Heritage Innovation Partnerships (HIPs) in CLIC cities and regions

Each HIP is steered by two local leaders: city-region leader (a representative from a municipal/regional or non-governmental organization) and an academic leader(representative from a local research institute). Both are in charge of gathering a solid group of stakeholders, with diverse expertise fields and interests, who will work together in the definition of a Local Action Plan for the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage in their territory.

To do so, six HIP Dialogueson diverse topics (e.g. cultural resources mapping, governance models or financing and business models) will be held in each location during the first two years of the project. Moreover, the leaders of the HIP process will meet up one time in each of the city-regions with the occasion of the Peer Review Meetings, to discuss the implementation progress and exchange their learning experiences. One final HIP Open Day in each pilot city/region is foreseen in September 2020 to share the process results with the broader public.

The HIPs are carried out under the coordination of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability that will act as a knowledge broker, creating a bi-directional bridge between the project and the local processes, in order to support the project’s impacts and learning outcomes.

HIP’s in CLIC cities and regions

Heritage Innovation Partnerships took place in all CLIC cities and regons between June 2018 and March 2019. CLIC partner Pakhuis de Zwijger from Amsterdam seized the occasion of the We Make the City festival to celebrate the first HIP meeting at the end of June, 2018. The discussion among the participants focused on exchanging knowledge in order to make heritage more sustainable and design a circular urban development for the neighborhood. The second HIP meeting, at the beginning of February, was aimed at identifying concrete actions in the field of sustainability to plan future actions for Pakhuis de Zwijger Foundation, taking into account different levels of decision making (ownership, law and regulations as well as Municipality’s ambitions).

Västra Götaland region held the first meeting in Gothenburg on the 19^th of September, bringing together relevant stakeholders from three selected sites: Strömsfors, Forsvik and Gustavsfors. The second HIP meeting in the Swedish region took place on 30 January 2019 in Forsvik and continued the day after in Strömsfors, focusing on mapping the economic, social and environmental resources of the areas in order to define a vision for 2030.

Both Rijeka and Salerno chose the initial week of October to host their events. On the 5^th of October, the Croatian city gathered representatives from the NGO sector and other interested authorities to take part in the first meeting. Three days later, Salerno succeeded in convening a varied group of actors such us private individuals and representatives from foundations, banks and associationsin the city. These first dialogues counted with the facilitation of Groupe ICHEC-Brussels Management School and aimed to assess what the local communities identify ascultural capital assets in their surrounding environment, as well as the barriers and bottlenecks they find when addressing adaptive reuse of cultural heritage.

On the other hand, the first Peer Review meeting was hosted by the city of Salerno with the support of the Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development (IRISS CNR) on the 28^th and 29^th of November. This meeting included site visits to different examples of adaptive reuse of cultural heritage buildings in Salerno, what allowed Pakhuis de Zwijger, Rijeka and their respective academic partners to know firsthand the challenges Salerno faces and give some advice to the involved local stakeholders on how to overcome them. These discussions brought interesting insights both to the host city and the visiting partners, what without feed into their local processesand help in the preparation of the next  Peer Review meeting to be celebrated in March, 2019 in Rijeka.

The HIP workshop hosted by Salerno at the end of February 2019 involved local stakeholders to support them in identifying the most effective methods and criteria through which new uses of cultural heritage can be identified, in line with the principles of circular economy. It was the occasion to talk about the reactivation of “sleeping giants” for sustainable urban development and to present virtous projects able to generate positive social impacts.

The second round of Heritage Innovation Partnerships ended at the beginning of March in Rijeka where the Municipality and the University of Nova Gorica brought together stakeholders to discuss how to match nature and culture along the Riecina River.