Exploring the impacts of collaborative workspaces in rural and peripheral areas in the EU

CORAL aims to unpack the latent dynamics and impacts of collaborative workspaces (CWS) in rural and peripheral areas and integrate them as development tools in local and regional policies to open up new potentials for socio-economic development.

Whereas we have observed the rapid rise of CWS in urban agglomerations the past 15-years, there is now a gradual rise of CWS in rural and peripheral areas too.

However, there is no clear evidence about their functions, impacts and the ways that policymaking should promote the rural CWS wave and assist in linking the development of CWS with processes of local socio-economic development.

In fact, that policy link is much needed for those disadvantaged places (places that don’t matter) , as only a few EU policies (e.g. Interreg) have assisted, in a fragmented way, the development of CWS in peripheral and rural areas.

At the same time, there is an urgent need for qualified professionals in academia and the policy arena, in order to effectively promote CWS in the lagging parts of the EU and by that, open up new development futures.

CORAL envisages to provide specialized and tailor-made training to 15 young researchers to better understand and support the development processes of CWS in rural and peripheral areas, their wider impacts at the local and regional level, as well as at the level of the individual worker and the enterprise.

Moreover, through different means of dissemination and exploitation (knowledge exchange days, CORAL schools, digital platform), the impacts of CORAL aim to reach a wider audience ranging from public policymakers to private stakeholders and CWS communities across the EU.

The CORAL consortium consists of nine beneficiaries (five academic and four non-academic) and 6 partner organisations (four academic and two non-academic) from six EU Member States.