BeWoP
Policy objective: PO4 - A more social and inclusive Europe implementing the European Pillar of Social Rights
Specific objective: SO 6 - enhancing the role of culture and sustainable tourism in economic development, social inclusion and social innovation
Typology: Standard project
BeWoP project addresses the common challenge for developing an integrated cultural tourism offer in the programme area, also in the perspective of an overall increase of tourism favored by GO! 2025 in rural and peri-urban areas. The BeWoP project builds on the results of the WALKofPEACE project, awarded as the best Interreg project in 2020. The BeWoP project sets itself the even more ambitious objective of strengthening the tourism product through strategic level actions to make it a lever for the development of the border area.
The First World War sites located in the immediate vicinity of the border have been targeted by various research, valorisation, recovery and tourist promotion interventions. However, despite the creation of several cultural routes and the recovery of many of these sites, the cross-border dimension and an overall tourist and cultural valorisation of the area, understood as a territorial "unicum", have not yet been achieved.
The proposed project is in line with the innovation objectives defined by UN Environmental Programme, World Tourism Organization, European Tourism Agenda 2030, as well as with UNESCO criteria, and with the indicators established by the EC in European Tourism Indicators System. Three sites (Mount Kolovrat, Cerje-San Michele, Mount Sabotino) will act as pilot actions for the subsequent tourist valorisation of the entire cross-border area. These sites have already been targeted by some recovery and tourist valorization interventions with great symbolic value, including the aforementioned WALKofPEACE, and the subsequent Walk of Peace+ capitalization project, currently under implementation, and other transnational projects on the same theme already implemented or in the process of being implemented under other programs (Danube, Central Europe).
- The general objective of the project is to increase tourist flows, thanks to the creation of an integrated tourist area in the cross-border sites of the First World War, focusing on sustainable and conscious cultural tourism, which results in the optimization of the physical space in three pilot cross- border sites and the dissemination of greater knowledge regarding the history and the environment of this territory, while promoting homogeneous and coherent cross-border economic development.
- BeWoP aims at an integrated tourism promotion of the cross-border area attentive to sustainability and user awareness, contributing to an overall change in the tourist attractiveness of the border area taking in account also the objectives of GO! 2025
- The previous experience of cross-border cooperation promoted by the partnership can certainly be considered as a good practice, and will be further developed and strengthened by the BeWoP project with diversified interventions and activities that combine historical research, major events (also connected to the ECC Nova Gorica-Gorizia 2025 and to the èStoria Festival)
- dissemination of knowledge of the events of the Great War among the public and promotion of integrated and sustainable tourist routes on the identified sites which will then act as a driving force for a similar approach across the entire cross-border territory.
The innovative dimension of BeWoP lies both in the adoption of technological solutions that favor sustainable and conscious tourism, and in the constructive interaction that will be promoted with events and other cultural and tourist promotion activities of the territory such as the èStoria Festival (which will take on a cross-border dimension) , as well as with GO! 2025 events.
results :
- improve accessibility to the tangible and intangible heritage of the Great War in the three pilot sites,
- promote the inclusion of the cross-border Walk of Peace among the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe,
- strengthen the integrated cross-border tourism promotion strategy with attention to sustainability,
- strengthen historical research and knowledge, organising cross-border cultural events that improve the dissemination of knowledge of the war events that have scarred this territory among the public, while promoting mutual understanding and the transformation of a divisive and tragic event like the First World War into an opportunity for dialogue, sharing and reflection on the future of Europe as a whole
