From data to action: Living Labs and their challenges for shaping rural policies

The Long Term Vision for Rural Areas recognizes the importance of engaging territories and local actors for addressing rural challenges through active participation and collaboration. Rural territories are complex and dynamic and demand innovative data and methods to effectively capture the complexity and support decision making toward tailored area-specific solutions. This study aims to explore processes and dynamics in the realworld context through seven Living Labs across Europe (France, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom) within the European GRANULAR project. The role of Living Labs, in this context, is shifting from the field of product innovation to a more general idea of territorial agencies, for organising policies and promoting a participatory system of local governance. The seven Granular Living Labs represent and include a variety of actors and geographical contexts. They show typical Living Lab issues, but they also have specificities because they deal with large rural territories (to varying degrees) and focus not on isolated interventions but on the broader management of the territory. This adds significant complexity, as they address a wide range of issues, including connectivity, tourism, agricultural productivity, accessibility of basic services, and involve diverse private and public actors. Within this framework, we aim to analyse the actions undertaken by these Living Labs during the first 24 months of the project, identifying the barriers they encounter and the drivers that enable their progress.