How individuals become agents of change in old industrial regions

As a result of the decline of key economic sectors, old industrial towns face several development challenges, reinforcing the perception of these places as peripheral. However, even in the context of old industrial towns in the Ústí nad Labem Region in post-socialist Czechia, local people are addressing locally specific issues to facilitate a positive change. These actors (known as ‘agents of change’) mobilise diverse resources through their actions. This study shows that to build an individual capacity to act, inspiration and knowledge transfer from diverse professional and geographical structures are even more important than formal education. To finance their initiatives, agents use informal investments provided by their friends and family, but later they exploit formal subsidies from the public sector. In terms of social capital, a high-quality collaboration between locals is a crucial factor for change, yet local and regional governments often fail as coordinators and leaders of change agency.