Leveraging the Value of World Heritage Sites in the Regions for the Benefit of All.
World Heritage Sites are important promoters of regional development, both economically, as they attract tourism, and socially, as cornerstones of regional identity. However, it is often difficult for sites with a World Heritage status to convey the abstract and complex concept of World Heritage to their local communities or to visitors and tourists. This can often be traced back to a lack of novel approaches to unlock the wealth of knowledge encased in cultural heritage resources. Most approaches to convey the stories of World Heritage sites have utilised new media and technologies in a static top-down fashion. This leaves little room for active community participation. In contrast to these conventional methods HERITAGE ALIVE! seeks to engage citizens and visitors actively in a cultural dialogue to increase their awareness and understanding of the shared heritage and regional identity. The bottom-up approach involves all actors, including stakeholders from the tourism sector, regional development and spatial planning agencies, local communities and local industries (such as handcrafts) as well as educational and youth organisations. HERITAGE ALIVE! comprises a network of World Heritage sites in urban environments in the CADSES area; in some of these sites, city districts have World Heritage status, and in other sites only certain monuments. The project also includes sites which have applied for World Heritage status (Corfu/Ionian Islands, Perperikon/Kardjali). HERITAGE ALIVE! will establish a transregional network of partners from EU Member States and Non-EU Member States to better utilise the regions’ World Heritage status to stimulate economic prosperity, to strengthen social cohesion and to promote  regional identity.