Cultural and Heritage Tourism is a tool of economic development that achieves economic growth through attracting visitors from outside a host community, who are motivated wholly or in part by interest in the historical, artistic, scientific or lifestyle/heritage offerings of a community, region, group or institution (Silberberg 1995). There is broad agreement that cultural resources generate economic vitality by leveraging human capital and culture to generate economic vitality through tourism, crafts, and cultural attractions. The project partners, working in the field of rural development and adults learning in six various countries, raised the issue of increasing cultural and heritage tourism in rural areas in their countries and insufficient capacities of local inhabitants and wider communities in corresponding to this demand through provision of wide range of quality services. After the situation and needs analyses taken by each partner in their respective countries, they agreed to cooperate on improvement of adults education on cultural and heritage tourism. The overall aim of the project is to improve the rural adults' competencies in provision of the cultural and heritage tourism services in the partner countries. The objectives are threefold: - development of the training tool-kit for adults training, based on the hands-on learning method; - improvement of the adult educators skills in teaching adults on cultural and heritage tourism, - improvement and extending of the adult learning opportunities on cultural and heritage tourism. The target groups are the following: - adult educators, - adult learners. The results of the project are the following: - 1 training tool-kit developed, including at least 12 best practice cases (texts and videos), - 2 short-term staff trainings organized, - 48 adult educators and learners trained on cultural and heritage tourism and application tool-kit to the trainings, - 5 local multiplication events organized, - 1 international forum organized.
The overall aim of the project was to improve the rural adults' competencies in provision of the cultural and heritage tourism services in the partner countries. The objectives were threefold: - development of the training tool-kit for adults training, based on the hands-on learning method; - improvement of the adult educators skills in teaching adults on cultural and heritage tourism, - improvement and extending of the adult learning opportunities on cultural and heritage tourism. There two target groups: - adult educators, - adult learners. The project was aiming to develop the training tookitl for the adults wishing to make videos with the smartphones in promoting the rural cultural heritage. Also, the tool was dedicated for the adult trainers, who would be able to integrate the training toolkit into various training courses related with the local cultural heritage, such as production of local food, farming praciticies, production of crafts, etc.
The project idea came from the nature of the partner organisations, operating in the rural areas and working with the rural communities: farmers, craftspeople, local business people, and other local inhabitants. All of them live their daily rural life which is full of local culture heritage: local crafts, traditions, folkmusic, local food, country life style, nature, local architectre and other simple but interesting things. Some of the partners had members who provided tourism services, such as acommodation, local food products, trainings on food production and crafts, study visits and other which attract the tourists and raise the awareness on the villages and rural culture heritage. The partners raised the need to strentghen the local communities' skills in increasing the visibility of the rural areas in the social media and modern communication channels to promote the rural culture heritage for tourism purposes. As the most effective and popular way of promotion in the social meda are short video clips, the partners identified that their adult members lack of skills in producing the video by smart phones and publication them in the social media, Facebook and Youtube. The project was prepared to fill this gap.