Regional Development Agency of South Bohemia – RERA a.s organised the last 12th of August a group meeting with 21 stakeholders, which took place in the Institute of Technology and Business (VSTE) of the city of České Budějovice.
The encounter was willing to strengthen the synergies between MOMAr and the Interreg Transborder AT-CZ programme, in the framework of technical heritage linked to traditional businesses in the borderlands, including wood floating, glass working, iron working, railway infrastructure (the first European continental railway was Č. Budějovice-Linz [South Bohemia-Upper Austria] built 1827-1836), water regulation structures, milling tradition, beer brewing, etc.
The practical translation of this work is the newborn project, MonumTech, which has just officially started and will carry out its core activities next year. Both projects, MOMAr and MonumTech, share common values such as sustainability, a balance between tourism and the local population, the benefits for the local communities, and entrepreneurs, among others. Therefore, it becomes mutually advantageous to implement this work to MOMAr’s Action plan. Besides, the academic institution, VSTE, is the main project driver for South Bohemia and the perfect candidate to incorporate in the MOMAr’s Action plan.
Thus, the event started with an introduction of the MOMAr project and its links to technical heritage and was followed up by the collaboration kick-off. In that sense, participants discussed the definition of technical heritage and the different target groups compared to ‘general’ tangible heritage (heritage railways, bridges, glassworks, wood-floating facilities and infrastructure, mining, etc.), they compared the approaches on both sides of the borders, very different due to diverse recent history (mainly the second part of 20th century), and analysed promising actions to carry out and its challenges, as well as managing details.
The result of the event was a very profitable dialogue and an interesting start of collaborative work among the institutions involved.
