Author Archives: Petra Derkzen

Visiting IFUL in Esbjerg, Denmark

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images6From 16 to 27 of Februari I am staying at the The Danish Institute of Rural Research and Development (IFUL) as a visiting researcher. IFUL is located in Esbjerg, at the western coast of Jutland. IFUL is an institute within the social sciences of the Southern Denmark University aimed at the development of sustainable rural areas specially focusing on business development and the population’s life condition. Whereas our group has its roots in agriculture and has broadened to rural and regional studies, this institute always had a territorial focus on rural development (working papers).

On Monday 23 of Februari a seminar will take place  entitled “the rural paradigm, hardly settled!- ready to move?”  The seminar is open to people from within and from outside the university with various contributors.

The island of Vinön

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Part of the study the ENDLT network did (see blog 26 -1) was to visit a project on outdoor education on the island of Vinön.

The island is the largest island in lake Hjalmaren, approximately 200 km from Stockholm. The island has 100 permanent inhabitants and population decreased over the past twenty years. Many commute to mainland jobs, others have small-scale enterprises, often a combination of fishing, farming, gardening and tourism. The European LEADER funding for rural development has been used to develop a framework for the development of Vinön. Continue reading →

Cross cultural learning in rural development

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Last week, from wednesday 21 to friday 23 of January, I stayed in Basenberga, mid Sweden for a workshop on cross cultural learning in rural development. The workshop was organised by the Swedish team of an informal LEADER-based network which exists since 2005 and which calls itself ‘European Network for Local Development Teams (ENLDT). The ENDLT is a knowledge building and shared learning network involving mixed teams of local practitioners, local politicians/civil servants and academics from the countries Ireland, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and with some earlier participation from Germany, Hungary and Great Britain. By visiting each other, by the mixed nature of our teams and by developing a method for cross cultural learning, we jointly deepened our understanding of local development in different European settings which benefited our own practice. This time in Sweden a small proportion of the network came together to test and discuss the Manual of our method, written by the Swedish team. The Manual will be published in March and will be available on the web.