landscape with fields and hills
Empowering rural communities to act for change

Fiastra Valley, Italy

Territory: Inner rural area
Inhabitants: 11,764
Area: 180,000 sqkm
Main occupations: Manufacturing, agriculture, forestry and fishing
Protected areas: The Monti Sibillini National Park, and the Abbadia di Fiastra Nature Reserve

The Fiastra Valley is a sparsely populated rural district, covering a hilly area characterised by ancient settlements and agricultural land crossed by the Fiastra river. The land cover is mainly arable land, with a few forests occupying mostly riparian and high-inclination areas. It is located in the inner part of Le Marche region, in central Italy, at the foothills of the Apennine mountains.

Since 2010, Borgofuturo organises the homonymous festival of “sustainability at the hamlet scale” in Ripe San Ginesio, one of the municipalities of the valley. Since 2020 the festival took a wider scale, both spatially and thematically, extending to the whole valley and triggering a participatory process to define a rural regeneration strategy for the area.

The strategy is currently being translated into action through a project named QUI Val di Fiastra, involving more than 30 partners from the area and developing around four main drivers: built infrastructure and heritage, cultural reactivation, local agriculture and artisanship, environmental education and natural heritage.

Our ambition
Given the above listed drivers of the other project active in the area, within RURACTIVE Borgofuturo wants to focus on the drivers listed to the right, both to improve what is already being done in the area and to strengthen it with further complementary actions.

In particular, while the first driver has always been the core of Borgofuturo activities, the second has recently been explored through reactivating a walking ring crossing the valley which was previously used by local shepherds to walk the cattle. Finally, sustainable agri-food systems and ecosystem management is a new frontier of regeneration which Borgofuturo wants to explore thanks to RURACTIVE. In addition, Borgofuturo shares RURACTIVE’s transversal objectives of promoting digital innovation, climate resilience and social justice in its future activities in the area.

We aim to explore and develop the topic of sustainable agri-food systems and ecosystems management as it is one of the most practiced occupations in our area and promises to have many possibilities for innovation and development.

Fiastra valley has been very open to tourism, particularly natural and cultural tourism, like in all of the Marche region. We are developing a walking ring-route that crosses all the villages and the valley. Our goal is to involve the communities, particularly accommodation facilities, to make this route sustainable and active over time.

As the core of our activities, we aim to develop new perspectives and growth opportunities for cultural activities already active in the area, by involving and collaborating with new stakeholders in the area, who can share new insights and good practices to be implemented in the area, especially to approach vulnerable groups in the area.

This makes us unique
The Fiastra valley is made up of very small villages, each on a hilltop. They seem very close to each other, each hamlet looking at one another but they all preserve strong identities and bicker with the other: the people of Colmurano are called 'Paccuccià', for a typical product linked to the use of dried apples. On the other side, Urbisaglia folks are called 'Magnagatti'.

La Maratonda is a sports-folkloric, but also fun competition that came to life along with the Borgofuturo+ valley festival. This competition challenges ancient rivalries through disciplines that can never lead to competition, but simply to encounters and exchanges.