Toolkits
The cultural traditions and heritage of every community can be an engine for driving economic development if they are preserved and shared with others. The FARM2U Collaborative® has developed a toolkit with five (5) easy-to-use guides that enable communities to identify their cultural assets and use them to build relationships with tourists that can be sustained for years to come.
The Toolkit focuses on heritage tourism, both cultural and culinary. Once your community decides what makes your “homeplace” attractive to tourists, you can create an authentic experience that will be rewarding for the visitor and community alike.
Currently our toolkits are available for download only:
Cultural Heritage as Community Development
Heritage tourism has become a multi-billion dollar industry and this guide provides easy-to-follow steps for attracting tourists to your community.
Culinary Heritage Tourism:
A delicious way to explore
This guide describes how your community can provide experiences for heritage travelers to immerse themselves in local activities that include trying traditional, local food.
Planning a Country Roads Cook-Off™:
A Recipe for Success
This comprehensive guide provides step-by-step instructions for organizing, planning and implementing a local food event. The planning tools include a manual, video and the various templates required…essential forms, press releases, rules and regs, entry forms, posters, award certificates and more.
Bringing Partners to the Table:
Building Community Partnerships
Building support and finding partners for community-based heritage events is essential to sustaining efforts over time. This kit provides insights on the difficult task of asking someone for money to help you.
Cultural Heritage – Preserving, Sharing, Fundraising
This illustrated toolkit and accompanying video demonstrate how to preserve artifacts as family treasures, as well as how to incorporate them into memorabilia to be sold as an entrepreneurial fundraising activity.
This guide helps community teams work together to identify key aspects of local culture and heritage that have inherent economic value. It provides a step-by-step process for developing an asset map – an objective view of the unique social traditions, foods, geography, history, agriculture, architecture and other unique aspects of a community that have appeal to tourists and can attract tourism dollars. Mining for Gold also helps community teams develop action strategies and build the capacity necessary for carrying out their plans. Includes sample meeting agendas, tips for meeting facilitation, and links to essential resources.