In May 2026, Kastelholm Castle hosted a working visit. Thirty-six students and academics from four EUNICoast partner universities arrived to spend a week on a brief from the Museum of Åland's Cultural Heritage unit. The question they had to answer: how could the castle grow tourism around it without losing the heritage that draws visitors?
The course was EUNICoast's first blended intensive programme on cultural tourism, "Cultural Tourism and Community Engagement: Bridging Heritage Preservation and Local Involvement". It ran from 3 to 8 May 2026 after ten hours of online preparation in April. The Åland University of Applied Sciences (Finland) hosted, with the University of the Azores (Portugal), the University of Sassari (Italy) and the University of Patras (Greece) as partners. Participants earned 3 ECTS.
The tension behind the brief is familiar across Europe's islands and coastal regions. Tourism is one of their economic engines and one of their heaviest pressures. The people who look after cultural heritage depend on visitors to survive, while watching the same tourism wear away the history that makes their places worth visiting.
Mixed international teams worked through the Design Thinking "Double Diamond". The method moves from understanding a problem to defining it, then from developing ideas to delivering a workable solution. The week combined lectures, site visits to Kastelholm and the Bomarsund fortress, and a final pitch to the client.
Among respondents to the feedback survey, overall satisfaction averaged 4.6 out of 5 and likelihood to recommend reached 9.6 out of 10. Every respondent reported at least one concrete outcome, most often new skills, knowledge shared between partners, or fresh collaborations.
An academic from the University of Sassari reflected that "more than the content itself, I appreciated the communication and analytical skills that this work helped me develop." A student from the University of Patras was struck by "seeing the thought process of people who have different experiences and backgrounds." A lecturer from the University of the Azores noted that the real-world problem "enabled everyone to get involved in the tasks set." One of the Åland hosts welcomed the chance to work on "a real case" rather than an imaginary one.
This first edition is more than a single course. It shows how EUNICoast works as an alliance. The programme contributes to Work Package 2 (Education), which builds the alliance's shared educational model, and it draws on Work Package 5 (Mobility and Internationalisation) for its physical mobility component. Its theme connects directly to one of EUNICoast's five Teaching and Research Hubs, the Hub on Identities, Local Knowledge and Cultural Heritage. There, academics, researchers and students from across the alliance turn the common challenges of island and coastal communities into joint teaching and research. As the first in a series running to 2029, with later editions hosted by Patras, Sassari and the Azores, it also feeds the alliance's shared tracking of participation, mobility and learning outcomes.
