The REACH Project Contribution to Protecting, Preserving and Valuing Tangible and Intangible Heritage Through Participation

This paper aims to demonstrate how social participation in culture contributes fostering the resilience of tangible and intangible heritage, and to enhance its preservation and conservation. The REACH Social Platform brings together a wide community of relevant heritage stakeholders’ representatives. They include research communities, heritage practitioners from public and private cultural institutions and organisations as well as policy-makers at European, national, regional and local levels. Based on a focused, critical mapping of existing research and practice, the objective of the Social Platform is to develop a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities for research and innovation in the participatory preservation, (re-)use and management of cultural heritage. The project identifies theoretical participatory models and tests them in practice through four thematic pilots. Final aim of the Social Platform is to propose the adoption of an integrated model of resilient European cultural heritage milieux.