RW, facilitating policymakers to adopt place-based policies balancing the opportunities and risks of RW and sharing practices to foster mutual learning on RW in the novel scenario of megatrends and shocks. These objectives will be achieved through participatory research activities across 4 case studies, each addressing a different form of RW (digital nomadism, post-pandemic, high-skilled in hi-tech sectors and enforced remote workers). The 4 case studies encompass overall 7 countries(Italy, Greece, Portugal, Germany, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Ireland): for each country, 1 second-tier city and 1 rural area will be studied. REMAKING generates an impact on socio-spatial transformation processes across second-tier cities and rural areas in terms of improved planning, design and implementation of multi-level policy, promotion of territorial socio-economic resilience and development, and advanced understanding of RW multiple impacts.