Before finalizing the project SWARE at the end of the summer, partners from four different countries met for the 2nd Knowledge Exchange Session of the project’s additional call. Metropolitan City of Milan was chosen as a place for meeting for a reason – one of them was having a study visit to see the result of Social Enterprise project in Mirasole Abbey.
During two fulfilled days four good practices under the theme of “Revitalizing and community engagement” were discussed the same as participants were asked to use different forms of sharing experience: for example, studies of good practices and workshops for new ideas in future solutions.
Project manager Stephan van Dijk emphasizes the meaning of experience sharing: “During our visit in Milan we have listened to and seen a lot of good practices that establish a direct link with the community, focused on diversifying tourism, promoting different places which can help mitigate pressure from certain hotspots, and increasing the attractiveness of the region’s trough new informative attractions. The reimagining of cultural heritage along the Danube River with CULTPLAY, to stimulate cross-border tourism between Slovakia and Hungary is one of the great examples. There is a necessity to spread tourism over undiscovered places and for informative cultural heritage visits as it shows the “soul” of these places. Governance structures are important to achieve this, but it starts bottom-up, from the community, working together on implementing good practices and strengthening the potential of the green and blue areas across Europe.”
Further there are basic information about good practices that was shared during Knowledge Exchange Session. All good practices in full from the very beginning of project SWARE are published HERE.
Adda Martesana Permanent Observatory and Smartland Adda Martesana
The mission of the Smartland Adda Martesana project is to support the evolution and development of the ecomuseum Martesana with a territorial and thematic focus. The Smartland project uses the European Integrated Territorial Investment fund to coordinate and develop infrastructural projects. The Ecomuseum Martesana acts as a linking pin for dialogue between municipalities, third sector and the community.
The Milano is always the one because it’s never the same
The goal of this project is to promote neighborhoods as places to be discovered through telling stories on the different souls of the different neighborhoods. It helps to prevent people from feeling lonely during COVID restrictions, and also to attract tourists and citizens to the different (and less explored) neighborhoods of Milan. The project achieves this mainly through communication strategy with art projects, tours, and video campaigns.
Link to one of projects video is HERE.
The Cultplay
The Cultplay project was intended to increase the attractiveness of the border area by providing new, cross-border attractions for innovative use of cultural heritage. CULTPLAY parks are modelled according to the most important built heritage along the Danube River. 7 Parks have been realized, with another one being developed.
The Mirasole Abbey Social Hub
The Social Hub project provides multiple benefits to people and the complex itself: the enhancement of the Abbey’s complex, the enhancement of the attached agricultural area, and training socially disadvantaged people. The project serves a social need within the area.
Good practices presented and shared between partners during SWARE project, and its extension can be useful for full implementation in other countries or through the extraction of certain good elements for transfer.
As new and effective ways of experiencing our Green and Blue areas and attracting a different audience to tourism objects many of projects choose digitalization methods. Digitalization, as gaming, 5D visualization and others makes tourism available for a much wider audience not only local but also interregional. During past two years these tools gave the opportunity to visit places remotely, overcoming the hurdles of pandemic restrictions and guarantee continuity to the promotion of peculiar places of our territories.
SWARE experience shows how governance structures can and should work together into implementing good practices in an efficient way to strengthen the potential of cultural and natural heritage along inland waterway (and green areas).
The project " Sustainable heritage management of WAterway REgions" (SWARE) is implemented with the support of the European Regional Development Fund' s program Interreg Europe 2014-2020. This publication reflects the author' s views only and the Interreg Europe programme authorities are not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.
