Changing Perspectives: The Role of Creative Industries in Social Innovation Projects to Empower Local Communities

Ana Margarida Cruz Silva; Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos

doi:10.21814/rlec.3664

Authors

Ana Margarida Cruz Silva Centro de Estudos Interculturais, Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração, Politécnico do Porto, Porto, Portugal https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2022-0230
Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos Centro de Estudos Interculturais, Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração, Politécnico do Porto, Porto, Portugal https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7010-2908

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21814/rlec.3664

Keywords:

local communities, social development, creative industries, social innovation, empowerment

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the notions of social life as we know them, so it is important to develop and mediate projects that meet the contexts of great social transformation we live. The COVID-19 crisis also affected rural areas that have sought to control rural exodus. However, new opportunities emerged for rural territories as the world adapted to the pandemic. In the central region of Portugal, the Association for the Integrated Development of the Mountain Villages Network, through its Mountain Villages project, seeks to promote the regional development of these cultural territories. For this purpose, it has been developing social innovation projects with enormous potential for the region’s social, economic, and cultural development. The association has begun creating two social innovation projects essential in developing the communities located in the Mountain Villages: the Queijeiras Project and the Cooperativa Coworking Spaces @Mountain Villages. This article presents both projects and emphasizes the importance of practices that lead to the positive development of society through the convening of creativity and creative industries in social innovation projects. The professional work and fieldwork carried out at the Association for the Integrated Development of the Mountain Villages Network and the Mountain Villages territories frame the study conducted, as do interviews and questionnaires with people and entities linked to the projects. The results presented in the article demonstrate how both projects are extremely valuable to understand the importance of building possibilities for the reinterpretation and empowerment of local communities that are often neglected. Furthermore, they also reveal an expansion from the local to the global, that is, an interaction of global environments with local cultures, creating an intercultural space so important in our globalized world.

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Author Biographies

Ana Margarida Cruz Silva, Centro de Estudos Interculturais, Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração, Politécnico do Porto, Porto, Portugal

Ana Margarida Cruz Silva is a graduate in modern languages from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra that completed her master’s degree in intercultural studies for business, at Porto Accounting and Business School in 2021. In the same year, she started doing research at the Centre for Intercultural Studies, as an initiation grantee, having then extended her functions as junior researcher. She is currently collaborating with the StreetArtCEI project, Enging project and the Augmented Assessment project. Her research interests involve street art, cultural and creative industries, as well as social and sustainable innovation and sociocultural entrepreneurship.

Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos, Centro de Estudos Interculturais, Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração, Politécnico do Porto, Porto, Portugal

Clara Maria Laranjeira Sarmento e Santos is an aggregate professor in cultural studies from the University of Aveiro and a PhD in Portuguese culture. She has a master’s degree in Anglo-American studies and a degree in Portuguese-English studies from the University of Porto. Founder and current director of the Centre of Intercultural Studies of Porto Accounting and Business School, she has received many awards and authored many national and international publications on Portuguese and Anglo-American culture and literature, cultural and intercultural studies, ethnography, feminist, and gender studies.

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