Published on 17 May 2023
On May 8th – 11th TExTOUR partners met in Narva, Estonia, for the third steering committee meeting of the project. All participants had the chance to share their work, achievements, and future steps, and to attend a workshop and an interactive presentation of TExTOUR’s ICT platform.
Narva is the third largest city in North-East Estonia, at the very border with Russia. On the 8th of May, several partners from the TExTOUR project met at Tallinn airport, from where they reached Narva after a three hours trip by bus. It is not by chance that Narva is one of the TExTOUR pilot sites for sustainable cultural tourism development in remote areas.
The real meeting started on the 9th of May, and the keyword of the day was discovery. The partners visited the industrial site of Kreenholm, an ex-textile factory located on Kreenholm island in the middle of the Narva River. It is an immense area now used for cultural activities, such as the Narva opera festival. The second leg of the tour was a beautiful villa, originally built for the director of Kreenholm Textile Manufacture and now the headquarters of NART- Narva Art Residency.
The second half of the day was dedicated to the visit of Narva city, and of its underground casemates system. The long day of exploration ended on the seashore of the Baltic Sea.
The 10th of May was dedicated to project updates, and the keyword was dynamism. The project entered its more active phase, with the pilots implementing their sustainable tourism actions, the launch of the TExTOUR ICT platform, and the beginning of the replication process.
All project tasks are organised in groups called work packages, and each work package has a leader. Each work package leader is in charge of the successful completion of all the tasks in its task group. The day was dedicated to work package leaders to share their progress and achievements, interact with other partners, and present the next steps of their work package development.
Due to the advanced stage of the project, some tasks are already completed, such as the setup for a participatory approach to sustainable cultural tourism development, or the development of TExTOUR methodology.
Other groups of tasks are being developed now, such as the TExTOUR ICT platform. The replication process started with the successful call for replicators. The new pilots have been selected and they are going to implement the TExTOUR methodology under the tutoring of the already existing pilots.
The 11th of May was the last day of the meeting its key word was engagement. It started with an intense workshop on EU action plans for cultural tourism development delivered by the University of Bologna. The workshop was followed by the presentation of the cultural tourism lab progress.
After lunch, the pilot partners had the chance to test TExTOUR’s ICT platform and learn how to use the different services and how to upload their material. The last presentation of the day was on exploitation and upscaling strategies.
TExTOUR’s third steering committee was a valuable opportunity for the partners to meet and discuss in person, getting to know each other better and opening the road to new collaboration opportunities.
