This article originally appeared on <link https: ec.europa.eu culture news>ec.europa.eu/culture/news/20170606-cultural-heritage-diversity-project_en. This is a re-post.
STEPS is a EU-CoE Joint pilot project which aims to build and strengthen community cohesion and to promote trust, dialogue and mutual understanding across diverse societies, through the participatory heritage-based action plans. The cities of Lisbon (Portugal) and Rijeka (Croatia) have been chosen to pilot the process through a call open to all the cities of the Intercultural Cities network from the EU28 countries.
The cities are now proceeding to create and train a group of citizens that will be in charge of mapping the diverse cultural heritage of a neighbourhood. This is being done using the Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Faro Convention, 2005) and the intercultural integration principles as a basis.
Rijeka and Lisbon will support the ICC Team to design a methodology and tools that will enable a wide range of cities across Europe to develop community cohesion strategies using cultural heritage as a resource. In particular, the two cities will mobilise a local team (involving NGOs, schools, universities, cultural Institutions, etc.) that will receive training on participatory heritage mapping, as well as on Asset-Based Community Development. Furthermore, they will design an action plan to develop and test a methodological framework for the use of heritage at the local level.
STePS will feed into the European Year for Cultural Heritage and Rijeka 2020 European Capital of Culture.
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