About us - Via Gastrocarpathia

Project DRANICA.24 (HUSKROUA/23/RS/2.2/021) represents the third milestone in our long-term initiative to build a sustainable platform for safeguarding and promoting the traditional crafts of our region. It builds on the results of two previous initiatives. DECC (HUSKROUA/1001/058), implemented between 2012 and 2015, mapped and analyzed the structure of the regional cultural and creative industries. KRA’GAS (HUSKROUA/1702/3.1/0027), delivered from 2019 to 2021, introduced innovative ways of interpreting craft and gastronomic heritage and resulted in the creation of the cultural route viagastrocarpathia.com.
The current initiative, DRANICA, takes the next step by focusing on the region’s unique immaterial wooden heritage.

PROJECT DRANICA – 2nd step

PROMOTING THE IMMATERIAL WOODEN HERITAGE OF THE CARPATHIAN EUROREGION. A TECHNICAL HANDBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL WOODWORKING

Acronym: DRANICA.24
Call: HUSKROUA/23/RS
Priority: P2 – A healthy and attractive border region
Project ID: HUSKROUA/23/RS/2.2/021
Project start date: 1 January 2025
Project end date: 31 December 2026
Total contracted budget: EUR 529 788,00 EUR, out of which European Union funding: 476 809,20 EUR
Co-financing sources: Interreg VI-A NEXT Hungary Slovakia Romania Ukraine 2021-2027 Programme (https://next.huskroua-cbc.eu)

The gradual disappearance of traditional crafts is a shared challenge across the region. While immaterial cultural heritage is often associated with folk music or dance, traditional building crafts are an equally vital yet frequently overlooked component. Wood lies at the heart of our regional identity, telling our story through vernacular architecture and historic structures. The exceptional level of local craftsmanship is most visibly embodied in the region’s wooden churches, where master builders achieved monumental log constructions, precisely planed and tightly sealed, using only basic hand tools. These skills represent an extraordinary cultural achievement.

Today, discussions around the shortage of skilled woodworkers tend to focus on artistic or design-oriented craftsmanship, while the loss of practical, traditional building skills is rarely addressed. Yet once such knowledge disappears, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recover. Traditional craftsmanship can only survive through continuous practice and transmission from one generation to the next.

DRANICA aims to preserve and revitalize this immaterial heritage by systematically collecting and documenting traditional knowledge through a dedicated woodworking handbook and by creating a cross-border cultural and tourism tool. This platform will actively connect specialized cultural tourists with local wood craftsmen, supporting knowledge exchange, visibility, and sustainable livelihoods.

This moment offers a unique opportunity. A new, international generation of craftspeople is emerging, combining traditional skills with contemporary design and values. Often connected to the craftivism movement, these highly skilled yet non-traditional practitioners rely on open knowledge sharing, learning through observation, copying, and emulation. By supporting knowledge diffusion and cross-border collaboration, DRANICA provides the conditions needed for traditional wood craftsmanship to remain a living, evolving practice rather than a forgotten legacy.

Overall Objective

To strengthen cross-border cooperation and improve quality of life in the region through culture and sustainable tourism by preserving and promoting the immaterial wooden heritage of the Carpathian Euroregion. This will be achieved through the development of a traditional woodworking handbook, the facilitation of knowledge transfer between local wood craftsmen and specialized cultural tourists, and the closer engagement of local communities, helping to reduce cultural and social barriers between EU Member States (Hungary and Romania) and Ukraine.

Specific Objectives

SO1 To enhance cultural knowledge of the project’s cross-border region by researching and documenting its immaterial wooden heritage. This objective aims to provide a comprehensive overview of traditional woodworking tools, techniques, and know-how, including joinery, carpentry, and wood carving.

SO2 To support effective knowledge transfer of the region’s immaterial wooden heritage to key stakeholders through the development and dissemination of dedicated learning tools. These include a technical handbook on traditional woodworking (tools, techniques, and know-how), hands-on traditional woodworking workshops, and international joint events.

SO3 To increase awareness of the project region’s cultural value and cultural tourism potential through a targeted communication campaign. This objective promotes the region as a shared cross-border destination centered on its immaterial wooden heritage, with a particular focus on connecting local wood craftsmen to a specialized tourism market of woodworkers seeking authentic skills and knowledge. Activities include dedicated web platforms and the identification and promotion of local craftsmen open to hosting short-term training experiences.

Lead partner

Project partners

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PROJECT KRA’GAS – 1st step

PROMOTION OF CRAFTS AND GASTRONOMY, AS RELEVANT COMPONENTS OF THE CULTURAL HERITAGE OF THE CARPATHIAN EUROREGION

Acronym: KRA’GAS
Call: HUSKROUA/1702
Priority: 3.1: Promoting local culture and historical heritage along with tourism functions
Project ID: HUSKROUA/1702/3.1/0027
Project start date: 1 October 2019
Project end date: 30 September 2021
Total contracted budget: EUR 646 616.35, out of which European Union funding: EUR 581 954.68
Co-financing sources: ENI CBC, Hungary – Slovakia – Romania – Ukraine ENI Cross-Border-Cooperation Programme 2014 – 2020 (https://huskroua-cbc.eu/)

Three universities and three business organizations have paired to propose an innovative approach in promoting the heritage and touristic potential of crafts and gastronomy in Hungary-Romania-Ukraine cross-border region.

At a time of globalization and cultural uniformity, heritage and creativity of crafts and gastronomy are co-creators of regional identity. As such, they are perceived as strategic “spices”, seasoning tourism development. Positioned at the intersection of Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, this area has recognizable cultural areas but, as in other parts of the world, immaterial heritage suffers from dying out of traditional crafts and gastronomy, and from lack of visibility. Offering local producers access to markets through tourism’ growth is a possible answer to these problems. As a vehicle for linking local producers with markets, we proposed in this project mapping a touristic cross-border cultural route on crafts and gastronomy, ViaGastrocarpathia.

Innovative here is not the idea of a route, but that of backing it on an anthropological analysis and then, targeting the special category of “cultural tourists”. This way, we managed to highlight the common cultural heritage, helping perceive the region more as a common cultural area, than as a sum of local cultures. Afterwards, we promoted the region not as a list of destinations, but as a common tourist destination. The project assumption was that the increase of regional market’ volume of traditional products will provide employment and funds for heritage’ preservation, strengthening regional cooperation, bringing closer communities and thinning the dividing lines between the three countries.

Overall objective

To develop the cross-border cooperation in the project region, by promoting the crafts and the gastronomic culture of the region as relevant components of the cultural heritage of the Carpathian Euroregion and as common regional tourist destinations, this way bringing closer the local communities and thinning the dividing lines between the EU members Hungary and Romania, and its neighbor, Ukraine.

Specific objectives

To conduct an anthropological analysis in the project region on the subjects of crafts and gastronomy, in order to provide a rounded view of the knowledge, customs, and evolutions of the communities.
To identify, map and test a thematic cross-border crafts and gastronomic touristic route in the project region.
To develop the project region as a common tourist destination, by supporting and promoting the mapped cross-border touristic route as a vehicle for linking local producers (crafts and gastronomy) to tourism markets.

	Babeș-Bolyai University (Romania, Cluj-Napoca) https://www.ubbcluj.ro
	Uzhhorod National University (Ukraine) https://www.uzhnu.edu.ua
	University of Miskolc (Hungary, Miskolc) http://www.uni-miskolc.hu
	Transcarpathian Enterprise Support Fund “Tes Fund” http://www.tes.org.ua
	University of Miskolc (Hungary, Miskolc) http://www.uni-miskolc.hu Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County https://www.bokik.hu

	Maramureș Museum (Romania) https://muzeulmaramuresan.ro/
	Uzhhorod National University (Ukraine) https://www.uzhnu.edu.ua
	University of Miskolc (Hungary, Miskolc) http://www.uni-miskolc.hu