The Open School for Village Hosts European Training was not only a space to cultivate skills but the right environment for collectiveness to sprout. Yes, we are a movement!

How could Village Hosts improve their initiatives? How could Village Hosts be recognized as both a new job and a potential alternative? How could Village Hosts have a positive and relevant impact?

In the last decade design methods such as co-designing, co-creation, user experience creation, user-centred and participatory design have emerged along with experience, service, system and product design to emphasise society, community or a user - a human being as an individual. Inclusive community building, its strategies and policies are not just central to social design.

From May 15 to 19, 18 community activators from different European countries gathered in Grottole (Italy) for the first time, as part of the Open School for Village Hosts European Training.

We follow their journeys through different maturity seasons, seeking to understand their needs and allowing ourselves to get touched by their beautiful visions for thriving rural areas.

From May 14 to 21, 2023 Grottole will host the European Training of the Open School for Village Hosts, an Erasmus + project coordinated by the Casa Netural Association, together…

Among the several things to be done when approaching a community, I would like to stress two in this post: getting to know a community and co-designing with it.

Design in the 21st century is neither the subject nor object; rather, it is a method for defining why one or other solution or design intervention is needed.

In Roman religion, every place inhabited and frequented by humans is characterized by the presence of a supernatural entity: the Genius loci.

Depopulation of rural areas, caused by a combination of population loss and population aging, keeps hindering their socioeconomic development.