Culinary Trail

Culinary Trail supports Danube Region programme and its Specific Objective 3.3 by addressing the ethnic (its 30 ethnic groups, including Jewish heritage and heavily marginalised Roma communities) and local culinary heritage (including viniculture), including heritage in geographically remote and underdeveloped communities, thus providing significant economic opportunities for rural areas and small settlements. Culinary Trail will employ the culinary heritage as an opportunity to revitalise and diversify tourism, to promote local economic development, create employment opportunities, and encourage frugal and social innovation. It will engage minorities, but also other marginalised groups that face disadvantages on the basis of youth, old age, gender, disabilities etc. In doing that, Culinary Trail will enable the Danube Region to capitalise on its vibrant and diverse ethnic landscape, rich and complex history and cultural traditions. Culinary Trail will improve interconnection and cooperation between tourist destinations, services, products, and stakeholders, it will encourage short value chains and promote quality products from the primary sector in the Danube Region. To do that, Culinary Trail will: 1. Collect, digitalise and protect the culinary cultural heritage of its 30 ethnic groups (digital catalogue), to effectively safeguard culinary heritage and local knowledge, preserving traditional recipes, techniques, and cultural significance attached to them. 2. Develop transnational Culinary Trail route with several transnational trails spanning the Danube Region. These trails will integrate ethnic and local culinary heritage information, providing a multimedia experience through the digital trail component integrated into the digital catalogue. Trails will prioritise green mobility options such as bicycles, public transportation, electric car chargers, and water travel, promoting sustainable and environmentally friendly modes of transportation. 3. Developing transnational strategy for the protection and development of ethnic and local culinary heritage in the Danube Region. 4. It will revalorise, re-interpret, upgrade and connect the isolated and poorly visible culinary products in a joint thematic transnational cultural heritage product, by developing a business model with a transnational brand and a franchise for the Danube Region; this will include annual transnational culinary festival and two prototypes (small river boat and small food cart). 5. Establishing joint Demonstration and Training centre, with all the necessary infrastructure and equipment, will to support practical localised and transnational training and demonstration activities. 6. Three capacity-building modules (Ethnic and Local Culinary Heritage for Small Businesses, beginners and advanced sommelier skills for ethnic cuisine in the Danube Region) in physical, online, and hybrid formats will be used to train 60 participants during the project. 7. Joint Culinary Trail Innovation and Policy centre with 14 hubs (one in each Danube Region country) will connect stakeholders to promote sustainable and slow heritage tourism, harness local resources and value chains, and frugal and social innovation after conclusion of the project. 8. The centre will develop 33 transnational action plans, covering 30 ethnic groups from all 14 countries of the Danube Region, one for recent migrant groups and for risk scenarios like Covid-19 and war in Ukraine. Culinary Trail will contribute significantly to implementation of EUSDR by developing a total of 3 solutions, which will be tested in 7 pilots. During the project, we will develop a total of 34 strategies and action plans. In this, 27 organisations will cooperate across the border (19 project partners and 8 associated strategic partners). Culinary Trail will increase institutional capacity of 250 organisations due to their participation in cooperation activities across the borders. Throughout the project Culinary Trail will actively engage a variety of target groups from across the Danube Regions in its activities. NGOs (especially those advocating minorities, other disadvantaged groups, working on social cohesion, tourism and education), local businesses (especially in tourism, local crafts, culinary activities etc.) and business support organisations, public authorities (local, regional and national) and sectoral agencies, academic institutions (universities and research institutes). With a comprehensive and balanced partnership covering all 14 countries of the Danube Region and all quadruple helix organisations the project will support the PA3, PA8 and PA9 from EUSDR Action Plan and contribute to networking and experience exchange between the partners and countries, also with the support of the existing Danube Transfer Center Network.