Echoes of the past into the future
City practices
- UIA CAMINA project - Community Awakening for Multicultural Integrative Narrative of Almería, Almeria (ES). With Pablo Macías Bou, Khora Urban Thinkers
- Buzludzha foundation - Exploring the potential of dissonant heritage, Kazanlak (BG). With Dora Ivanova, UAEU Partnership
- UIA ForwArt project - Moving forward with the power of art: from a place to hide to a place of pride, Tilburg (NL). With Tanja Jansen-Hassouna, Tilburg Municipality and Ismail Osman, Tilburg youth organisation.
Topic and challenges
Rather than being static, culture and cultural heritage can evolve and incorporate new values over time. These are driving forces for the regeneration of territories and the empowerment of communities, helping strengthen people’s sense of belonging and interest in exploring community roots and history, providing spaces for all stories to be heard, and promoting inclusion and social wellbeing.
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Sometimes, official history offers us a single perspective about countries, cities and people. But stories differ according to the perspective of the person who tells them. If we only hear one story, we risk misunderstanding the situation – and excluding certain voices. All stories matter, and we need to collect them to ensure a more equal and democratic inclusion of minorities and disadvantaged groups. One example of an inclusive approach fostering the decolonisation of culture by including voiceless stories is the Cultural Circular Route developed by the Municipality of Almeria (ES), with the UIA project CAMINA.
Culture and cultural heritage can encompass critical, dissonant memories and experiences. The term dissonant can be used to address controversial links between physical elements, such as architecture, neighbourhoods, monuments and urban public spaces, and the complex historical and political values they represent.
As European history shows, our heritage can be controversial and complex, especially when linked to totalitarian regimes or disputed borders. European Dissonant Heritage is a result of this complex and diverse history. By critically examining the past, such heritage can be brought into the present to promote democracy and solidarity. This is the case in Kazalank (BG), where local communities are involved in reflections on dissonant heritage and its adaptive reuse.
The social dimensions of culture and the creative sectors include tangible and intangible elements, with culture providing a bond between people who share the same territory. Culture plays a key role in strengthening the cultural capital of groups and individuals, contributing to lifelong and lifewide learning beyond traditional education institutions, and opening up new skills, capacities and opportunities. Art and culture can trigger positive social transformation focusing on the potential of young people and marginalised groups. The ForwArt UIA project shows a way to attract the youngest and marginalised people, supporting their talent development and improving their lives through culture.
Highlights
Text
- All stories matter: the potential of cultural city narratives
Culture and cultural heritage initiatives should be more inclusive and open to all citizens, not reserved for experts and niche groups. The co-design of city cultural narratives is an inclusive tool to engage local communities in developing cultural paths. Inclusive city narratives give common stories and expert’s histories the same importance, bringing voiceless and official stories together.
- Novel participation ideas for culture and cultural heritage
Innovative participatory processes are needed to enhance the engagement of people in culture and cultural heritage initiatives. Tailored participative approaches should be proposed for including marginalised communities and vulnerable people, for example women and girls, migrants, elderly people and youth. A low intensity but highly creative approach to participation helps engage unexpected people and stakeholders in attending and contributing to cultural events. This is the case, for example, with Tilburg’s “Pizza participation weekly meeting”, invented to engage young people in a co-design initiative.
- Common languages to welcome and listen to people
Facilitating safe spaces for listening and talking with communities can improve the capacity of local authorities to stay connected with people. Facilitators and experts can play an important role in finding ways to communicate with residents, sharing ideas and building common scenarios, and finding common languages of understanding and learning.
- Culture and cultural heritage are for the youth!
The engagement of young people should be a priority in every cultural initiative, which local authorities should consider encouraging through co-responsibility and co-ownership. Including young people as protagonists involves trusting them more, while providing space to experiment, implement and improve the cultural offer.
- Spaces for the people built by the people
Architecture is important for culture. Spaces play a key role in place-based experiences: providing good places, possibly co-designed and co-realised with local people, helps to create good environments for working and collaborating. Furthermore, local authorities should facilitate the use of free space to support bottom-up cultural activities.
- Co-visioning and co-implementing
Involving communities from a project’s early steps and conception phase helps them to feel more connected with the overall process and take ownership of the project’s results. Participatory initiatives for culture and cultural heritage should be implemented throughout the whole project cycle: from the problem analysis to the vision, from identifying objectives to planning and implementing actions.
- Good trigger!
While it is easy to talk about participation, real engagement of people can be difficult, particularly when the target areas are deprived neighbourhoods or linked to dissonant heritage. Finding a positive or original trigger to promote the project can help make a successful start. This is the case for reflections on the Buzludzha monument in Kazanlak, which started by focusing attention on the mosaics’ conservation rather than the entire monument. This led on to reflections about dissonant heritage, triggering a process of consciousness around the monument’s possible rehabilitation.
- All stories matter: the potential of cultural city narratives
Culture and cultural heritage initiatives should be more inclusive and open to all citizens, not reserved for experts and niche groups. The co-design of city cultural narratives is an inclusive tool to engage local communities in developing cultural paths. Inclusive city narratives give common stories and expert’s histories the same importance, bringing voiceless and official stories together.
- Novel participation ideas for culture and cultural heritage
Innovative participatory processes are needed to enhance the engagement of people in culture and cultural heritage initiatives. Tailored participative approaches should be proposed for including marginalised communities and vulnerable people, for example women and girls, migrants, elderly people and youth. A low intensity but highly creative approach to participation helps engage unexpected people and stakeholders in attending and contributing to cultural events. This is the case, for example, with Tilburg’s “Pizza participation weekly meeting”, invented to engage young people in a co-design initiative.
- Common languages to welcome and listen to people
Facilitating safe spaces for listening and talking with communities can improve the capacity of local authorities to stay connected with people. Facilitators and experts can play an important role in finding ways to communicate with residents, sharing ideas and building common scenarios, and finding common languages of understanding and learning.
- Culture and cultural heritage are for the youth!
The engagement of young people should be a priority in every cultural initiative, which local authorities should consider encouraging through co-responsibility and co-ownership. Including young people as protagonists involves trusting them more, while providing space to experiment, implement and improve the cultural offer.
- Spaces for the people built by the people
Architecture is important for culture. Spaces play a key role in place-based experiences: providing good places, possibly co-designed and co-realised with local people, helps to create good environments for working and collaborating. Furthermore, local authorities should facilitate the use of free space to support bottom-up cultural activities.
- Co-visioning and co-implementing
Involving communities from a project’s early steps and conception phase helps them to feel more connected with the overall process and take ownership of the project’s results. Participatory initiatives for culture and cultural heritage should be implemented throughout the whole project cycle: from the problem analysis to the vision, from identifying objectives to planning and implementing actions.
- Good trigger!
While it is easy to talk about participation, real engagement of people can be difficult, particularly when the target areas are deprived neighbourhoods or linked to dissonant heritage. Finding a positive or original trigger to promote the project can help make a successful start. This is the case for reflections on the Buzludzha monument in Kazanlak, which started by focusing attention on the mosaics’ conservation rather than the entire monument. This led on to reflections about dissonant heritage, triggering a process of consciousness around the monument’s possible rehabilitation.
About this resource
The European Urban Initiative is an essential tool of the urban dimension of Cohesion Policy for the 2021-2027 programming period. The initiative established by the European Union supports cities of all sizes, to build their capacity and knowledge, to support innovation and develop transferable and scalable innovative solutions to urban challenges of EU relevance.
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