Local identity driving traditional industry transition

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Five regional managing authorities and three regional agencies from 6 European countries (Finland, Spain, Poland, Ireland, France and Italy), have decided to join their experiences and work together to enhance the capacity of their regional authorities to design and implement better regional policies supporting innovative industrial regeneration based on local identity. LOTTI project is their chance. They all present the challenges of a traditional manufacturing and economic structure, which previously formed the basis of the cultural identity with which citizens connected, and are now facing times of transition. Transition is digital, related to industrial modernisation, and environmental, related to the green transition. Within LOTTI, they share a strong need to re-create local identities and local skill sets, and use these as the boost to new opportunities in regional smart specialisation sectors. Within the concept of high-road competiveness and supporting place-based approaches, LOTTI’s overall aim is to enhance capacity of public authorities to design and implement policies that foster an innovative, sustainable and citizen-led transition driven by industrial tradition and identity. LOTTI specific objectives, achieved through interregional exchange and connecting to S3 priorities in each region, are to support public authorities to: - Engage citizens in a pro-active approach to industrial transition, using local identity as a source of opportunity and a means of addressing backlash often present in the face of socio-economic transformation. - Re-create local identities that can encourage effective and attractive technological and non-technological innovation of traditional industrial contexts. - Connect local identity with the possibility for new jobs, businesses and entrepreneurial opportunities, based on S3 sectors and a regeneration of industrial production and premises.

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