“New Horizons for Cultural Heritage – Recalibrating relationships: bringing cultural heritage and people together in a changing Europe” is the Second Policy Seminar organised by the RICHES project to discuss how the project can provide insights to support evidence-based policymaking in Europe.
The seminar, hosted at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), comprises political updates by representatives from the European Parliament and the European Commission, the presentation of policy recommendations from the RICHES project and a Round Table discussion involving major stakeholders.
The programme offered to participants the opportunity to challenge institutional points of view with some practical results of the research conducted by RICHES, with particular regard to the following themes:
- The use of craft skills in new contexts.
- Community-led developments: food and cultural heritage in the urban age – the role of local food movements.
- European identity, belonging and the role for digital cultural heritage: structures for social and territorial cohesion and minority communities.
- Economics of culture: fiscal and economic issues in the digital age.
- Institutional changes: exploring the status of digital heritage mediated by memory institutions.
Two overarching themes, related to citizenship and cultural heritage, were selected and discussed among the participants in world café type discussion groups:
– in the run-up to the European Year of CH in 2018, what policies should be developed in order to ensure that the celebrations are inclusive?
– how might developments in policy help to bring about an integrated approach to safeguarding CH?
The aim of the discussion was to provide ‘joined-up’ policy recommendations to be used in the definition of the H2020 work programme for 2018-2020.
Also, the seminar started with a pre-event consisting in a networking session of EC Projects, A Digital Posters Exhibition of the involved projects was also published.
The networking sessions was follow up to the first such session organised on the occasion of the first Policy Seminar in October 2015. The scope of this session was to reflect on how to sustain the organisation of these kind of appointments in the future, after the end of the RICHES project. In facts, as the RICHES events are organized with networking sessions and discussions, they represent a good opportunity to reflect on the impact that cultural heritage projects are delivering, identify opportunities to improve the effectiveness of their results, and identify synergies and the potential for collaboration among projects.
For further information, the presentations by the speakers and any further outcome of the Policy Seminar, please visit the event page on the RICHES website.
