Better knowledge
for better rural policies
GRANULAR is a four-year multi-disciplinary and transnational project, which aims at generating new datasets, tools and methods to better understand rural areas. By doing this, we hope to gain new insights into the unique characteristics, dynamics, and drivers of change in rural areas.
Using this knowledge and our Rural Compass, we aim to help those involved in rural development to design place-based policies that are specifically tailored to the needs of each individual area. Ultimately, GRANULAR hopes to support rural actors in their efforts to promote sustainable territorial development.
Specifically, GRANULAR aims at:
Supporting just digital, economic and ecological transitions in rural areas
Conceptualising rural diversity, its multiple characteristics and functionalities
Informing rural actors on the diversity of rural areas
Empowering rural actors to engage in just, carbon-neutral and inclusive transitions
Living labs
Co-creation and multi-actor engagement are at the core of GRANULAR approach. As such, GRANULAR is running 7 Living Labs in different regions of Europe: France, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United-Kingdom). Living Labs bring together actors from science, policy and civil society, to co-design, test and validate GRANULAR work.
In addition, 9 Replication Labs are assessing how to replicate the tools and methods of the project in other countries. Our Replication Labs are located in Albania, Finland, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania and Serbia.
Knowledge Transfer Accelerator
GRANULAR Knowledge Transfer Accelerator is a virtual space where rural actors can learn and exchange knowledge and solutions to accelerate territorial development of their territory.
During the course of the project, the GRANULAR Knowledge Transfer Accelerator meet regularly to exchange knowledge and foster peer-learning. To this end, GRANULAR organises several ‘acceleration actions’, such as webinars, Q&A sessions, and discussion panels.
Digital Platform
GRANULAR Digital Platform is an online interface to visualise and analyse the data and indicators generated by the project on rural areas.
Rural areas often lack detailed data to picture their current situation and predict future trends. With our project, we facilitate the discovery and access to these data for different rural areas, and at different levels of granularity (e.g. local, regional, macro-regional).
