Rural areas are facing prospects of marginalization and peripherality in an age of globalization where the attention of governments and media focuses increasingly on the (lack of) competitiveness of urban and metropolitan regions in Europe. Many rural areas have, therefore, searched for ways to improve their position vis-à-vis other localities by mobilizing local resources and employing policy tools that are believed to foster indigenous social and economic development, including place branding. Unsurprisingly, using food as a means to profile rural localities has become widespread, with branding efforts revolving around local food festivals that commodify local cultural resources. The article attempts to illuminate the challenges faced by branding processes in rural areas through a case study of Løgstør, a small rural town in North Jutland, Denmark, which builds its branding efforts around an annual mussel festival. The analysis focuses on the relationship between stakeholders and branding strategies, and in particular aims to uncover the role of the food festival in aggravating or alleviating inherent tensions between different stakeholders and target groups. It is argued that in the case of Løgstør making a food festival pivotal, a signature event for the place branding efforts has been created, which appeals to both external and internal audiences, and that this may hold wider lessons for place-branding initiatives in other small towns across Europe.
There has been growing interest in regional policies that stimulate interactions between different sectors, often based on the concept of 'related variety'. Harmaakorpi (2006) has described the identification and development of new cross-sectoral growth trajectories as building 'regional development platforms'. This article contributes to conceptual debates about cross-sectoral regional development platforms and provides empirical analysis of attempts to create and develop such a platform. From a conceptual perspective we argue that the notion of related variety can help policymakers to identify potential combinatorial platform opportunities, but may overestimate the ability of 'related' actors to collaborate together in innovative ways, because knowledge is embedded in practice and the process of 'combining' knowledge in new activities therefore challenging. The paper illuminates the development of cross-sectoral platforms by examining the creation of new activities from a practice perspective that directs attention to the everyday activities, routines and understandings that constitute the 'doing' of economic development. We explore the development of a cross sectoral platform in the North Jutland region of Denmark, which integrates actors from the food and tourism sectors into a new food-tourism platform. We identify the dominant forms of the practices of producing food, retailing, catering, and promoting tourism, and then consider the ways in which these have changed in response to new cross-sectoral initiatives. The analysis shows that some aspects of practice are easier to change than others, and we conclude that an analytical approach inspired by practice theory can identify the requirements in 4 terms of micro-level change in the practices of actors that is required for an initiative to succeed.
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