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SmartCultour celebrates World Heritage Day: Spotlight on adaptation to climate change through coastal development plans

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The H2020 funded SmartCulTour project aims at supporting regional development in all European regions with important tangible and intangible cultural assets, including those located in rural peripheries and the urban fringe, through sustainable cultural tourism.

The International Day for Monuments and Sites 2022 (World Heritage Day 2022) takes place on 18th April, focusing this year on Heritage and Climate. As a project supporting the sustainability of cultural heritage within the sustainable tourism framework, SmartCulTour is working with 6 local community Living Labs to develop sustainable tourism approaches.

One of the goals of the international day is to ‘safeguard all types of cultural heritage from adverse climate impacts’. The local authorities of the municipalities (which are members of our Split Living Lab – see Fig. 1), especially the coastal ones, have been very active in developing measures to adapt to climate change through implementing coastal development plans. Although this activity has neither been financed nor supported directly by the SmartCulTour project, we are reporting on this practice example provided by one of our Living Labs in order to help raise awareness about how climate change is impacting on our cultural heritage and how active solutions are being sought.

Figure 1. The Split living lab area consists of the following cities and municipalities: the cities of Split, Trogir, Kaštela, Solin and Sinj and the municipalities: Klis and Dugopolje.

The impacts of climate change are felt in the whole Split Living Lab (LL) area, in terms of the growing temperatures, longer waves of extreme heat and consequently longer periods of drought, changes in precipitation amount and regime (with occasional strong showers causing flooding) and stronger winds. In addition, Split LL coastal cities, especially their historical centres, are located on a narrow coastal strip and are affected by a significant rise in sea level. Figure 2 shows a significant change in the average monthly sea-level increase in the city of Split from the 1956 to 1997 period (blue columns) compared to 2017 (red line) (Margeta et al. 2019[*]).

Figure 2: Average monthly sea level rise in the city of Split from the period 1956-1997 compared to 2017.

According to Margeta et al., 2019, the city of Kaštela has experienced a 30 cm rise in seal level over the last hundred years and in response has developed a Coastal zone management plan foreseeing several adaptation scenarios to combat climate change.  The plan defines the development of an action plan based on integrated coastal zone management and maritime spatial planning. The goal of the Coastal Plan is the sustainable development of the coastal area based on tourism with a focus on measures to protect the sea coast that is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Some of the solutions proposed by the Plan to strengthen the resilience of the coastal strip and its infrastructure to climate change are already being implemented. These include infrastructure enhancements close to the heritage buildings within the old historical cores of the seven Kaštela municipalities that are the most endangered by the sea level rise (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Seven Kaštela municipalities – historical cores (Photos ©Mr. Boris Kačan, published with permission)

Another interesting solution in the City of Solin aims to mitigate climate change impacts and protect important historical remains (Katić, M., Bucat, M. 2022[*]). The city is rich with monuments from the Roman period and the early mediaeval ages when it was the seat of the early Croatian rulers. One of the most important monuments of that period are the remains of the so-called Hollow church (dedicated to St. Peter and Moses), the coronation basilica of the Croatian King Zvonimir (11th century A.D.). While in the eleventh century, it was above the level of the adjacent river Jadro, the ground level of the church is today situated below the height of the river (Figure 4). The terrain is flooded due to several factors, among others due to underground springs and the rise in sea level, considering that the river´s sea estuary is not far from the remains of the church. Therefore, the city of Solin has developed a plan to displace the course of the river a few meters away to protect this important archeological site from flooding (Figure 5). Although being technically and financially challenging, the project is a good example of partnership and cooperation among different experts and stakeholders, for example archaeologists (from the Museum of Croatian archaeological monuments in Split), architects (from the architectural bureau “Arhitektonski kolektiv” in Split), the City of Solin administration and the Croatian legal entity for water protection “Hrvatske vode”.

Figure 4. The remains of the Hollow Church in Solin
Figure 5. The solution for the flooding problem of the Hollow Church in Solin

[*]

Margeta, J.,Baučić, M., Vilibić, I., Jakl, Z. Petrić, L., Mandić, A., Grgić, A., Bartulović, H.,,Popić, N., Marasović, K.,Jajac, N., Rogulj, K., Ivić, M., Jovanović, N., Bačić, S., (2019), The city of Kaštela Coastal Zone Management Plan, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Geodesy, University of Split. Document financed by the ERDF, within the Interreg Med project CO-EVOLVE, pg. 16 (retrieved from: https://www.kastela.hr/projekti/plan-upravljanja-obalnim-podrucjem-grada-kastela).

Katić, M., Bucat, M. (2022). Budućnost starohrvatskih lokaliteta Rižinice i Šuplje crkve u Solinu, power point presentation from the 8th International Congress of the Historic Cities, Solin, 29/3/2022-1/4/2022.

Serious Gaming for the future of Hoek van Holland & Bospolder-Tussendijken

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At the end of March, stakeholders from Hoek van Holland and Bospolder-Tussendijken played a game to determine which interventions could be applied in the future to further develop cultural tourism in both districts. This game was obviously not just a ‘game’ but a serious game developed within the framework of the European project SmartCulTour.

SmartCulTour in Rotterdam

The Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Rotterdam / Living Lab Rotterdam is one of the six living labs participating in the European project SmartCulTour, which is funded by the European Commission within the framework of the H2020 programme. The aim of the living labs is to encourage networking between tourism stakeholders in order to develop best practices and innovative solutions for sustainable cultural tourism, which can also be exchanged with other European regions.

Over the past months, several meetings have taken place with Rotterdam stakeholders to identify areas where there are opportunities to further support sustainable cultural tourism. Hoek van Holland and Bospolder-Tussendijken are the areas where a neighbourhood-oriented approach with stakeholders is being used to investigate what is needed to further develop cultural tourism. For example, in both Hoek van Holland and Bospolder-Tussendijken, neighbourhood tours were conducted to identify interesting places in the areas together with stakeholders. In addition, interviews were conducted with stakeholders to get a better idea of what cultural interventions might be of interest.

Hoek van Holland

On 24 March, various stakeholders, namely the municipality, local residents, cultural entrepreneurs and researchers used tools to think about the cultural tourist future of Hook of Holland. The meeting took place in MY Torpedo shed. A piece of cultural heritage, the shed was used for years to store sea mines and torpedoes. Since 2014, the shed has been used as a hotel, restaurant and meeting venue.

The meeting started with the use of the House of Quality tool. This is a tool to reach consensus on (policy) interventions that have the greatest chance of contributing to the wishes of a destination. The tool was used in Hoek van Holland to get more indication about which (policy) intervention has the greatest chance of success when it comes to making Hoek van Holland ‘better’. In addition, the tool helps in making rational decisions.

The ‘needs’ were jointly assessed. How important is accessibility to good jobs?’ or ‘How important is the development of a cultural identity? After rating the needs with a number, the current situation was mapped. How is the accessibility to good jobs at this moment? Subsequently, the stakeholders were asked what type of cultural interventions they considered important, after which the first results of the House of Quality were revealed. For example, the most important intervention that emerged was that there is a strong need in Hoek van Holland to develop »A cultural tourist offer that can attract visitors during the low season.»  This intervention is in line with the need of, among others, the municipality of Rotterdam to transform Hoek van Holland into a four-season seaside resort in a sustainable manner.

After the deployment of the House of Quality, the SmartCultour Serious game was used as a tool. The serious game is a hybrid role-playing game that uses a combination of a digital dashboard, a mobile app and physical intervention cards. Players assume the role of regional stakeholders of cultural heritage and try to achieve their goals and needs by creating interventions or supporting someone else’s intervention. The players are of course given roles they do not fulfil in everyday life. This makes for surprising results. In Hoek van Holland, the most important outcome was the need for a practical strategy to achieve the four-season resort in a sustainable way. In the next session on 14 April, the Roadmapping tool will be used to determine together which steps need to be taken.

Hoek van Holland SmartCulTour Session

Bospolder-Tussendijken

One week later, on the border between Bospolder-Tussendijken and Historisch Delfshaven, a meeting was held in which the stakeholders from Bospolder-Tussendijken set to work on interventions for their neighbourhood. At this meeting, too, a diverse range of stakeholders were present: municipal employees, local residents and entrepreneurs. In the library of Altstadt, a theatre and workshop for performing arts in the making, they first used the House of Quality tool together. This made it clear which interventions would have the greatest chance of success in Bospolder-Tussendijken. The most important intervention that emerged was that there is a need in Bospolder-Tussendijken for the development of new products and services in the area of tangible cultural heritage.

With this intervention in mind, the various stakeholders got to work together using the SmartCultour Serious game. The game showed that there is a strong need to bring together a number of existing social but also cultural components in a (public) space. On 18 May, the stakeholders will sit down together again to take the first steps, based on roadmapping, towards making this a reality in the future.

Want to know more about SmartCulTour? Check out the website.

Bospolder-Tussendijken Session

Presentations on community-led interventions in Scheldeland

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In November 2021 and February 2022, two advisory board sessions were organized in Living Lab Scheldeland, with the explicit purpose of presenting the community-led ideation to local policy makers.

The first session on 22 November 2021 took place in hybrid fashion, both real-life in CC Binder in Puurs-Sint-Amands and via Microsoft Teams. In this session, the project ideation canvases of the three subgroups – as developed in the fourth workshop – were summarized in a PowerPoint presentation and presented to the advisory board by selected members of the workgroup. The three prospective project to be presented were:

  1. “Scheldeland in beweging” (i.e. Scheldeland in motion): family-focused and group-based active weekends, linking different cultural heritage attractions and particularly focusing on one of the last remaining steam trains in Belgium;
  2. “Scheldeland, goed gezien” (i.e. Scheldeland, well seen): a sensory route for people with visual impairments, with slow modes of transportation;
  3. “Scheldeland, vanuit de hoogte” (i.e. Scheldeland from above): nature ‘hangouts’ with landmark values, particularly focusing on a lookout platform at the Scheldt river turn, linked to cycling routes and bird breeding grounds.

A House of Quality matrix was used by policy makers on various level in order to scare the different initiatives on different priorities and needs, leading to aggregated scores for the three proposals.

After the meeting, the scores were analyzed and reported to the participants, with “Scheldeland in beweging” receiving the highest average score. In a next advisory board session on February 2022, the different proposals and their respective scores were discussed and “Scheldeland in beweging” was unanimously seen as the initiative to prioritize, considering multiple recognized benefits. In the remainder of the meeting, a customer journey was mapped out in order to identify further needs in product development and help to plan future workshop meetings.

Loarre and CIHEAM Zaragoza host a European training event on how to promote sustainable cultural tourism

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The training took place in Loarre’s Town Hall on 17 March with researchers and experts from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Representatives of different counties of Huesca took part in a parallel training session to test a tool designed to boost sustainable tourism in the province.

The SmartCulTour project, Smart Cultural Tourism as a Driver of Sustainable Development of European Regions, has organized an internal capacity-building event for representatives of the project’s six Living Labs to test creative tools to boost the tourist sector in each of the regions. The training was organized in two working sessions, one in the town of Loarre on 17 March and another on 18 March at CIHEAM Zaragoza. Participants came from Belgium, Finland, Croatia, Italy, Austria and Spain.

The aim of the first session was to provide the project’s partners with context about the tourist sector in Huesca. They worked on tools to favour engagement of stakeholders related to the tourist sector that would enable them to promote their area from a more emotional perspective, linking their past, present and future to their territory.

The second session was held at CIHEAM Zaragoza. Participants worked on methodologies to help territorial managers improve their decision-making by addressing initiatives that would cover the needs identified for development in European regions – including the province of Huesca – as sustainable cultural tourism destinations.

A parallel session was organized on 17 March for representatives of different counties, public entities, and businesses in the province of Huesca who did a pilot test of the SmartCulTour Game, one of the project outcomes expected to have the biggest territorial impact. The idea is to use the serious game approach to draw up policies and engage stakeholders, and at the same time learn about cultural tourism and potential interventions to make cultural tourism more sustainable for local communities, the environment and the business sector.

This training event lies within the activities of the SmartCulTour project, which aims to promote territorial development through sustainable cultural tourism. This model of tourism requires a redefinition of the classical cultural tourism, considering new demands derived from sustainability and the need for supply and demand metrics and impact assessment. The project intends to review theories and make an empirical validation of good practices in the natural surroundings and seek closer collaboration between the local stakeholders, facilitating the development of joint strategies and creating sustainable cultural tourism experiences.

2022 Winter School on Digital Cultural Tourism and Diplomacy

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2022 Winter School on Digital Cultural Tourism and Diplomacy

Indigenous cultural heritage is the legacy of tangible physical objects combining the intangible aspects of a group of society. Objects, artefacts, buildings, places and monuments aside, intangible cultural heritage, also known as “living heritage” or “living culture”, refers to living practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, and skills passed down from generation to generation. This heritage provides communities with a sense of identity and is continuously recreated in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history. It is called intangible because its existence and recognition mainly depend on human knowledge and will, which is immaterial, and is transmitted by imitation and living experience.

The 2022 Winter School of the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage, in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites, is dedicated to investigating how ICTs designed to enhance the tourism experience can help in preserving and transmitting living heritage and bring people to work and live closer together, while at the same time promoting forms of tourism (cultural, historic, religious, gastronomy, wine, etc.) that go beyond traditional “sun sea and sand”, and can verifiably serve as a vehicle of cultural diplomacy. Cyprus, with its richness of tangible and intangible heritage, will provide a suggestive background, as well as an ideal place for the event and offer an environment with various case studies.

More info: https://digitalheritagelab.eu/event2/2022-winter-school-on-digital-cultural-tourism-and-diplomacy/

The fifth hybrid workshop held in the Utsjoki Living Lab

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The Utsjoki Living Lab held its 5th workshop with the local stakeholders from tourism and municipality in the beautiful and wintery Utsjoki area on the 2nd and 3rd of February 2021. The facilitators of the Living Lab workshops were from the University of Lapland.  

Based on the constructive knowledge from the previous meeting, it was time to focus on ideation and more creative thinking of the intervention videos. The themes of the videos, selected last workshop, were how to behave in nature, and how to represent modern and traditional Sami culture. While jumping into the ideation, it’s often difficult to be creative in the moment. Hence, an ‘art impulse evening event’ was organised a day before the actual workshop, on the 2nd of February. During the one-hour event, art videos were presented by using e.g. place-making method by professor Satu Miettinen.  

Participants experiencing the art impulses in art event (Pics: Mira Alhonsuo) 

The art impulses were first introduced to the four participants by the fire in the hut and right after the art experiments were shown and performed outside. The participants were freely invited to take part in and so few of them jumped into the experimentations. The dark evening made it possible to project the place-making videos on different surfaces, such as snow and the roof of the hut.

The official workshop started the next day. The participants, local stakeholders from the tourism and municipality, were invited by offering both onsite (6 participants) and online (2 participants) participation. After a short introduction and a quick replay of the art impulses shown the previous evening, the ideation exercises started. The participants were first asked to recall their art experiences: what art has impressed them and why? From these experiences, important features were selected, discussed, and mapped down. After that, the participants highlighted the most important features. These selected features were used by the groups to support the ideation, while developing the draft version of the two intervention videos. The video ideas were deepened to consider, among other things, where the video was filmed, what story it tells, and where the video could be presented to impress travellers with its storytelling or location.

Project staff and workshop facilitators Ella Björn (left picture) and Satu Miettinen and Mira Alhonsuo (right picture) starting the workshop next day (Pic: Mira Alhonsuo) 

In the last exercise, the groups visualized service journeys, where they used the persona development tool produced in an earlier workshop (April 2021). The groups either selected a single video or considered merging the two video drafts. Through the service journey, the idea was the video, its location and impact were concretized better.

A participant finalising their customer journey mapping based on the video idea (left picture) and Ella facilitating online participants (right picture) (Pic: Mira Alhonsuo) 

Deliverable 1.2 – First-policy-report

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This report aims to provide an overview of the specific policy recommendations that originate from two particular tasks in the SmartCulTour project: re-conceptualization of (sustainable) cultural tourism and expectations concerning future trends and developments (WP2), and identification of state-of-the-art interventions in cultural tourism towards sustainable development (WP3).

The report starts by recognizing the potential of cultural tourism in Europe and specifically its framing as a driver for sustainable development and smart regional growth. However, due to an ongoing lack of comprehensive evidence on the benefits of cultural heritage and the observation that, in many countries, cultural tourism is not yet adequately measured, the policy report pays attention to two particular issues:

1. The conceptual fluidity of cultural heritage and, by extension, cultural tourism;

2. The lack of structural evidence on the holistic benefits of cultural heritage for a destination.

In this report we first focus on the question of conceptualization, and through analysis of existing definitional frameworks, propose contemporary definitions to frame cultural tourism in all its aspects as: “a form of tourism in which visitors engage with heritage, local cultural and creative activities and the everyday cultural practices of host communities for the purpose of gaining mutual experiences of an educational, aesthetic, creative, emotional and/or entertaining nature” (Matteucci & Von Zumbusch, 2020, p.19).

Secondly, the policy report presents both workflow and results of an extensive case-study analysis on cultural tourism interventions throughout Europe, both in terms of resources used and in terms of generated (or expected) outcomes in order to provide more robust findings on the multiple benefits of cultural tourism. The five main purposes for cultural tourism interventions that were recognized were: (1) to protect, restore, safeguard and promote, (2) to develop and innovate, (3) to interpret, understand and disseminate, (4) to involve and connect, (5) to manage and influence. While the list does not necessarily need to be considered as exhaustive, and can depend on the non-random case study selection, the typology helps in describing situations and challenges that are typical of each intervention category and can therefore inform policy makers on selecting appropriate cultural tourism projects.

At the end of the report, a number of policy recommendations are given, both on conceptualization and operationalization, and on methodological recommendations that can be followed by Destination Management Organizations and policy makers to collect additional primary research data.

You can read de full report here: Deliverable 1.8

The SmartCulTour Game: Playing for a sustainable Future

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The SmartCulTour Game is an integral part of a set of intervention toolkits for the six SmartCulTour Living Labs. With its playful approach to policy making, the game aims to engage stakeholders to learn about cultural tourism and interventions to make cultural tourism more sustainable for communities, the environment, and creative businesses.

The game was developed in 2021 by the Research & Development Lab ‘Cradle’ of Breda University of Applied Sciences. Drawing on insights and outputs of previous WPs such as the ‘state of the art of cultural interventions’ or the ‘Future of cultural tourism for urban and regional destinations’, concepts have been translated into a workshop with playable interactions.

About the SmartCulTour Game

The serious game is a hybrid role-playing game using a combination of a digital dashboard and backend, a mobile app (for iOS and Android), and physical intervention cards. Players take the role of regional cultural heritage stakeholders aiming to achieve their goals and needs by creating interventions or supporting someone else’s intervention.

Login screen of SmartCulTour game on phone app
KPIs on Dashboard

The game can be contextualised and played in any city or region and is designed to cater 10-15 players. The setup of the game can be tailored to any local situation for which different scenarios can be played through. Once, the setting is defined and player-roles are chosen, participants play in rounds and create or select interventions which support their aims. After implementing the intervention, an evaluation and discussion on potential impacts will take place which is supported by a visualisation on the dashboard.

Game Sessions and Afterlife

Within the next months, the SmartCulTour Game will be ready to be played in the SmartCulTour Living Labs. Then, we will be able to share some more insights and learnings. Please stay informed here.

Contact

If you want to play the SmarCulTour game also in your area or are interested in the game, please contact Dr. Jessika Weber-Sabil, senior researcher and lecturer at BUAS at weber.j@buas.nl

Creative workgroup sessions in autumn 2021

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In autumn 2021, 4 working group sessions were organized in quick succession in the Scheldeland Living Lab, on 6 September, 13 September, 20 September and 4 October. The flow of the workshops was designed following a double-diamond session model for co-creative ideation.

The first workgroup session took place in-person in CC Binder in Puurs-Sint-Amands on 6 September 2021 and brought together local stakeholders from the three municipalities of Dendermonde, Bornem, and Puurs-Sint-Amands. The main aim of this first meeting was (a) to serve as an ice-breaker, (b) to get acquainted with each other and the project goals of SmartCulTour, and (c) to discuss the context of Scheldeland from the perspective of the three identified domains (‘Heritage & Culture’, ‘People & Society’, ‘Nature & Water’). A sticky notes sorting game was adopted in order to link the particularities (opportunities and challenges) of the three domains with the situation in Scheldeland.

The second  workshop took place physically at the Sint-Bernardus Abbey of Bornem on 13 September 2021. The focus here is on the “What if…” question. As a first step, the living lab participants were given a presentation of the UN SDGs and trends in order to inspire them to work within the framework of the new paradigms and holistic systemic design thinking. Starting from the general context defined in the first workshop, participants now narrowed down the opportunities and challenges to three challenges (one of each domain: ‘Heritage & Culture’, ‘People & Society’, ‘Nature & Water’) to be focused on in the remaining sessions.

In the third workshop, organized in-person at the city hall of Dendermonde on 20 September 2021, the project moved towards the ‘ideation’-phase (“What wows”). At the start of the session, lab participants were given a presentation on a selection of the best practice cultural tourism interventions that were identified in WP3 of SmartCulTour and were deemed most appropriate/of interest to the Scheldeland case. Next, the workshop adopted a serious play approach, in particular Lego © Serious Play, to further entice creative, out-of-the box thinking. At the end of the session, within the three sub-groups of the Living Lab, three bottom-up cultural tourism initiatives were suggested: (a) a sensory parcours for people with visual impairments, with slow modes of transportation, (b) family-focused and group-based active weekends with gamification elements, linking different cultural heritage attractions (c) nature ‘hangouts’ with landmark values, particularly focussing on a lookout platform linked to cycling routes and bird breeding grounds.

In workgroup meeting 4, which took place in Puurs-Sint-Amands on 4 October 2021, the ideas that originated at the end of the previous session were further refined, focusing on specific questions such as: What’s the objective? Who is the target group? Who are primary/secondary stakeholders? What are advantages/disadvantages? For each cultural tourism initiative, a project initiation canvas was completed which outlined further steps to be taken.

Living Lab Vicenza: Testimonials from stakeholders

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Giulia Basso is the creator of “Itinerari Letterari“, a project born to organize guided walks and events in city’s locations that are told in literature. In the video, she tells us, for example, how, with the Living Lab and its network she discovered a place unknown to many tourists and citizens: the Church of Santa Maria Nova, the only religious building designed by the architect Palladio in Vicenza. The Living Lab for Giulia is a great opportunity to network with the many stakeholders involved, providing effective tools and interactively sharing information and innovative solutions for the development of cultural tourism

Caterina Soprana is the President of the Culture Commission of the Municipality of Vicenza and creator of the Cittàbellissima project which combines architecture, culture, tourism and economy to increase the attractiveness of Vicenza in Italy and in the world. This project merged into the Vicenza2024 Candidacy Dossier as the Italian Capital of Culture. In this video Caterina identifies 3 key components of the SmartCultour Living Lab project: 1) Cooperation between associations, universities and the Municipality of Vicenza to create an innovative and sustainable cultural offer. 2) Cooperation among other European Living Labs to learn about new ways and development projects of the cultural tourism. 3) A very important collaboration with the Department of Economics of the Ca ‘Foscari University of Venice, a true scientific study of data processing, which transforms those into fundamental tools to help Living Lab stakeholders in research and definition of new development systems. 

Giulio Vallortigara Valmarana is Villa Valmarana ai Nani’s Owner. He manages and implements events, tourist visits, and creates tailor-made experiences for Italian and foreign guests. Giulio is a great  supporter of «networking» and sharing knowledge and experiences , to create a proactive collaboration between all stakeholders in the hospitality tourism sector, he immediately and enthusiastically embraced the Living Lab project. In this  video he takes us on a short itinerary of his splendid Villa, on the hills of the city, which hosts the fabulous frescoes by Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo