Successful seminar on Wellbeing tourism and Biocultural heritage at University of Florence
On Friday 6th of May all project partners gathered at DISEI (Department of Management and Economics), University of Florence (UNIFI) to present findings from the EUniWell seed project on Advancing Wellbeing tourism.
The half-day seminar was open to visitors on site as well as online. Students from both the Linnaeus university (Lnu) and UNIFI were represented. This summary is written by one of them, Ibrahim Badmus Oluwatosin, student of the master program in health science at Lnu.
Giorgia Giovannetti, the vice president of International Relations- UNIFI Coordinator for EUniWell, opened the session, followed by Maria Elvira Mancino- Director of DISEI, and Marco Bellandi, DISEI. Some of the things mentioned during the opening remarks include: EUniWell goals to shape the future, seed funding to aid projects, starting a new course under EuniWell: “Sustainable business for Societal challenges” that will be under the pretext of wellbeing & tourism. Hence, providing the opportunity for student exchange around EUniwell web network, alliance with other university and so on.
After the opening remarks followed an introduction to the workshop by Lali Lindell, Lnu, Sweden, with explicit presentation on the concept of “wellbeing” and its 6 pillars (which are economic, social, environment, body, mind and soul), and the values of wellbeing-tourism and biocultural heritage. She also mentioned the alignment between the concept and the new Inner Development Goals (that for example emphasize being, thinking, relating, collaborating, and acting). Lali Lindells discussion involved territorial biocultural heritage and its different components for example biodiversity, cultural identity & diversity, and cultural heritage.
Later on, Silvia Scaramuzzi and Sara Gabellini (UNIFI), gave a presentation about “Advancing on the conceptualization of Biocultural Heritage Tourism”, with focus on The Iris case study and virtual circle of Biocultural Heritage, it resources and valorization (identification, design, and remuneration). According to Silvia Scaramuzzi, some of the most important features of the Iris Di-Firenze project are; extraction of essential oil, its high intrinsic value, preservation of landscape, participatory action research, participatory bottom-up approaches, and inclusive & sustainable rural territorial development.
The workshop was then continued by Emma Surman from the university of Birmingham (England). She gave a well educative and explicit presentation on “Regenerating rural skills to care for and engage with protected landscape”. It included an introduction to the Cotswolds, its landscape, Cotswold stone and the rural skills from the use of Cotswold stones (for example, edge laying, drying stone walling, coppicing, spinning & weaving). Following this presentation was a lecture titled “Examining guidelines provided to Canadian communities to host meaningful Biocultural Heritage activities" by Francoise Le Jeune from University of Nantes (France). The lecture was about holistic community based approach and cultural tourism.
Further, Alejandra Echazú Conitzer from the Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo (Bolivia) gave a presentation on Andean textiles, its history, orality and memory. Per Pettersson Löfquist from Lnu (Sweden) continued the workshop with a presentation on “Mindful walks in cultural landscape” and the case of Lises farm at the forest ́s edge. Per Pettersson discussed, the heritage and history of Lises farm, how biocultural resources can be used for wellbeing and also to preserve the heritage, and how nature serves as a form of believe and hope to people.
The workshop ended with a presentation titled “Game-based policies for culture and environment” by Leonardo Boncinelli from UNIFI. The presentation covered Gamification that works with the concept of behavior and Game based learning with the concept of preference, awareness and belief. The seminar was finalized with information on the possibilities of studying well-being tourism and biocultural heritage at Lnu and at UNIFI.
In the afternoon a closed workshop was held among the project participants to discuss the outcomes of the seminar presented above, and to discuss different possibilities on how to develop the project further.
Text by: Ibrahim Badmus Oluwatosin, student representative, Lnu. Edited by: Lali Lindell, Lnu