Lights on Candelaria`s participation in Find Your Greatness APN

1. Key strategic development challenges of the city
The main challenges taken on by the Local Urbact Group in Candelaria and the working team were to maintain a focus on an integrated approach, horizontally and vertically, in the design and action of a digital marketing strategy that pivots around culture and heritage; to attract and promote innovative, smart and sustainable businesses in the municipality on this heritage basis; to encourage the building of community spirit and to promote a tourism model in line with the potential of the municipality and the Caring City archetype to which Candelaria responds.

2. Strategic brand positioning
The Candelaria Viva city brand responds to the competitive advantage resulting from the prior perception of Candelaria's brand attributes as a city of Marian tradition and its use as a product. The Candelaria Viva brand is always based on the canons of behavior that a welcoming, caring city should offer, a city that brings together cultures, welcoming, culturally active, dynamic for businesses, and a heritage reference for the cities that may represent its competitors.

3. Objectives of IAP
The main objectives have been to make Candelaria an attractive place to live and visit, improve the quality, accessibility, and functionality of its public, heritage, and natural spaces; all of it to make Candelaria a socially cohesive and inclusive town by supporting disadvantaged social groups; to generate employment through the creation and promotion of SMEs in innovative business niches and to digitize Candelaria's society and economy to improve public and private services on a human scale.

4. Main actions of IAP
In our IAP many actions were designed in the different working tables around culture and heritage, digital marketing, community spirit-building actions, support for business innovation, and those linked to tourism. The three main actions of the strategy are The implementation of digital marketing actions from an integrated and integrative approach applied to the brand attributes; the promotion of products and resources of the municipality from an integral approach and in accordance with the archetype of the city and the generation of working structures involving different stakeholders with links between them.

5. The role and activities of ULG in co-creating IAP
The ULG of Candelaria has designed the action plan, although the working team has had to refine the document to avoid duplication of actions, and each modification is validated by the ULG.  The richness of the ideas contributed is due to the ULG. The IAP responds to the needs of the municipality and/or the needs of its citizens, it is modest in its expectations, and it has also generated credibility on the firm commitment to achieving these objectives. 

6. The benefits of participating in APN FyG 
Candelaria benefits from this project in many ways: The spaces for debate are created locally and transnationally, producing feedback flows in the very design of the project and in the working methods; it provides a comprehensive approach to local problems from a multilevel analysis, local and transnational reflection from different points of view; the experience of each city, and best practices; new tools thanks to the E-University and the different training actions programmed; the feeling that you are joining concerns common to other cities and finally and very important learning the Urbact "style" of work based on integrality and participation as the very basis of a smart city model.

Learn more about Candelaria from FYG Final digital product: https://issuu.com/findyourgreatness/docs/find_your_greatness_e-book