Industrial culture as an agent of social innovation: reflections from Velenje, Slovenia

Abstract

Industrial towns are often framed as marginalized and less innovative compared with service-oriented urban agglomerations. Their specific trajectories create both opportunities and constraints for new concepts, such as social innovation. However, little is known about their innovative capacity in relation to societal and cultural norms and social capital. The objective of this article is therefore to analyse the capacity of an industrial town to generate social innovation on the case study of Velenje, Slovenia. By employing a concept of industrial culture and an interactive process of research and action with the local community, we try to link territorially embedded norms, values and social capital to producing past, present-day and possible future social innovations. Velenje can be described as ‘innovative milieu’ since many social innovations, strongly territorially and historically embedded, were developed in the town. The main drivers of these innovations seem to be socialist and industrial values, which largely persist in the modern era, also due to very engaged youth. The town‘s capacity to produce social innovation is further enhanced by a culture of collaboration. The article challenges contemporary notions of non-innovative (post-socialist) industrial towns and highlights the capability of industrial culture to unlock the local innovation potential.

Keywords:

• Industry
• small and medium-sized town
• values
• innovation capacity
• social capital
• local context
• post-socialism

Introduction

Industrial towns are increasingly framed as places of economic, social and political marginalization (Rodríguez-Pose 2018). Owing to an ‘old’ productive economy, traditional industrial cities are perceived as inherently vulnerable (Hamdouch, Demaziere, and Banovac 2017), while smaller cities lack the knowledge base to compete with larger urban environments (Wolfe 2009). In innovation theories, this is a basis for the ‘urban bias’, in which smaller cities and peripheral areas outside of large, service-oriented urban agglomerations are seen as essentially not innovative (Shearmur 2015), and ‘industrial bias’ in which cities of the post-industrial age are considered more innovative (Kennedy 2011). However, cities and municipalities have different forms of government, socio-political traditions and local political cultures, which is likely to have an impact on their resilience and ability to innovate and address development problems (Cattacin and Zimmer 2016).

The ‘industrial town’ is quite a ubiquitous spatial phenomenon in Europe. About 56% of urban population lives in small and medium-sized towns (Servillo, Atkinson, and Hamdouch 2017), which possess a larger share of industrial employment than high density urban clusters (Servillo et al. 2014). An industrial town is a particular place with specific social and historic trajectories (Gordon 2019; Kozina, Bole, and Tiran 2021) and possesses ‘industrial culture’, which encompasses tangible and intangible aspects of industrial heritage in a certain setting, potentially unlocking the local technological and social innovation potential (Rauner 1997; Görmar and Harfst 2019). This can be of a particular importance as addressing (social) innovation is becoming a focus of many EU programmes, such as EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (European Commission 2020). On the national level, some limited research is available showing that certain types of industrial towns in Switzerland (Meili and Mayer 2017) and Slovenia (Bole, Kozina, and Tiran 2019, 2020) can be very successful and innovative, especially in economic terms (high and medium-tech towns in particular). Older industrial regions were also more resilient to the global financial crisis of 2008 (Plöger and Kohlhaas-Weber 2014; Hoekstra 2017) or they had lower unemployment rates in contrast to non-industrial ones (Hoekstra 2017). This could indicate that they are more resistant to change (positive and negative), remaining locked into trajectories of slow decline (Sweeney, Mordue, and Carey 2020) or they hold certain innovative capacities rendering them to be more resilient to economic and associated social shocks.

Many economic and social problems of industrial towns can be at least tackled by social innovation, especially if mainstream state – and market-led solutions do not meet local needs (Leitheiser and Follmann 2020). There are numerous drivers of spurring non-technological innovation, ranging from multi-actor collaboration (Sørensen and Torfing 2011; Ziegler 2017), organizational culture (Anderson, Potočnik, and Zhou 2014), social and cultural norms (Grimm et al. 2013) to leadership (Mulgan 2006) or social entrepreneurship (Schöning 2013; do Adro and Fernandes 2021). Many authors (e.g. Grimm et al. 2013; Cattacin and Zimmer 2016) argue that social innovations have to be analysed against the background of their specific contexts. Cattacin and Zimmer (2016), for example, claim that local social innovations are the outcome of a political process and as such a reflection of city-specific (welfare) cultures and local governance arrangements, combining the institutional and the political perspective. These city-specific settings create both opportunities and constraints for new ideas and concepts.

Interestingly, social innovations specifically in traditional or more peripheral industrial towns have not been studied. They have been extensively studied at the firm level (Cooke and Wills 1999) while the innovation ecosystem and innovative capacity of smaller towns and traditional industrial areas are very under-researched. The scarce literature on this topic mostly focuses on the economic or entrepreneurial aspects of innovation in the periphery such as clustering of innovative firms and the role of entrepreneur networks with such concepts as ‘open’ or ‘closed’ innovation systems (Tödtling, Prud‘homme van Reine, and Dörhöfer 2011; Meili and Shearmur 2019) or ‘slow’ innovation (Shearmur 2015). Even scarcer is the research on social innovation outside the Western societies, e.g. in the post-socialist settings, where the role of innovation in tackling social concerns was found as largely underestimated due to a specific historical context (Erpf, Butkevičienė, and Pučėtaitė 2020). In addition, there were very few attempts trying to link other forms of innovations, such as social innovations, with specific societal and cultural norms and social capital, historically and territorially embedded in traditional peripheral industrial areas. Hodson (2008) attempted this by showing how sociotechnical innovations persist in older industrial areas (Teesside, UK) and can become ‘nested’ with the regionally, culturally negotiated responses to outside pressures. However, available literature on the innovation capacity of industrial towns is still obviously scarce.

However, contrary to the many benefits the literature rarely articulates that social innovation can also have a ‘dark side’ that challenges normative assumptions about their positive contributions to urban development (Phills, Deiglmeier, and Miller 2008). Nicholls, Simon, and Gabriel (2015) advocate the need to be aware that social innovation from one stakeholder perspective may look and feel very different from another. For this reason, social innovation in cities should always take a multitude of different urban stakeholders into account (Nicholls and Murdock 2012). Building on relational thinking in urban studies, Bartels (2020) developed the relational approach to social innovation to enhance capacities for transforming these relational dynamics by co-producing actionable knowledge with local actors. However, he admits that the relational approach to social innovation is conceptually promising in this respect, but its foundations and practices need to be further developed.

The objective of this article is to analyse the capacity of a traditional industrial town to generate social innovation. By employing a concept of industrial culture and an interactive process of research and action, we try to establish the link between territorially embedded social and cultural norms and social capital on one hand and producing past, present-day and possible future social innovations on the other hand.

Specifically, three research questions will be answered:

1. How were local social innovations territorially and historically embedded?

2. How industrial and other cultural values, norms and traditions influence the capacity of producing social innovation?

3. How do shared expectations and visions influence urban transformation and new path development?

The research was performed in Velenje, a medium-sized industrial town in the north-eastern Slovenia (pop. 30,000). The town was chosen as a case study as it is one of the most industrialized towns in Slovenia with almost 60% of its workplaces in manufacturing, mining and construction (Bole, Kozina, and Tiran 2020). In addition, it possesses prominent tangible and intangible industrial culture (Kozina, Bole, and Tiran 2021), a high level of social sustainability (Tiran et al. 2019) and is amongst the most technologically advanced and innovative towns in Slovenia (Kozina and Bole 2018). With such characteristics, it is a suitable setting to evaluate the role of industrial culture in producing non-technological innovations.

Literature review

The role of local context for social innovation

Conventional notions of innovation are often narrowly associated with higher efficiency, global competitiveness, technological progress and pursuit of profit. In contrast, social innovation as an emerging field come up with new ideas, or apply old ideas to new contexts, in ways which lead to useful outcomes, and have thus been reinterpreted through a ‘social’ lens more attuned to economic redistribution, political empowerment and social inclusion (Thompson 2019). Social innovation can be understood in different ways, as an output (e.g. as a result of new social practices and experiences, or changes in established set of rules), or as a process (e.g. fostering more inclusive practices). The two fundamental features of social innovations are (1) that they are civil society-initiated as a response of society to a certain need, a desire, an aspiration, or a quest for solution and (2) that they emerge at meso-social or micro-social levels, so the response of society is constructed locally (Fontan, Klein, and Tremblay 2008). Social innovation is often described as a ‘quasi-concept’ (TEPSIE 2014); various definitions mostly stress the complexity of social innovation, the centrality of cooperation and the relationship between different actors within civil society, business and government, and enhancement of the society’s capacity to act (e.g. BEPA 2014; TEPSIE 2014).

Many authors agree that social innovation have a transformative power in urban development processes (Moulaert et al. 2005; d‘Ovidio and Pradel 2013; Blanco and León 2017; Bartels 2020). We can understand them as a way to fight social exclusion providing resources and empowerment to communities and promoting new ways of participation (Pradel-Miquel 2017; Poljak Istenič 2019) such as social entrepreneurship (Van Dyck 2012), crowdfunding (Langley et al. 2020) that can represent the needed nexus between social finance and social innovation (Moore, Westley, and Nicholls 2012), urban agriculture (Pickard 2018), and so on. Ardill and Lemes de Oliviera (2018) designed a more specific review (2002–2018) of social innovation in urban spaces, which indicates that research in the spatiality of social innovation can be grouped into three major themes: (1) spatial planning and community development; (2) governance; (3) co-production and service design. Their findings suggest that in general the collaboration of end users in place-based development is central to this process of urban change and that the process is as significant as the outcome.

The success of social innovations is highly dependent on the so called socio-territorial capital of local community (Klein, Fontan, and Tremblay 2008). Their ability is to not only influence the society‘s capacity to develop innovations and produce growth but also to adapt to the changes induced by different types of innovations (Fontan, Klein, and Tremblay 2008). This refers to local community‘s political ‘culture‘ and institutional thickness (participation of leaders, potential for local support, the organizational capacities of the performers of collective actions, coalition building, specific constellations of actors, lobbies, government decisions) (Klein, Fontan, and Tremblay 2008; Brandsen et al. 2016), social factors (freedom, diversity and density of contacts) (Brandsen et al. 2016), financial resources available (Klein, Fontan, and Tremblay 2008) and the capacity of ensuring social collaboration links (Klein 2009).

Pradel-Miquel (2017) argues that the role of social innovation in transformative urban processes is better understood if we take into consideration the local governance system and the history of counter-culture. Historically, there have been major differences between countries in the ways in which they have organized and sustained innovation within their national economies (Freeman 1995), where urban development has an important feedback effects (Carter 1988; Pumain, Paulus, and Vacchiani-Marcuzzo 2009). However, Hamidi and Zandiatashbar (2019) report a lack of direct evidence on innovation productivity on lower spatial scales. Owing to weak theoretical base and lack of clarity, evaluation of the research and formulation of guidelines for territorial innovation policies is limited, especially in small and medium-sized regions (Andersson and Karlsson 2006).

There is rare evidence on social innovation in industrial towns outside big agglomerations. Gros-Balthazard and Talandier (2020) only recently reported that social innovation could play in the renewal of productive economy in medium-sized industrial towns in Europe. They believe that their favourable size influences professional and personal interrelation between entrepreneurs, researchers, inhabitants, decision-makers and elected officials as a favourable basis to re-think a new productive path, based on values, social and environmental impacts more than profit and capitalization. This view is in line with the notion of Mulgan (2006) that social innovation is likely to be most successful when there is close involvement of people with the strongest understanding of needs.

Industrial culture as a possible source for social innovation

Industrial culture is a surprisingly low-key concept, rarely employed in the geography of innovations. Bole (2021) proposes the study of five main aspects of industrial culture research: material, social class, anthropological, institutional and evolutionary. For example, the anthropological aspect encompasses industrial latent knowledge and tacit skills of the people, such as non-explicit and non-academic knowledge of labourers (Rauner 1997) that lead them to be resourceful, adaptable and prone to experimentation. Social-class perspective defines industrial culture as a way of life and a class consciousness (from manual labourers to engineers to industrial capitalists). Byrne (2002) stated that industrial culture is incredibly resilient and can persist in the post-industrial era. He identified social and ecological movements as a residual part of industrial culture and essentially as social innovations, improving quality of life to the local communities. Stories, ideas, meanings, orientations and practices structured around industrial development or a local resource such as coal or oil can affect the community to start with sociotechnical innovations; for instance, Eaton (2016) describes how former energy-extracting towns became prominent in bioenergy production.

The evolutionary perspective of industrial culture sees different future development paths of the city, town or region through innovations that occur mostly from related fields (e.g. connected to past industry). For example, Gwosdz, Domański and Bilska-Wodecka (2020) used the concept of ‘localised capabilities’ (local social, cultural and institutional features) to create new development paths. Based on the case study of three Polish industrial towns they state that strong civic and educational traditions and a positive local identity can be seen as new development factors originating from their industrial activity. In the institutional perspective industrial culture is bundled together with norms, traditions and social conventions as part of informal or ‘soft’institutions (Rodríguez-Pose 2013). In industrial settings, they often originate from specific norms developed in the workplace, such as solidarity, labour-union work, comradery and volunteering (Kozina, Bole, and Tiran 2021). They underpin social capital and build trust, which can mobilize entrepreneurs and lead to new (social) innovations.

According to Görmar and Harfst (2019, 4), ‘industrial culture’ is grounded in the specific institutionalized routines of industrial structures, their incorporated conventions, beliefs, and production patterns, and the interlinked social factors beyond the factory itself. Especially intangible aspects of industrial culture can foster innovation capacity in the community: the crossover of traditional industrial values do not always constrain but can also cultivate a culture of change and innovative solutions for present social and economic problems (Harfst, Wust, and Nadler 2018). Such view is similar to scholars who highlight the central role of culture as a source or repertoire of new strategies of action (Swidler 1986), for example in entrepreneurial and innovative practice (Lounsbury, Gehman, and Glynn 2019). As an example of non-material aspects of industrial culture Kozina, Bole, and Tiran (2021) notice embedded values such as solidarity, tolerance, multiculturalism, mutual respect, comradery and equality. Those values are incorporated into socio-political structure of industrial towns and its inhabitants and manifested in diverse social practices (Gordon 2019).

Abovementioned research makes links between industrial culture, new development and creativity. To only attempt to connect industrial culture with the urban social innovation system was made by Gros-Balthazard and Talandier (2020). In the French mid-sized town of Romans-sur-Isere they observed how the past (industrial) economic activities were embedded in social structures and how they were a catalyst for the formation of new organizational forms and new services and products serving the local needs. For instance, they mention the formation of new labelling scheme for the town‘s social economy, new practices of citizen collaboration in the assessment of development impacts, and so on.

Byrne (2002) stipulates that the industrial culture is a very territorial (place-based), connected to the ‘structure of feeling’ and ‘way of life’ that often challenges the notion of global consumerist capitalism. In this vein, the dominant narrative of industrial culture is related to those narratives of social innovation, which propose some alternative economic arrangements that challenge the current neoliberal, capitalist system of perpetual economic growth (Wittmayer et al. 2019). So the coupling of the concepts of industrial culture and social innovations in research seems as a logical next step.

Research design

Industrial culture is understood here in terms of the five basic aspects presented by Bole (2021). They range from material to social class (values, preferences, identities), anthropological (tacit knowledge and skills), institutional (norms, rules and habits) and evolutionary aspects (experiences and stories). Different elements of industrial culture can be seen as an asset for the emergence of social innovations that address pressing social needs, enhance internal capabilities or empower local communities.

We draw our understanding of social innovation in this article based on the TEPSIE project, which defines social innovation as new approaches to addressing social needs, which are social in their means and in their ends, they engage and mobilize the beneficiaries and help to transform social relations by improving beneficiaries’ access to power and resources (TEPSIE 2014).

Our approach broadly follows guidelines of Jessop et al. (2013) who argue that social innovations research should set up an interactive process of research and action. The methodology roughly consists of two parts.

In the first part, we analysed the local history of social innovation from 1945 by delimiting the main time periods, and identifying, categorizing and describing the social innovations by a desk-based research. Local activities were recognized as socially innovative if they met five core criteria: novelty, addressing social need, being put into practice, engaging and mobilizing beneficiaries, and transforming social relations (TEPSIE 2014). We were interested in identifying their initiators, contributors involved, and especially broader and specific (local) circumstances – which societal challenges or needs were they meant to meet and how. Expressions of industrial culture as a potential source of creating social innovation were extracted by analysing 23 semi-structured in-depth interviews about urban development with key local professionals based on the quadruple helix structure (public authority, business representatives, science and culture professionals, and civil society), which is a commonly used concept for involving relevant stakeholders in urban and regional development (Cavallini et al. 2016). The interviews were designed to elicit collective knowledge, memories, emotions, and reflections relating to socialism, industrialism, and post-industrial development. We focused on the intangible aspects of industrial culture, such as values, norms, traditions and social capital.

In the second part, we tried to activate the territorial social capital, simulated how the community creates practical social innovations from residual and emergent industrial culture and co-produce new knowledge that has benefits for both researchers and local community. We followed principles of participatory action research (Chevalier and Buckles 2013). Between February 2019 and April 2019, we organized two workshops in the local community with 17 local representatives (also selected by the quadruple helix model): at the first one, they verified and supplemented the list of local social innovation (pre-recognized by our desk-based research), explore the role of industrial culture in their creation, and identified the biggest problems of the town, while at the second one, they were searching for potential solutions for those problems – new ideas for social innovations – firstly by idea generation and then by idea development. Participants worked in groups on each of these exercises, worksheets and prompt cards were used as tools to stimulate ideas and discussion, and enable participants to document their work (see Gordon 2019). At the workshop, we drew on broader notions of innovation, which are usually marginalized within the hegemonic discourse of innovation: different ways of thinking, creative problem solving, exploitation of a good idea and artistic or intellectual novelty (Blake 2010). The used approach also enabled us to evaluate how can shared expectations and visions influence new path development (Table 1).

Table 1. Industrial culture as a possible source for local social innovation.

Industrial culture		Social innovation		Town of Velenje
Aspects	Description	Features	Description
Material	Industrial heritage such as buildings, infrastructure, and specific types of industrial landscape	Novelty	A social innovation is new to the context in which it appears	New services
Values, preferences, and identities	Traditional values originating from organizational routines in factories	From ideas to implementation	Ideas that have been put into practice	New practices
Tacit knowledge and skills	Non-codified knowledge shared and passed on informally within workers’ collectives	Meets a social need	Social innovations are created with the intention of addressing a social need in a positive or beneficial way	New processes
Norms, rules, and habits	Past industrial activity transcending institutions that affect the present social and economic behaviour of industrial communities	Engage and mobilize beneficiaries	Beneficiaries are involved or engaged in the development of the social innovation or in its governance	New rules and regulations
Experiences and stories	They shape memories of industrialism and recognize the temporal dimension of industrial culture from an evolutionary perspective	Transform social relations	Improving the access to power and resources of specific target groups and challenge the unequal or unjust distribution of power and resources	New organizational forms

Results

Local social innovation from past to present

The history of local social innovations can be divided and examined across four, partly overlapping major periods with common political, economic and social characteristics. The chapter stresses out the main social innovation (for a full list, see Table 2) and their connection to elements of industrial culture, which have solved the town’s challenges and needs and had the biggest and long-term impact on the quality of life in the community.

Table 2. List of social innovations in Velenje.

Type	Social innovation	Year of start/duration	Initiators	Operators and main contributors
New practise	Shock work	1945–1969	Coal mine, local authorities	Coal mine, local authorities, miners, local inhabitants
New rules and regulations	Local self-contribution	1970–1985	Federal government, municipality	Municipality, local districts
New practise	Urban gardening sites	1974	Coal mine, municipality	Coal mine, municipality
New organizational form	Local environmental movement	1987−1995	Civil society (individuals, cultural workers)	Civil society (associations), municipality, research institute, syndicates, companies
New service	Pippi Longstocking Festival	1990	Inter-community friends-of-youth association, local cultural centre	Numerous local institutions from all sectors
New organizational form	Youth Centre	1997	National government, local student club	Local youth centre, municipality
New practise	Holiday work for the youth (‘Čisto moje Velenje’)	2002	Regional youth NGO	Regional youth NGO, municipality
New organizational form	Regional business incubator (‘SAŠA Inkubator’)	2007	National government	Municipality, regional development agency, EU
New service	Free city bus service (‘Lokalc’)	2008	Municipality	Municipality, few local companies, bus service operator
New organizational form	Municipal charity commission	2009	Municipality	Municipality, NGOs, local social work centre
New service	Office for paying bills without provision (‘Mestna blagajna’)	2010	Municipality	Municipality, banking service provider
New practise	Revitalizing former bakery	2012	Local artists	Local student club, local youth centre, municipality
New service	Bicycle-sharing system (‘Bicy’)	2012	Municipality	Municipality, local tourism board
New service	Free ice-skating rink	2013	Municipality	Municipality, NGOs
New practise	House of bands	2014	Local youth centre	Local youth centre, municipality
New practise	Free spaces for societies	2014	Municipality, NGOs	Municipality
New organizational form	Volunteering group (‘Udarnik MC Velenje’)	2015	Local youth centre	Local youth centre, municipality
New process	Innovative educational programmes (‘Planet generacij’, ‘Vzorčno mesto’)	2017	Local artists, local educational centre	Local educational centre, municipality
New service	Summer holiday childcare	2018	Inter-community friends-of-youth association	Inter-community friends-of-youth association, local youth centre, local sports association, municipality
New service	Free demand-responsive service for the elderly and physically impaired (‘Kamerat’)	2018	Local senior club	Municipality, local volunteering group
New service	Online citizen participation platform (‘Sooblikujmo Velenje’)	2018	Municipality	Municipality, citizens
New service	Phone line for seniors (‘Kr povej’)	2020	Local volunteering group	Local volunteering group, youth centre, municipality

Source: own elaboration by the authors and local workshop participants.

The construction of new town in the Yugoslavian socialist system (1945–1990)

The development of Velenje is inseparably linked with the coal mining, which started in the middle of the nineteenth century after a thick lignite seam was discovered. However, the mining intensity was low for decades and Velenje remained a market town until the middle of twentieth century.

The rapid growth of Velenje and transformation from miner’s colony to a regional centre started in the new socialist Federal People‘s Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1950s when technological improvements enabled increased excavation of coal and powerful political elite tried to establish an exemplary socialist city – ‘a social utopia’ (Hudales 2015). The construction of the new town was to a large extent encouraged by the shock labour. It first appeared in the months after the Second World War in whole Yugoslavia as a part of post-war reconstruction, inspired by the practices of the Russian post-October revolution tradition. In Velenje, first such actions were mostly limited to increasing the coal mine production. They appeared aboveground 1950 onwards, when the coal mine got new, ambitious management structure, led by Nestl Žgank (Hudales 2015). To accelerate building a new, modern socialist town according to principles of International style and the garden city model (Poles 1999; Grünkranz 2019), the local leaders established shock brigades, where people, influenced by a heavy propaganda (some kind of ‘mandatory volunteerism’), worked enthusiastically in numerous infrastructure projects: regulating rivers, building roads and recreational facilities, landscaping etc. In exchange, they were granted awards and benefits, such as a right to get a free apartment. The results were concrete and the new city centre was opened already in 1959, known as a ‘socialist miracle’, while the construction of the town and massive immigration continued rapidly also in the following decades. Even when shock work began waning elsewhere in Yugoslavia in the 1950s, Velenje continued to nurture it until the very end of the 60’s; up to 87% of the local working population participated in shock working actions (Hudales 2015).

Despite strong ideological connotation and ‘top-down’ organization, the shock labour in Velenje could be classified as a social innovation due to numerous long-term social impacts, tangible and intangible results. The essence of shock work was not just in saving money and physically constructing the town, but especially in community building and changing the mind-set of the inhabitants, encouraging social cohesion, enthusiasm and elements of industrial culture, such as collective consciousness, solidarity, diligence and equality (Hudales 2015), which increased social capital, also noted in other studies (Ograjenšek and Cirman 2015; Paskaleva and Cooper 2017). Also our interviewees see the shock work in a very positive light and mark it as one of the constitutive elements of the town‘s development, still being a source of pride and local identity.

Shock work was a cement, which really connected local inhabitants. (science and culture professional, D8)

In the 1970s, shock work actions were replaced by local self-contribution. The mechanism was a part of Yugoslavian self-management socialist system on the community level (Leonardson and Mirčev 1979) where local inhabitants were able to democratically decide on improving the quality of living environment by allocating part of their income, which can be classified as a collective expression of solidarity. Velenje was one of the first communities in Slovenia which adopted this mechanism: local people voted on referenda four times (1970, 1975, 1980 and 1985) for building infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, playgrounds, sewage system, and so on (Kljajič 1999; Lukaček 2019).

Environmental crisis and movement for ecological, social and political justice (1985−1995)

From 60s to 80s, the town of Velenje rapidly grew spatially, economically and demographically. The coal mine largely increased its annual production to 5 million t/yr (Kljajič 1999) but the development was not environmentally sustainable. Coalmining and electricity generation made the Velenje basin one of the most polluted areas of Slovenia by the 1980s, heavily affecting air, rivers, soil and woodlands (Špeh and Plut 2001) and causing subsidence of the surface and disappearing of villages (Šterbenk 1999). In the second part of the 1980s, the reaction from the emerging civil society followed, which corresponds with the nation-wide democratization processes. After the announcement of projected radioactive waste disposal site in the nearby woods in 1986 (in the months after Chernobyl nuclear disaster), concerned inhabitants started to demand a better quality of living environment, firstly by public meetings, round tables and artistic performances (Rezman 2020). On 8 November 1987, the mass protest on the main square occurred which was attended by around 15,000 people (half of the local population), which symbolizes the emergence of the local environmental movement (Ževart and Šterbenk 2017).

With wide citizens’ support, and clear and evidence-based demands, the movement outgrew environmental field and caused long-term environmental, political and economic changes. In 1987, it spurred the first environmental referendum in Yugoslavia in one of the surrounding villages, where over 80% of the voters supported the initiative for the ecological remediation of the nearby Šoštanj Thermal Power Plant. In 1988, the regional ecological society was founded and the municipal section of the Green Party of Slovenia a year later. The movement is responsible for the environmental remediation, transition to cleaner technologies and diversification of the economy, which happened in the following years. The accumulated local knowledge was the foundation for the establishment of the ERICo Research Institute in 1988 and Environmental Protection College in 2006 (Ževart and Šterbenk 2017). After the movement reached its primary goals, its power and activities slowly started to fade.

The example of environmental movement in Velenje basin demonstrates that extremely positive changes can be achieved if the various stakeholders in the local community (businesses, local authorities, civil society, research institutions) collaborate and form new power bases, develop new public discourses, cement new solidarities and social groupings (see Smith 2014). The case also stresses the power of ‘bottom-up’ civil initiatives and the importance of mobilization of the entire local community, which has led to positive and far-reaching changes, not only in the environmental but also political and economic field. Owing to its transformative power and ability to suggest novel solutions to new issues, the local environmental movement can be marked as a social innovation, largely stemming from the local industrial culture, especially its collectivism.

Another important dimension of the movement from the social innovation perspective was its ability to improve multi-actor collaboration, which our interviewees marked as an important asset of the town, believing to originate both from the shock labour and the environmental movement. Many fields in the town thrive on the idea of networking and community building as people are used to stand together and cooperate. In addition, interviewees, especially from the business sector, testify that the local authorities are open to suggestions from the citizens and is being participatory and inclusive in relation to various social groups and interests.

It is perfectly normal in Velenje to find a miner, doctor, professor, and a junkie sitting at the same table. (science and culture professional, D12)

Transition period − paving the way for youth (1990–2007)

The period of transition after the breaking-up of the Yugoslav federation and Slovenia‘s independence marks the transition from self-governing socialism and a socialist economy to a democratic political system and market economy. It should be noted that Slovenia opted for a gradualist approach to transition (Rojec et al. 2004; Bohle and Greskovits 2007) and that the collapse of Yugoslav market did not significantly damage Slovenian or Velenje‘s economy, already well-placed on foreign markets (Uvalić 2018).

However, gradual democratic and social changes highlighted certain needs in the town. One of them was solving the lack of a space for the youth for socializing and creativity. After extensive dialogue with the municipality, young people, organized around the very engaged local student club (founded already in 1957), were given the spaces of the present-day eMCe plac cultural club in 1996. Soon after, numerous youth programmes and activities emerged. Immediate after the national government enabled the establishment of youth centres in 1997, the Youth Centre of Velenje was founded, one of the first public institutes of its kind in Slovenia; it started developing programmes in international mobility and the social field, while also organizing cultural, educational and entertainment events and festivals. In 2020, it had 15 employees, and diverse portfolio of programmes and activities (hotel, volunteering club etc.). They maintain a high level of cooperation with municipality and other local youth organizations. Such highly intertwined local youth ecosystem is also manifested in highly developed local youth policy with the Youth Local Development Programme, which is being developed every five years.

There are also many other signs of maintaining ‘youth spirit’ in the town by enabling quality and diverse leisure time activities for the youth and promoting industrial and socialist values, such as tolerance, solidarity and diligence. Pippi Longstocking Festival, the biggest and oldest Slovenian children‘s festival, already held on in 1990. In 2002, summer holiday work for high school students was introduced, a practice that is still being successfully carried out today. All these youth practices and institutions are being run by numerous local actors from civil society and local government, confirming the notion of collaborative capacity of the town.

After Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004, Velenje also adopted some good practices in the area of micro entrepreneurism, with the regional business incubator leading the way. ‘SAŠA incubator’ was launched in 2007, following the model of company start-up accelerators. The purpose of the incubator is to retain young talents in the region, encourage launching new companies, and offer support in their speedy development and growth. In 2015, a local entrepreneurship centre started to operate within the incubator; in five years, 53 companies were established and 74 workplaces were created (Saša inkubator 2019).

Our interviewees stressed that the youth have been an important protagonist in preserving industrial and socialist values in town and have been very creative. For example, a renovation of the town’s open-air cinema was organized by the local youth centre on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the city centre in 2009. Younger interviewees coming from start-up companies stress that the town supports them through numerous institutions and programmes and makes sure young people participate in the economic, social and cultural life.

The youth sector is extremely prevalent … There are tons of charity activities organized by young people. It is also visible in the events, for example the Kunigunda Festival of Youth Culture. There is also the Youth Council, which operates well. In short, the younger generation is very engaged. (civil society, D9)

Response to economic crisis and neoliberalism (2008–)

Another milestone from the evolutionary perspective of local social innovation was the 2008 global financial and economic crisis. On one hand, due to focus on coalmining and energetics and the transformation of Gorenje, a major household appliance manufacturer, into globally competitive company, Velenje was not as heavily affected as other Slovenian towns (Bole, Kozina, and Tiran 2019). On the other hand, the town has been involved in the wider social–economic and political currents in recent years, marked by the liberalization and privatization of the economy, decentralization of the authorities, combined with emerging individualism and competitiveness. The principles of tolerance, multiculturalism, solidarity and social equality that had been the foundation of the town have been fading (Kozina, Bole, and Tiran 2021). With the arrival of new ownership or management from other parts of Slovenia or even abroad (a sale of Gorenje to Chinese giant Hisense), also the corporate social responsibility is diminishing (Kozina 2020).

The town’s flexibility in relation to the social challenges can be measured with social innovations which emerged since the start of the crisis: their common feature seems to be the concern for the vulnerable and marginalized groups. After first social problems appeared in the town when Vegrad, the biggest regional construction company, went bankrupt in 2009 and around 600 local workers lost their jobs, the charity commission was established by the municipality involving representatives of numerous institutions, discussing solutions for preventing social exclusion and poverty and allocating charity funds. In the following years, numerous innovative practices emerged, especially in the field of social services (e.g. youth volunteer group, holiday day care for children) and mobility (e.g. free city bus, free demand-responsive shuttle for elderly, bike sharing). Almost all these services are offered free of charge for the local inhabitants and promote social inclusion, intergenerational and intercultural dialogue and address vulnerable and marginalized groups (children, the youth, the elderly, people with disabilities, underprivileged). It seems that the local authorities, who initiated or supported most of these practices, leant and partly returned to its industrial and socialist roots and values, such as solidarity and equality, on which the new town was founded.

Throughout our short history, people have never been left in need of help or on their own. People have never been regarded in any other way than deserving a certain quality of life. Of course, these values have continued to be nurtured and developed here. And I think we are still living according to these values today. (public authority, D17)

Among practices in the social field, a highly developed and formalized volunteering also stands out as continues the tradition of shock labour. A group of 70 young volunteers, organized within the local youth centre (‘Udarnik MC Velenje’), provide free help to elderly and socially deprived (for any work at home and around the house, e.g. housework, food delivery, grass mowing, forest clearing, snow shovelling …). Other reflections of volunteering spirit, mutual respect and solidarity include the Velenje Brigadiers Society, who maintain and promote the spirit of the shock work actions, the local scout organization with its annual mass camping holidays, and occasional shock work actions in the town. These examples clearly show the persistence of local industrial culture, being extremely resilient even in the post-industrial age. Moreover, Velenje has been holding a national title ‘Volunteer-friendly municipality’ for seven years, while the volunteer group received the ‘Apple of Inspiration’ award from the president of Slovenia in April 2020 (mlad.si 2020).

The town showed a high level of responsiveness and societal resilience also during the COVID-19 pandemics; at the start of the first wave in spring 2020, the youth volunteer group was immediately activated for food distribution, phone line for seniors was established and the town’s main hotel served as quarantine for Slovenians who returned from COVID-19 hotspots around the world – placing the city of Velenje on the top of Slovene municipalities (Skupnost občin Slovenije 2020).

Developing ideas for future social innovations

To test how can the residual and emergent industrial culture, presented in the previous chapter, be used for co-creation of social innovation, we tried to develop three social innovations with local community members which correspond to the major current issues in the town. The most pressing issues were selected ‘bipolar’ and vulnerable economy (which rests on two large industrial systems – Gorenje and coal mine – that employ almost half of the town’s working population), out-migration of the educated young population and unclear future after the coal mine closure, which could already happen in 2030.

A possible way for the first problem was searched in the field of diversifying the local economy and providing jobs, resulting in a proposal for establishing a fish farm in the Lake Šalek area (nearby Velenje). The lakes, which are of anthropogenic origin, caused by intensive coal mining, are recognized as a tangible element of industrial culture and have already been transforming into a recreational area (Šterbenk et al. 2017), so any kind of idea for further regeneration should be positively accepted in the local environment. In addition, an idea of fish farm is founded on existing entrepreneurial culture in the town (Pipan 2020). A fish farm would be based on a public-private partnership, employing up to 80 people. A farm could also be a part of the plan of the mine closure, securing funds for a business start-up. If such an idea were to be realized, it would have many benefits for the local community: besides new jobs (also for the low-skilled and unemployed), it would ensure efficient use of natural resources (also as a compensation for lost arable land), and provide an incentive for strengthening new economic branches that were being slowed down due to the predominant role of two major companies. A shortcoming of the idea is that it is designed around founding a company, associated very closely with individual entrepreneurship and market solutions, which could contradict the rationale behind the social innovation concept (Moulaert et al. 2017).

As a potential solution for ‘brain drain’, a cross-generational mentoring programme was suggested, which tries to access and secure the tacit knowledge, building on existing competences, sense of community, intergenerational dialogue and solidarity. The idea behind is that older workers would guide new, younger ones for a few years until they retire. In exchange for not extending their retirement age, they would be given an additional financial incentive. Such a mechanism, managed by a business incubator or employment office, would help young, educated people to capitalize on their know-how and stay in their home town, help employers to recognize the potential and ideas of young people, secure existing knowledge and bridge the gap between the economy and educational institutions. Besides the fact that idea is largely built on existing industrial culture, it is also in line with Klein, Fontan, and Tremblay (2008) notion that knowledge is not only scientific but also social, which calls for interrelations between the knowledge production organizations and the social actors.

As a possible solution to dealing with social issues in the future, which could arise after coal mine closure, building up the NGO sector was proposed, making it less dependent on voluntary work, with a higher number of professional staff. An idea is promising as the NGO and volunteering scene in the town is already very strong and valued, while the financial support for NGOs in Slovenia is lower than in the most developed countries and is overly dependent on voluntary work (CNVOS 2020). Unfortunately, the idea remained on a very general level and without concrete steps for its implementation.

Discussion

In its relatively short history, Velenje produced many innovations to cope with economic, societal and environmental challenges, largely stemming from the local industrial culture. With 22 recognized practices, services, processes, organizational forms and rules/regulations between 1945 and 2020, characterized as socially innovative and produced in a highly collaborative manner, the town’s past and present capacity to produce social innovation can be thus marked as high. The notion of the innovative spirit of the town was also confirmed on the local participatory workshops where some promising proposals for social innovation were developed. One may find such finding as surprising since small and medium-sized (industrial) towns are inherently perceived as non-innovative and problematic compared with bigger, service-oriented settings (Wolfe 2009; Kennedy 2011; Shearmur 2015; Hamdouch, Demaziere, and Banovac 2017). The Velenje case serves as a contrary evidence and challenges current perceptions of industrial (post-socialist) towns.

Most social innovations in the town were territorially and historically embedded as they were directly related to the societal challenges and were specific in the national or even the international context. The town has gone through few turbulent periods and shocks but has always found paths to overcome the challenges so far. The main three milestones were a need to construct the town with a high residential quality after 1945, environmental crisis in the 1980s and economic crisis with neoliberal threat after 2008. All these periods required decisive response from the community, which in all cases led to innovative place-based solutions, founded on the ones from the past and tightly related to the town’s industrial culture, with a long-term economic, social and environmental impact. This confirms notion that social innovations are highly embedded in their environment (Cattacin and Zimmer 2016).

The shock work in the 1950s and 1960s not only helped to construct the town. This ‘co-creation’ also served as a means to enhance social cohesion, collectivism and local identity and thus strengthen social capital of a local community. Despite its ‘dark side’ through some interpretations about its non-volunteering nature, the shock work in Velenje is seen in a positive light and is still being nurtured by well-organized voluntary actions of highly engaged youth, also supported by the municipality (see also Ograjenšek and Cirman 2015; Paskaleva and Cooper 2017). We argue that the collective spirit of the shock work transformed into the local environmental movement in the late 1980s, which was another expression of industrial culture: it not only improved living conditions but also collaboration capacity of the local community by social mobilization and (re)producing a sense of group belonging (see Klein, Fontan, and Tremblay 2008). This movement serves as a good example how involvement of wide range of actors, cooperation and learning ability created an ‘innovative milieu’ (Drewe, Klein, and Hulsbergen 2008; Matteaccioli 2008) where the socio-territorial capital led to development as actors worked together with the same aim of their intervention logic (Fontan, Klein, and Tremblay 2005), whereas the eruption of social innovation after the economic crisis from 2008 onwards was rooted in the decisive reaction of the municipality, founded on (reinforced) industrial-socialist values which led to numerous innovations in the later years with a high level of cooperation between the local government and civil society, improving access to power and resources of specific target groups. However, the question remains to what extent these solutions helped to achieve urban transformation and contribute to well-being of the local population compared to innovations in the economic field and whole local economy.

Such a high capacity of generating social innovation in the town could be attributed to the range of norms, values, conventions, beliefs and traditions, which have been supported and are embedded in various local institutions (municipality, schools, companies, societies, cultural organizations etc.). This industrial culture is tightly connected with industrial and socialist past and can be characterized by diligence, solidarity, tolerance, collectivism, mutual trust and equality. The collective memory is probably what keeps combined trajectories of socialism and industrialism alive and in a positive light, especially from the viewpoint of the cultural and social values that once strengthened social cohesion and built an effective and innovative economy. These values persist to a large degree today and have been transferred to social and institutional innovations, such as volunteering and non-legally binding and free social services, provided by municipality. These ‘forgotten’ aspects of industrial culture also challenge the current neoliberal capitalist order and can therefore be a catalyst for critical thinking about solutions to existing economic, environmental and social crises. This confirms notion that industrial culture is incredibly resilient and reflects in ‘industrial structure of feeling’ (Byrne 2002), grounded in the specific institutionalized routines (Görmar and Harfst 2019), and that continuities of the past affect future development (Grillitsch and Sotarauta 2020).

A high social innovation capacity of Velenje can be also explained by other local specifics. One of them is that the town was largely ‘built from scratch’ with collective effort in the socialist Yugoslavia. The post-war town was in fact a testing ground, polygon for innovative approaches to construct a new, ideal (utopian) socialist town, which was mainly realized and was manifested as a big political success – called the ‘socialist miracle’ (Hudales 2015). The popular notion around new towns is that their construction would also change individual behaviour, social relations and community (Wakeman 2016) but our example points out that this may not be possible without collective actions. The town also stands out among socialist new towns and traditional industrial centres in the Central and Eastern Europe, which have been framed as losers of post-socialist urban transition (Kovács 1999). However, it has to be noted that the Velenje‘s success could probably not be achieved without local leadership with clear vision, perseverance, political skills, devotion and ambition. Such view is close to one of two lenses for understanding, how the change happens: it is portrayed as having been driven by a very small number of heroic, energetic, and impatient individuals, which show how much persistent and dedicated people can achieve against the odds (Mulgan 2006).

Another important element of a local context and industrial culture, which can explain such a high social innovation capacity and strong involvement of beneficiaries in the development and/or governance of social innovation, is highly developed culture of collaboration in the town. This is probably inherited from the past because the town was built collectively, while the ‘collective spirit’ was further sustained in the following decades and strengthened in the times of uncertainty. The importance of collaboration for producing social innovation has been well-documented (Brandsen et al. 2016; Ardill and de Oliveira 2018) leading to comprehend social innovation as a collaborative concept (Ziegler 2017). Looking at Sørensen and Torfing (2011) list of the potential drivers and barriers of collaborative innovation, we can see that all these drivers − the construction of policy or service problems with a great sense of urgency, a strong interdependency between empowered and committed actors, agreement on the overall mission, a high level of mutual trust and the likelihood of significant gains from public innovation – are/were strongly presented in Velenje. Among the barriers which could potentially hinder the collaborative innovation capacity, only cultural were noticed in our research, expressed in ‘miners’ mentality – a common element in (old) industrial communities, such as small town mentality (Nilsson 2010) or mill-town mentality (Areschoug 2019), which can lead to the lack of entrepreneurialism and groupthink, which can hinder innovation process. The question remains if it has any (negative) effect on the social innovation capacity of local actors in Velenje.

With around 30,000 inhabitants, Velenje is a small town in a European context. Such size of the town seems favourable to maintain social cohesion, inclusive governance and cooperation ability. This notion was also confirmed to other authors, exploring the spatiality of innovation: due to ‘geographical proximity’, smaller settings are good environments for creating professional and personal interrelation between local actors, which makes a solid ground for producing social innovation and re-thinking a new productive path, based on values, social and environmental impacts over profit (Gros-Balthazard and Talandier 2020).

Our historical analysis revealed that local innovation capacity was further enhanced in the times of uncertainty. This finding seem to be consistent with other research, e.g. in the field of organizational innovation, which is enhanced by environmental uncertainty (e.g. Jung, Wu, and Chow 2008). Klein, Fontan, and Tremblay (2008), for example, describe how major economic and social problems in Montreal in the 1970s required a new kind of response, which also relied on collective or social entrepreneurship and turned to actions that emphasize local actors working in synergy. Here, we can refer to what Swidler (1986) states for the unsettled periods – that culture, mainly through ideologies, establishes new styles or strategies of action. The same author claims that values are unlikely to be good predictors of action in unsettled lives; Velenje, in contrast, during the last economic crisis seemed to lean on its industrial and socialist values, which, especially in case of the municipality, acted like a ‘tool kit’ for producing social innovation. Another question remains if and how much is an innovation capacity sustained by promoting innovation narratives, especially within the local government structures (Garud, Dunbar, and Bartel 2011).

The participation of local professionals in the research proved positive as enabled influencing (new path) development through shared expectations and visions – as noted by Hassink, Isaksen, and Trippl (2019), they are key to analyse in future research on new path development. Although this research recommendation was developed within the evolutionary economic geography, it can be also applied through a social lens. A possible practical way to implement such approach would be through an interactive process of research and action, presented in the article, and contribute to the development of relational approach (Bartels 2020). On one hand, embeddedness in the local context, building on the review of the history of social innovation and enabling collaboration between participants allows to create solutions on the existing social capital, unlock endogenous potentials and tacit knowledge, and on the other hand, enables avoiding importing ‘generic’ and often unsuccessful strategies and visions from outside. Ideas of founding a fish farm and establishing a mentoring scheme, which were developed at the workshops, seem promising but still need to be evolved and promoted amongst local actors. Our participatory process also experienced some challenges, namely an over-representation of civil society actors among the workshop participants, a lack of time for developing social innovation proposals and not being able to overcome the dominance of certain voices.

At this point, the main limitation of the research must be mentioned: it relates to the lack of theoretical and methodological clarity of the still evolving concept of industrial culture, which was, for example, also not strictly measured in the interviews with the local experts but rather derived directly from their responses. Furthermore, a local capacity to produce social innovation could be more thoroughly investigated or verified through more rigorous measurements, for example through indicators (see Unceta, Castro-Spila, and Fronti 2016, 2017); the reader should also bear in mind that the selection process of past, present and future social innovation was dependent on the chosen definition of social innovation. However, adopting the TEPSIE definition in our research seemed reasonable, as it draws on previous definitions and aims to bring the perspectives of research and practise closer together. Furthermore, we found this definition to be both comprehensive, in that it went beyond a narrow understanding of innovation, and precise, in that it assisted the selection process by evaluating the initial through the lens of five core criteria.

Conclusion

The objective of this article was to analyse the capacity of an industrial town to generate social innovation on the case study of Velenje, Slovenia. Through an interactive process of research and action, we tried to establish the link between territorially embedded social and cultural norms and social capital (intangible elements of industrial culture) on one hand, and producing past, present-day and possible future social innovations on the other hand.

We discovered that Velenje can be characterized as ‘innovative milieu’ since many social innovations were developed here, the majority being strongly territorially and historically embedded and created as a response to economic, social and environmental crisis. The main driver of these innovations seem to be local industrial culture, based on socialist and industrial values, such as diligence, solidarity, tolerance, collectivism, mutual trust and equality. They largely persist in the modern era, also due to very engaged youth. The town’s localized capabilities and high capacity to produce social innovation is further enhanced by a highly developed culture of collaboration, social cohesion and favourable size of the town.

Although the development trajectories of Velenje and its socio-cultural characteristics can be marked as specific in the national or even European context, our findings challenge popular contemporary notions of non-innovative (post-socialist) industrial small and medium-sized towns and highlight the ability of industrial culture to unlock the innovation potential. The origin and success of social innovations in industrial towns can be at least partly related to specific industrial culture, which is socially and territorially embedded and reproduced even in the post-industrial era.

Acknowledgement

Special thanks go to the local representatives for participating in the interviews and workshops.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Slovenian Research Agency under Grant H6-8284 (B) for the JPI Urban Europe project BRIGHT FUTURE and research core funding Geography of Slovenia (P6-0101).

Notes on contributors

Jernej Tiran

Jernej Tiran (male), Ph.D. is a research fellow at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Anton Melik Geographical Institute. His interests are mainly human geography with a focus on quality of urban life, sustainable mobility and electoral studies. In 2015, he was invited by Eurofound to develop and improve the questionnaire of the European Quality of Life Survey. He is a president of Ljubljana Geographical Society (2019–).

David Bole

David Bole (male) is a geographer and a senior research fellow at Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is the Head of the Human Geography department at the Anton Melik Geographical Institute. His interests are mainly urban and economic geography with a focus in participatory research methods and community involvement. He is involved in several international projects dealing with alternative futures and socio-economic transitions of small industrial towns across Europe.

Jani Kozina

Jani Kozina (male), Ph.D. (Geography) is a research fellow at ZRC SAZU and an assistant professor of economic and cultural geography at Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU. His interests are in the spatiality of cultural and creative processes and their socio-economic impacts. He is involved in several research projects dealing with culture, creativity and innovation in urban and regional development. He is a holder of Diploma of Excellence for the Black Sea – Danubian Social & Economic Innovator, Under the aegis of the European Commission – DG MARE.