(Re)Contextualizing Contested Heritage: Building Capacity & Designing Participatory Approaches to Preserve Cultural Heritage by the Youth

Reconheritage1

The ReConHeritage project is about mounting an interdisciplinary approach using arts and humanities research to respond to a critical global challenge of the continuous destruction of cultural heritage in conflict regions. An inspiring and professional team from the UK, Lebanon, Kosovo and Iraq have worked together to mount an interdisciplinary approach using arts and humanities research to respond to a critical global challenge of the continuous destruction of cultural heritage in conflict regions.

One objective was to develop transformative models of regional partnerships on sustainable transitions of peacebuilding and cultural exchange. Another objective was to establish a sustainable digital platform, supported by local young people, with help from three major international research universities.

The project was designed as an opportunity for experimenting and documenting new ways of collaboration between people with different backgrounds, organisations and sectors to develop new ways of engagement and learning from each other.

Impact

We have developed three customised Toolkit that share these concepts and provides insight into the unique opportunity our project partners have developed through experimentation, co-design and co-production that is embedding new practices within their respective unique and fascinating contexts and broader communities.

The co-produced research with young people identifies issues and solutions, to negotiate historical conflict, and building local consensus on future awareness, protection and nation rebuilding. The Toolkit provides several opportunities that may not always be obvious when researching context-specific case studies of inventive collaborations such as in this project.

I hope young people are inspired and encouraged to take a step forward in their explorations of what it means to reengage with the memory and existence of their contested heritage.

Downloads

https://www.reconheritage.co.uk/toolkits

Project website

https://www.reconheritage.co.uk