On 18 and 25 June 2020, the Culture/Cultural Heritage Partnership hosted their 3rd meeting, which was held in a virtual format.

Day 1

Gabriele Kautz (German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community) and Giorgio Martini (Italian Agency for Territorial Cohesion) opened the first day of the meeting, which was dedicated to the presentation of the draft Actions. Sandra Gizdulich, Giovanni Pineschi (Italian Agency for Territorial Cohesion) and Jan Schultheiß (German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community) introduced the agenda and defined the objectives of the meeting.

Working Leaders and Action Leaders presented the five short-listed thematic groups they have been working on jointly with selected experts and Coordinators during periodical meetings. The main topics were:

• Cultural tourism,
• Creative and cultural services,
• Transformation,
• Adaptive reuse and urban reconversion,
• Resilience on culture and cultural heritage,
• Cultural services and culture for inclusive cities.

This work resulted in the development of 15 concrete actions, 3 per working group. Each Working Leader presented and described the 3 actions of their respective working group in detail and opened the discussion to the audience to receive feedback, questions and suggestions of potential improvements.

Day 2

The second day of the meeting took place on the 25th June 2020, and was devoted to forming the ‘Action groups’, as the main objective for the Partnership was to be ready to write its Action Plan at the end of this two-day meeting. Therefore, from now on, partners will  move from Working Groups to Actions Groups. Laura Hagermann-Arellano (DG REGIO) presented relevant elements to consider when refining the Actions, explained the Public Feedback process and the inter-service consultation to Partnership members.

Coordinator Giovanni Pineschi (Italian Agency for the Territorial Cohesion) presented some examples of Actions from other Partnerships and reminded members that they will participate in the design of the Actions, thus they need to reflect on what they wish to work on, according to their interests and resources. Partnership members were then invited to select which precise action(s) they would like to work on among the following:

1 Data system for tourism management

1.3 Regulating phenomena of sharing economy

1.5 European Task force for crises in tourism sector

2 Cultural street Invasion, the local and European identity

3 CHIME

4 Cultural Reactives

5 Collaborative Management to adapt and reuse spaces and buildings for cultural and social innovative development

6 Strategic Plan for the Culture Enhancement in Urban Framework

7 Hub and platform for resilience of cultural heritage urban framework

8 Resilience and Risk support for urban heritage

9 Observatory/Multilevel Laboratory and Workshop

10 Dark Heritage

11 Cultural services and culture for social inclusion

12 Peer learning activities

13 Awareness for urban public libraries

What’s next?

The next steps for the Action Groups will be to agree on the activities, outputs, milestones and deliverables to further define selected Actions by the end of July, and prepare a first draft for the action Plan using the template and tools provided to them.

The Public Consultation was launched by mid-July, in parallel with the Inter-Service consultation. The Partnership is organising a workshop during the next European Week of Regions and Cities, taking place in October 2020, and a stakeholder conference in Berlin on 24 – 25 November. 

You can read the draft actions and contribute to the Public Feedback here