Atelier European Fortresses - Powering Local Sustainable Development
The historic environment of Europe is one of its greatest assets and an effective means of reconciling the needs of citizens, economy, community, environment, and society at large: But we cannot take it for granted! Our built heritage is valuable and vulnerable and securing its benefits now and in the future demands focussed action and investment from society, the heritage sector, and above all, the public authorities.
Aware of these possibilities and challenges, New Dutch Waterline proposed the AT FORT project outline to significant European fortified heritage sites who share the firm belief that preservation of these sites, coupled with their economic exploitation can only be achieved by creative, mutual thinking, building on an exchange of experiences.
AT FORT partners have set the OVERALL OBJECTIVE ‘to facilitate the adaptive re-use of fortified heritage sites by exploring solutions for successful approaches and methods to deal with enabling conditions and to create
better frameworks for their exploitation'.
Partners identified common fields of challenges that represent bottlenecks for the effective exploitation of these cultural values and defined 3 SUB-OBJECTIVES corresponding to the problem areas. They will work to: 
1. Identify and further improve solutions and tools dealing with crucial enabling conditions of the adaptive re-use of fortified heritage sites
2. Identify and investigate the transferability potential of various existing redevelopment models for multifunctional use of fortified heritage sites
3. Elaborate effective (workable) governance models taking into account innovative PPP solutions, legal issues, models for branding
Objectives are accomplished by the integrated ”Conservation through development” approach, involvement of relevant stakeholders and capitalizing on partners’ experiences. 
The OUTPUTS of At Fort ACTIONS will directly contribute to the achievement of these objectives through the following MAIN PROJECT RESULTS:
SELF ANALYSIS REPORTS reflecting the status quo and results achieved in each region
A MATRIX OF GOOD PRACTICES identified
GOOD PRACTICE TRANSFER VISITS (Ateliers) exploring possibilities of transfers
A TOOLKIT, which is a collection of good strategies for the sustainable exploitation of fortified heritage sites
IMPLEMENTATION PLANS for each partner region, describing the future actions planned to ensure that benefits of the exchange are not lost.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS targeted to the local and regional level.

The At Fort PARTNERSHIP includes 11 partners, representing 7 old and 4 new MS. Partners are local and regional authorities, public bodies and knowledge institutes with experience in the field of cultural heritage and with capacity to ensure direct continuity of the project results.
Roles and task are distributed between the partners in a balan+A3155ced way, building on their existing experience and transferable know how, and exploiting complementarities in the best possible way.