Changing Perspectives: The Role of Creative Industries in Social Innovation Projects to Empower Local Communities

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the notions of social life as we know them, so it is important to develop and mediate projects that meet the contexts of great social transformation we live. The COVID-19 crisis also affected rural areas that have sought to control rural exodus. However, new opportunities emerged for rural territories as the world adapted to the pandemic. In the central region of Portugal, the Association for the Integrated Development of the Mountain Villages Network, through its Mountain Villages project, seeks to promote the regional development of these cultural territories. For this purpose, it has been developing social innovation projects with enormous potential for the region’s social, economic, and cultural development. The association has begun creating two social innovation projects essential in developing the communities located in the Mountain Villages: the Queijeiras Project and the Cooperativa Coworking Spaces @Mountain Villages. This article presents both projects and emphasizes the importance of practices that lead to the positive development of society through the convening of creativity and creative industries in social innovation projects. The professional work and fieldwork carried out at the Association for the Integrated Development of the Mountain Villages Network and the Mountain Villages territories frame the study conducted, as do interviews and questionnaires with people and entities linked to the projects. The results presented in the article demonstrate how both projects are extremely valuable to understand the importance of building possibilities for the reinterpretation and empowerment of local communities that are often neglected. Furthermore, they also reveal an expansion from the local to the global, that is, an interaction of global environments with local cultures, creating an intercultural space so important in our globalized world.