ARTISTIC FINAL PUBLIC EVENT
"Intangible Cultural Heritage as a driver of local and regional development"
On July 7, 2020, we met with partners, experts and local actors active in the field of Intangible Cultural Heritage to summarize and celebrate 3 years of the ARTISTIC project implementation in the form of the online final public event "Intangible Cultural Heritage as a driver of local and regional development" which gathered 115 participants from Central Europe.
The event opened - Mr. Roberto Santolamazza representing t2i Technology Transfer and Innovation – ARTISTIC Lead Partner. Mr. Santolamazza introduced the participants to the idea, goals, assumptions and the most important achievements, as well as deliverables accomplished during the project. In his presentation, he devoted particular attention to pilot actions carried out in 8 regions of Central Europe, the aim of which was to select initiatives in the field of Intangible Cultural Heritage for which, thanks to the support provided, business plans were developed, and to identify projects whose development phase and the readiness of their originators allowed to test crowdfunding as a financing tool for these undertakings.
Mr. Christophe Ebermann from the Joint Secretariat of the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE program presented the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE program with particular emphasis on the support provided for cultural heritage topics, both tangible and intangible ones. Mr. Ebermann emphasized that thanks to the 4 calls of the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE program, 24 very interesting project related to culture were implemented so far, with a total value of eligible costs of 49.3 million EUR. These initiatives taken under the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE program enabled the cooperation of over 230 entities. Mr. Ebermann also referred in his presentation to the inclusive approach that will be taken in the new CE Programme for years 2021-2027.
Ms. Gertraud Koch from Institute for European Ethnology of the University of Hamburg, representing the University of Hamburg - the research partner of the ARTISTIC project spoke about the role of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in promoting sustainable regional development. Ms. Koch informed that strengthening of the local actions through culture in connection with economy and ecology is very important nowadays, and during the Pandemic time this approach is even more relevant then before. During the presentation Ms. Koch referred among others to the role of social perception of ICH, culture as important resource on which regional development depends on and to the main deliverables prepared by the partnership under research support of the University of Hamburg.
An important part of the conference was the presentation of success stories, results achieved in 8 Central Europe regions and changes initiated by the ARTISTIC project implementation. Representatives of 12 project partners talked about the experiences and lessons learned from the project, as well as the role of local actors in this process of transformation.
Final presentation of Ms. Valentina Lapiccirella Zingari, UNESCO facilitator referred to the Intangible Cultural Heritage, its meaning and perspectives in the context of local and regional development, in particular with regard to defining and re-thinking heritage, heritage evolutions, EU Normative and Policy, cultural rights, regional development, territorial cooperation, communities involvement, civil society empowerment and the role of Intangible Cultural Heritage as a source of resilience in emergency situations.
We are pleased that safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage is important for so many people and that despite the fact that our project is coming to an end, in 8 regions of the Central Europe all our actions will be continued thanks to the work of the local Intangible Cultural Heritage Desk points.
We share the results of our ARTISTIC work on the ENTRIBU platform, where you will find among others tools, strategies and guidelines supporting work with local Intangible Cultural Heritage actors, with private investors and much more: https://www.entribu.eu/en.
