Towards a European index for valuing cultural heritage

The project “Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe” will gather, analyze, consolidate and widely disseminate the existing data on the impact of cultural heritage – i.e. the impact on the social, economic, cultural as well as environmental. It will result in a European mapping of both qualitative and quantitative evidence-based research carried out at the European, national, regional, local and/or sectorial levels.

Europa Nostra leads the project in partnership with 5 other organisations, ENCATC (the leading European network on arts and cultural management and policy education), Heritage Europe-EAHTR (European Association of Historic Towns and Regions, UK), The International Cultural Centre (Krakow, Poland), The Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (RLICC, KU Leuven, Belgium), and The Heritage Alliance (as associate partner from England, UK). The project is supported by the Culture Programme of the European Union.

In order to collect as many data and evaluation studies of cases or projects as possible, this research considers the impact of the historic environment. It takes the immovable or built heritage as a starting point, whilst taking into account that cultural heritage is currently considered as a broad concept including the tangible as well as the intangible.

More in particular, we ask for:

• Studies indicating that immovable cultural heritage (or heritage in general) has a social, cultural, environmental and/or economic impact (studies can thus prove impact on one or more of these areas);
• Impact assessments of cultural heritage on European, national, regional or local level;
• Impact assessments published as a report, in books, or as an article in international peer reviewed journals, etc.;
• Contact details for key persons in regard to this topic;
• Websites;
• Etc.

In order to collect as much data as possible on existing impact studies in Europe, we developed a web application where you can fill in the data of a study. When you have knowledge of impact studies, we kindly ask you to complete this web application, especially where it concerns a study in another language than English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch or Polish. Studies can also be sent to us by e-mail (pdfs, word docs, links to webpages, etc.) or by ordinary mail (hard copies).

Please complete the web application on https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/culturalheritagecounts or send us information via sigrid.vanderauwera@bwk.kuleuven.be

KU Leuven Faculty of Engineering
Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (RLICC)
Sigrid Van der Auwera
Kasteelpark Arenberg 1 – bus 02431
B-3001 Leuven (Heverlee)
Please complete the survey or send us the information before the end of March.
We need this information in order to analyze the research already undertaken in Europe on the impact of cultural heritage. This mapping will be presented in a spreadsheet which will allow us to include and analyze relevant data (reference, impact domain, sub-domain, indicators used, summary of main arguments to prove impact, etc.) of these studies. This data will enable us to present an overview of social, cultural, economic and environmental impacts of immovable cultural heritage to develop policy recommendations, to define shortcomings in existing research in Europe and to recommend a future research agenda on the topic for Europe.