Methodologies and Tools for the Reactivation of Minor Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage enhancement calls for a multifaceted approach that promotes inclusive and collaborative efforts. This highlights the ability of citizens to share their opinions and help decision-makers find reliable and practical solutions for addressing social, environmental, and governance challenges of cities [5].

Cultural heritage policies of today strive even harder to foster active citizen involvement at both European and international levels. They aim to increase awareness and civic sense and to create new opportunities for cultural heritage, citizens themselves, and public administrations. The Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach, for example, emphasizes the role of diverse stakeholders, including communities, in the identification of the cultural, historical, social, and economic significance of the urban landscape [14]. The TRANS-URBAN-EU-CHINA action considers best practices from European and Chinese context, where people-centred approaches to conservation and regeneration in historical urban areas is encouraged [12]. While there are numerous policies for this collaborative approach in literature that have not been explicitly discussed in this part, they undoubtedly complement the argument and reinforce the concept of citizen participation for cultural heritage enhancement.

Considering these factors, we advocate for the adoption of a “transversal” model for enhancement to ensure that cultural heritage maintains its meaningful role in the development of communities and territories. This model includes the active involvement, or more precisely, “participation” of various sectors, stakeholders, and actors, encompassing actions such as conservation, safeguarding historical value and significance, economic sustainability, enhancing management, and improving accessibility [4]. Minor cultural heritage, in their tangible and intangible forms¹, play an important role in improving the socio-economic conditions of citizens and communities. As opposed to major cultural heritage, minor cultural heritage often receives less attention in cultural heritage-related policies. Nonetheless, this lesser-known heritage possesses inherent values and meanings for the communities they are part of [13], not to mention cultural, social, and economic benefits.

Therefore, this contribution presents a valorisation methodology for minor cultural heritage supported by digital technologies, which involves citizens in the identification of its unique attributes and intricacies, uncovers knowledge and raises awareness to it, preserves its value and significance, and enables its adaptive reuse. This reactivation methodology (the reuse of goods through the activation of people) employs co-design to improve the collaborative efforts of stakeholders and communities in the enhancement of minor cultural heritage, a process that can be significantly facilitated with the use of digital tools.

The elements that characterize the process of minor cultural heritage enhancement are well represented in the case of the Small Temple of Loutsa, Greece. Despite its cultural and historical significance and link to a network of archaeological sites, the Small Temple is in unfavourable condition and lacks formal archaeological status. The enhancement of the Small Temple was led by a research team from the School of Architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, that undertook the task of identifying and selecting the most pertinent projects, initiatives, and practices [13].

Drawing from the abovementioned case study, the most important elements defining the enhancement process of minor cultural heritage in this contribution are identified as the “inclusive approach,” which is considered a participatory and community-centred approach that fosters the deliberate activation of resources, initiative, energies, and intelligences, along with the “holistic approach,” which is not only concerned with the integration of both tangible and intangible dimensions of cultural heritage but also the problems around it in order to provide more comprehensive and effective solutions. In this context, the holistic approach invites us to view cultural heritage - including minor ones - as catalysts for social and economic development. There has been a transition from the conventional perception of heritage sites as spaces for cultural enjoyment to an unconventional outlook regarding them as places for strengthening identities, sense of belonging, social cohesion, economic benefits, and more [1]. Hence, we need to adopt a reversed perspective, focusing on how culture can contribute to other areas like education, health, well-being, and innovation, instead of solely contemplating what we can do to support culture. This perspective is quite evident in the New European Agenda for Culture, which also highlights the potential of digital technologies in achieving these goals [6].

In the field of enhancement and reactivation of minor cultural heritage, technologies can play a significant role in documenting the tangible and intangible culture of a place, as well as the virtual reconstruction of assets to prepare them for other possible initiatives. For example, the digitization of artifacts, artworks, handicrafts, and other elements of minor cultural heritage can foster the growth of innovative, immersive experiences of fruition and interaction, thanks to virtual and augmented realities. These technologies are used in immersive digital storytelling to involve the community in educational, promotional, and enhancement activities for structuring advanced forms of co-design with simple applications. Enabling processes of direct social change by means of the widespread intelligence of citizens using digital technologies is an important objective of the “European Collective Awareness Platform for Sustainability and Social Innovation” (CAPS), and of the HORIZON program itself, which supports the creation of platforms to foster the democratic process, the sharing of information, and the dissemination of participatory practices. Referring to the latter aspect, De Filippi et al. (2020) critically analyse several “Digital Participation Platforms” (DPPs), with the aim of bringing out methods, tools, and possible technologies of use. The contribution focuses particularly on the theme of public space, but the results of the study can be transposed by analogy to the theme of minor cultural heritage. The analysis highlights the scarcity of studies and experiences on the collaborative exchange between citizens and Public Administration (PA), which represents the highest form of interaction provided by the European legal system. While the first three levels of interaction, ranging from the simple sharing of information by the PA to the actual interaction to and from the PA are widely investigated and used, the last level, referring to co-design and co-production of initiatives by the public and private sectors, still has strong experimental characteristics. As the study highlights, it is precisely in this line of research that digital technologies can express their full potential: by changing the relationship between professionals and users and between platforms and citizens, digital technologies not only allow citizens to freely use products and services but also to trigger social relationships and the enhancement of resources [3].

One of these initiatives is the interactive platform “MinStad” through which the Municipality of Gothenburg offers its citizens the opportunity to digitally explore the city and interactively express suggestions and proposals. It is also possible to modify through special intuitive tools the buildings and urban context in which they are inserted². An experience of pure exploration intended for the knowledge of the urban context but with specific insights into temporal transformations is represented by the research group at “Timemachine”. The group born from the experience of a H2020 project bases its activity on the processing of data from archives or surveys specially drawn up to build easy-to-use scenarios of urban transformation³. These are scenarios whose free use can trigger new interactions with civic subjects involved in a process of smart knowledge of contexts. Other interesting experiences concern the development of design envisioning methodologies to increase the effectiveness of the information and creative exchange between expert and non-expert users [7, 9]. Further experiments have even led to the creation of special digital technologies to support forms of co-planning and co-design [10]. An interesting experience is represented by the project “EU H2020 Project UCODE, a new tool for enabling expert planners to communicate with citizens in urban design,” whose methodological premises are clearly laid out by Jannack et al. (2015) [8]. A further international experience is represented by the study “Simultaneous Collaborative Urban Planning and Design based on Web-Based Desktop 3D Modelling” documented by Imottesio and Kain (2022) [7].

An extensive technological reconnaissance of the environments of interaction between users and digital models in Architecture and Urban Design aims at outlining possible scenarios for the evolution of the space of user-model interaction concept into a fully virtual digital space containing both, an antechamber of the Metaverse [2]. It is identified as the area that best represents the above instances the platforms set up by software houses that offer modelling systems based on BIM environments. Areas that do not constitute a real ACDat, but environments for the collection and sharing of information among partners who share the same licenses, such as BIM360. In recent years, however, cloud-based platforms specifically designed to facilitate interaction with less experienced subjects are being developed. In Heritage BIM (HBIM), these platforms feed interaction through the cloud and 3D surveys that enrich the semantics of the model. At the urban scale, the concept of City Information Modelling (CIM), based on an enhanced BIM approach, aims to digitally recreate the characteristics of the city and manage its planning. The potential of this technology goes as far as Virtual City Systems (VCS) that can simulate the behaviour of a city’s physical and social components, also for the purpose of decision-making. Although less explored, the urban scale is able to suggest different application possibilities of digital technologies, from the most traditional to true Digital Twins [2]. However, there are structural limitations in the user-model interaction of these tools that can be solved in more innovative spatial representation systems, such as interactive metaverses. These systems represent the foundation for the development of a true multi-scalar approach in the interaction between users and space, which is still being perfected.

Other solutions allow, albeit in a simplified way, experimentation with forms of user-model interaction in digital reconstructions of the real environment. Based on particular solutions for the creation of 3D models through simple cameras and sensors, these systems yield models of reality that can be used for various purposes, such as immersive visualization and interactive exploration. In some cases, the obtained digital reconstruction has been used to promote original museum visit itineraries or transformed into simplified platforms of true co-design.

In this contribution, the practical application of digital technologies led to the development of a methodology for co-designing the valorisation of minor cultural heritage. The methodology evolved from the authors’ years of experience in the field. By gathering and analysing literature and case studies, a hypothesis was formulated and was later tested through on-site experimentations, paving the way for an adaptable model applicable for future cases with similar contexts.

The experimentation carried out for the “Safely-connected” project included the administering of surveys to understand the perceptions of local citizens of the public space at SGL before and after interventions. Through virtual representations, insights were gathered on various aspects of the public space, including design features, identity, safety and security, accessibility, health and Covid-19, and sustainability. Overall, the proposed interventions were widely favoured by respondents, as they introduce covered spaces and sitting areas (82% agree), enhance the identity of the public space (79.2% agree), improve safety and lighting (84.2% agree), make the public space more inclusive and accessible to all users (81.2% agree), address Covid-19 restrictions (76.6% agree), and promote slow mobility (87% agree).

As a summary, the result of this investigation is a practical application, which include reactivating the public space lead by cultural tradition, co-designing the mobility and functionality of the open-air urban market, improving public engagement, and – above all– developing an Operational Toolkit for making urban areas liveable, walkable, and healthier– even in the event of a pandemic.

This insight gained from the “Safely-connected” project and other similar experiences have provided us with valuable references for crafting a methodology tailored to the enhancement of minor cultural heritage including the following activities: historical/environmental surveys to highlight the characteristics of the places and their possible evolutionary prospects (Fig. 2.[1]); seminars to initiate the design activity, detailing of organizational agreements, and aligning of operational aspects; creative workshops for participatory planning and co-design and involving experts, young creatives, the inhabitants of the area, and potential visitors (Fig. 2.[2]). The workshop foresees a phase of creative divergence, followed by a phase of convergence, relating the proposals to a strategic action framework; digital prototyping and virtual staging of proposals and solutions outlined by the working groups (Fig. 2.[3]); evaluating ideas and proposals through digital instruments (Fig. 2.[4]). Moreover, this methodology depends on the prototyping and virtual staging of the works and their use in immersive and augmented reality (Fig. 2.[5]).

The limitations of this research methodology stem from the gap between its theoretical effectiveness and its practical application in real-world scenarios, which remains largely untested. Other limitations include the limited knowledge of minor cultural heritage, the challenge of involving non-experts in co-design processes, and the restricted access to digital technologies. However, these limitations can be overcome, given the promising progress⁵ seen in the valorisation of minor cultural heritage [3, 13].

Redefining the role of culture has become a pressing issue now more than ever. Sacco (2019), in his presentation on “Cultural participation and societal wellbeing,” invites us to look at culture as a complex ecosystem that is intertwined with other sectors [11]. Therefore, culture has to be seen as having a great impact and, particularly, as having the power to address issues that we typically do not associate with it. This becomes even more necessary when considering minor cultural heritage. Unlike cultural heritage, which has accumulated an extensive body of literature, methodologies, and techniques for managing its processes, these approaches are not well-suited for the unique characteristics of minor cultural heritage. Minor cultural heritage requires an adaptable and accessible approach that involves non-experts, providing them with easily comprehensible tools and the guidance of experts who serve as facilitators in the process. Nevertheless, there is much work to be done in the field, particularly concerning the setup of the technology for creating and populating models and also for the monitoring of results of user interaction, which form the basis of our future works of interest. We must also not undermine the challenges posed by “exponential technologies”; while these technologies are new and continuously advancing, facilitating the processes of minor cultural heritage valorization, and fostering creative exchange between various actors involved, their practical application and adaptation to interventions is not simple, since they require effort in terms of capacity building of the most fragile subjects.