Boosting cultural heritage in rural communities through an ICT platform: the Viv@vó project

Rural regions concentrate on themselves a very rich set of ancestral traditions. The perpetuation of such traditions has been achieved through transmission between generations. Unfortunately, all this knowledge is typically elders-centered and it lacks effective processes of digitalization, storage and providing-systems for that all this heritage can effectively be perpetuated through future generations that are digital-born. From this base, it was created a project case study limited to the Portuguese Northeast region, named Viv@vó – living in the grandma's house. This paper presents the ICT platform that was created in this project and some main achievements during the project development process. Tourism and mainly experience and cultural heritage tourism are growing in tourist’s interests. Rural regions have an untapped potential for this slice of tourism industry. Rural regions have an enormous collection of ancestral knowledge that we are responsible to deliver to future generations as an inheritance to which they are entitled.The present work was developed under the Viv@vó Project: "Living in the Grandma's House", with the reference NORTE-01- 0145-FEDER-023637, financed by the Regional Operational Program of the North, Notice 02/SAICT/2016.