Prof. Paulo Ferrão, President of COST Association, participates in the ReDiscover Europe workshop on sustainable Cultural tourism

10/05/2021

Launched in January 2020, the H2020 Impactour project organised the ReDiscover Europe workshop on Europe’s day,  9 May 2021. The aim is to connect Cultural Tourism stakeholders and researchers to find new ways to support the European Cultural Tourism. The workshop centred on the role of sustainable Cultural Tourism in a post-COVID Europe and was the occasion for Prof. Paulo Ferrão, President of COST, to present the role played by COST Actions over the years in defending Cultural Heritage.

COST President Prof. Paulo Ferrão

Cultural heritage at the time of the COVID-19 crisis

As we celebrate Europe day and Robert Schuman’s declaration establishing Europe’s foundations, the ReDiscover workshop reminds us of the importance of our Culture across Europe which is “playing a huge palliative role by sharing Europe’s rich cultural diversity”. The pandemic which has been striking the planet for more than over a year is vividly reminding us how we missed access to Culture: Cultural Tourism in not only a bridge between people and different European cultures, but a key factor of economic growth. In practice, States now need to adjust to the new rules resulting of this unique situation by taking measures to guarantee a safe and sustainable tourism in a post-COVID world. For instance, new tools were implemented to preserve the link between culture and the general public such as online visits and conferences, live streaming on dedicated pages or videos presenting specific items, to name a few.

The ReDiscover workshop falls into a rich agenda for the culture and tourism sectors. In March of this year, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on establishing a European Union strategy for sustainable tourism and, in April, Horizon Europe has been approved with a dedicated cluster for culture and creativity to strengthen European democratic values, including rule of law and fundamental rights, safeguarding cultural heritage, and promoting socio-economic transformations that contribute to inclusion and growth.

It is in this unique context that the ReDiscover Europe workshop, 100% online, free and sustainable, gathered policy makers, scientific researchers, industry and cultural tourism practitioners to address three main topics:

  • The post-COVID cultural tourism: what have we learned, what might we do differently, an opportunity for Big / SMART Data?
  • People: accessibility, inclusion / exclusion, market needs
  • Technology: digital gateways, mobile interactive content / co-curation, dynamic modelling and tourism management.

Prof. Ferrão applauded the online format of the ReDiscover workshop, an “out-of-the-box approach, which transcends scientific disciplines, actors and regions”, and which gives a proper, easy-to use, simple to adapt and flexible answer to all the challenges resulting from the COVID-19 crisis. “These mechanisms build trust and provide the necessary safety allowing to fail and offering to restart in a low-risk and secure way, creating a fertile breeding ground for the development of much-needed new ideas, approaches and solutions”, he added.

Tarn region, France.

COST’s engagement in cultural heritage

As pointed out by Prof. Ferrão during his speech, COST “has been an acknowledged partner providing solid platforms via its COST Actions in the field of cultural heritage”. Because of its bottom-up nature, opened to all scientific fields, COST, indeed, answers to all “niche’s needs”, and cultural heritage is, of course, one of the beneficiaries.

COST’s involvement in supporting the cultural heritage is not new and goes back 25 years ago with the first ever COST Action on cultural heritage (1996). In 2011, COST organised a strategic workshop alongside the University of Florence (Italy) and the Fondazione Florens on “The Safeguard of Cultural Heritage – A challenge From The Past for the Europe of Tomorrow”. More recently in 2017, the “Cultural Heritage in the Digital ERA” COST Connect was organised and focused on the importance of digital technologies in the cultural heritage research activities just before the European Year of Cultural Heritage launched by the European Union in 2018.

With more than 30 Actions currently working on the cultural heritage field, “the COST Programme has been nourishing open and inclusive networks of excellence in all scientific domains and has established itself as a platform where people and ideas can grow and establish long-lasting global connections”, explained Prof. Paulo Ferrão to the audience. “In the case of the current conference this is more tangible than ever. The project housing us today, the cooperation that allows for our exchanges is rooted back to a COST Action starting officially in 2015 and maybe a couple of years earlier, considering all the planning and preparation work”.

Indeed, Dr Joao Martins, Coordinator of Impactour, is also the former Chair of the “Innovation in Intelligent Management of Heritage Buildings (i2MHB)” dedicated to achieving a common understanding and operation for the Heritage Buildings. “[This] collaboration is a clear example of COST’s contribution to reach out to a multi-stakeholder community, often involving the private sector, policymakers and civil society that are very important stakeholders in the context of cultural heritage”, continued Prof. Paulo Ferrão.

After addressing COST’s societal engagements to answer society and citizens’ needs from the cultural sector, from the citizens on how they can contribute and promote cultural heritage around them and have a digital access to the world’s most famous sites during lockdown, Prof. Paulo Ferrão concluded his session by declaring : “Let me express my trust that COST will remain a supporter to further build the cultural heritage research as a consolidate sector and offer the COST Actions as platforms for this purpose”.

Traditional Estonian outfits