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The UK’s ratification of Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in March 2024 signals a formal commitment to engage with the concept of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). This article investigates how this commitment could reshape built heritage practices in the UK through fostering a more integrated relationship between the tangible and intangible qualities of heritage. It argues that prioritising this interface is essential for contemporary built heritage management, ensuring the diverse cultural values embedded in the historic environment are represented. After examining the broader UK context, the article narrows focus to England, where Historic England’s guidance and initiatives demonstrate how shifts in policy and practice could materialise in response to the convention. The article concludes by proposing three key opportunity areas that could emerge from emphasising the tangible–intangible relationship: 1) evolving understandings of heritage, community and participation; 2) recognising the mutual influence of ICH and physical heritage; and 3) strengthening place-based cultural practices. These opportunities offer a timely pathway for the UK to become a thought leader in heritage management by aligning conservation practices with evolving cultural values and community involvement, thus setting a new benchmark for built heritage management in a Western European context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Kingdom (UK) has not adopted the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage (the 2003 Convention). It has been argued that this is because the UK government does not fully comprehend intangible cultural heritage (ICH). However, this article suggests that the UK government does in fact understand ICH, and that several historic and current UK laws and policies protect aspects of ICH. The article re-examines ICH, and reveals that ICH includes two key elements: the discernment of heritage and the embodiment of heritage. The discernment of heritage refers to how cultures identify which spaces, objects and artefacts are the correct and meaningful referent for the expression of ICH. The embodiment of heritage refers to activities which express ICH. Understanding ICH in this way clarifies that heritage-related laws in the UK have been focussed on protecting the discernment of heritage, and not on protecting specific embodiments of heritage. The divergence of heritage-related laws and policies between England and Wales since Devolution is then examined, revealing a relationship between nationalism and the embodiment of heritage. It is argued that the UK government's understanding of this relationship better explains the UK's hesitation in adopting the 2003 Convention than poor comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines dissonant heritage from the perspective of sustainability, i.e. should we maintain and preserve artefacts from our Soviet past, such as the war memorial in the Antakalnis cemetery, which honours soldiers of the USSR who died fighting on Lithuanian soil during the Second World War? Currently, there is an intention on the part of Lithuania's political authorities to remove this apparently dissonant monument. Its presence – and/or removal – raises more than a few issues of sustainability, including those of the socio-cultural environment, policy(ies) for heritage, and matters pertaining to the legal system. Accordingly, the paper analyses this particular example of Lithuania's dissonant heritage by reference to the relevant literature, and also by presenting historical aspects of both the cemetery and the memorial. The opinions of the cemetery's visitors concerning the Soviet memorial are also analysed. The empirical research covers the purposive group of Antakalnis cemetery visitors during All Soul's Day (2 November 2022). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The General Assembly of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention adopted a policy and strategy on climate change in 2007. Many of its actions remain to be delivered. Climate change has highlighted the limits of a system under stress to respond to an immense challenge. The General Assembly is again considering the issue, and a second World Heritage climate change policy is being developed to provide high-level guidance on response measures. The draft second policy emphasises the role of individual States Parties in addressing climate impacts on their World Heritage sites but says less about the responsibilities of the World Heritage Committee, World Heritage Centre or Advisory Bodies to the Convention in meeting the goals of climate action and achieving an equitable, international and shared response. Nor does it tackle issues related to Outstanding Universal Value, the core of any response to climate change. We develop a conceptual framework for substantive reform and propose actions to enable the World Heritage system to effectively respond to climate change and support the resolution of longstanding, systemic issues. Meaningful response to climate change needs to involve strategic as well as operational elements in a staged response with measurable outcomes and outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of LGBT+ memories and identities has been neglected in processes of heritagisation. This is despite numerous attempts undertaken by various institutions to promote a more inclusive notion of heritage, which incorporates cultural diversity and the demands of social sectors that have previously been ignored in heritage policies. This study contributes to the literature by examining the incipient recognition of heritage that contributes to the visibility and normalisation of sexual diversity. We focus on tourism and leisure contexts, which have played an important role in disseminating certain perspectives on sexual diversity. Specifically, we highlight how the confluence of the market, transformations in heritage systems, and ways of depicting the LGBT+ narrative reveals new processes of recognition for LGBT+ heritage. In the process of heritagisation, tourism and leisure serve as narrative pillars of memories and identities. This study explores these aspects by focusing on a Spanish town, Torremolinos, which has become one of the most important international LGBT+ tourist destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines the discursive structure, operational mechanism, and historical narratives embedded in the Heritage Plan, Israel's official cultural heritage policy since 2010. One central stated goal of the policy is to strengthen Israel's heritage infrastructure to convey the idea of 'the Jewish people in their homeland'. This article uses the concept of the 'Jewish people in their homeland' to explore the guiding premises of the policy. By analysing a variety of data sources (such as policy documentation and interviews with the policy's architects), this study investigates the discourse which constitutes and is constituted by the Heritage Plan. The findings suggest that the Heritage Plan is guided by international heritage conservation policies such as UNESCO's World Heritage Convention which have been adapted to the Israeli context. Specifically, this adaptation is derived from a particular interpretation of Zionist historiography, which in turn guides the goals, selection criteria for heritage sites and ultimately the historical narratives presented by the Heritage Plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a Smart Heritage computational system that automatically produces a wide range of design proposals for new timber Gothic churches based on an intelligent interpretation of an architectural database of historic churches. The system enlists the software ‘Houdini’ and a digitally archived dataset of 19th Century timber Gothic churches. The cases presented here focus primarily on timber churches built in Wellington, New Zealand. Through a process of analysis and deconstruction of these historic churches into their characteristic architectural components, spatial organisation and geometric relationships, the system assembles them into novel designs based on high-level design parameters. This paper details this computational system, its development, its operation and its outputs. The role of the system that has been developed is two-fold. One is designing in an architectural heritage context, and one is as an aid to historical architectural investigations, or what can be called digital forensics. The particular outputs are automatically generated hybrid churches that capture the historical design values and complexities of Gothic inspired churches in New Zealand. However, the broader applications are as an investigative tool for historians, and as an objective generative tool for those involved in heritage reconstruction.

Abstract Depicting the temporal and spatial evolution pattern of global world cultural heritage systematically and finely is the basis of heritage recognition and protection. In this study, 869 world cultural heritage inscriptions (through 2019) were selected as the research objects, and the times and types of each World Heritage site were manually annotated from more than 5000 pieces of data. Through time series modelling, the advantages of and changes in heritage declarations in different regions and periods were analysed, and the impact of heritage strategy on the number of heritage sites included in each region was evaluated. The results showed that the implementation of heritage policy greatly impacted each region, especially on the number of heritage sites in Asia and the Pacific region. Using the heritage era to carry out modelling analysis, from the perspective of the integrity of historical heritage cultural types, it is considered that there may be cultural heritage sites in the Caribbean and Latin America that have not been given enough attention. The modelling analysis results of era attributes can support the fairness of heritage determination. By calculating the frequency and peak value of heritage sites at the national scale, the frequency and peak value of each country in the top 10 list are used to characterize the ability of national declarations of cultural heritage and reveal the differences in the ability of each member country to declare heritage sites and the heritage era. By calculating the distribution density of the heritage era, this study finds that the world’s cultural heritage is not concentrated in the Middle Ages (600–1450) but the periods of Reformation and Exploration (1450–1700) and Progress and Empire (1850–1914). The above analysis shows that there are imbalances and strategic adjustment effects concerning regions, countries, eras and types in World Heritage list development. The composition types of heritage are complex, and the combination types have obvious changes in different periods. It is suggested that the strategy of world cultural heritage collection should be further optimized to fully guarantee the balance of regions, countries and types, and the heritage value should be fully considered in heritage protection with more diversity and complexity of types.

This article documents and analyses the Chinese government's legislative and policy framework for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH). It summarises early Chinese ICH protection measures before analysing how systemic ICH legislation and policy frameworks were put into place after China joined the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2004. Since then, China has established a multilayered legislative framework for safeguarding ICH, with its capstone national ICH law passed in 2011. China currently embraces a production-based ICH-safeguarding paradigm, and it is implementing several practice-oriented policy initiatives that are discussed in this article. China's legislative and policy endeavours to safeguard ICH are impressive when compared to most other countries, but they are also hampered by significant challenges that are inherent in its state-centric nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reveals the contemporary Chinese state's active role in shaping the country's religion-related intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding, through a systematic review of China's official inventories of national representative ICH projects and extensive investigations of relevant local practices and initiatives. Although China is ruled by a political party officially embracing an atheist ideology, various elements of the contemporary Chinese state have been proactively involved in safeguarding religion-related ICH. The Chinese state's involvement in de facto religion-related ICH safeguarding predates its adoption of explicit ICH safeguarding narratives. Still, the Chinese state's practices and initiatives in safeguarding religion-related ICH flourished after ratifying the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2004. Since then, China's central government has established a nationwide framework to recognise representative ICH items, including religion-related ones. Beyond Beijing, various local state agencies have also developed noticeable enthusiasm for supporting the safeguarding of religion-related ICH. In addition to engaging directly with ICH safeguarding, the contemporary Chinese state has also shaped China's religion-related ICH by working closely with some academics and religious groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 presents an opportunity to preserve a rich and diverse historical record—one intended to honour all experiences and voices and in recognition of ongoing systemic inequalities shaping the pandemic. But policy changes are necessary in three key areas: how memory institutions are funded and supported, the gaps in our capacity to preserve the digital records that reflect how we communicate with one another today, and how to preserve and make accessible valuable scholarly research into the societal impact of COVID-19. Our goal is to begin a conversation about priorities for archival preservation, the need for greater equity and justice in our preservation practices, and ways to safeguard the existence of historical records that will allow us in future to bear witness, with fairness and truth and in a spirit of reconciliation, to our society’s response to COVID-19.

The Washington Arms Limitation Treaty 1922 was arguably one the most significant disarmament treaties of the first half of the 20th century. It can be shown that the heritage items associated with this treaty are still extant. Ship’s bells are one of the few moveable objects that are specific to the operational life of a ship and are therefore highly symbolic in representing a vessel. This paper surveys which bells of the ships scrapped under conditions of the Washington Arms Limitation Treaty are known to exist. A typology of ship’s bells has been developed to understand the nature of bell provisioning to vessels newly commissioned into the U.S. Navy. Each of the countries associated with the Washington Treaty have divergent disposal practices with respect to navy property, and this is reflected in both the prevalence and nature of custodianship of ship’s bells from this period. Such procedures range from the U.S. requirement commanding all surplus Navy property to be deemed government property upon ship deactivation, to the British practice of vending ship’s bells to private parties at public sales. However, ship’s bells, like many obsolete functional items, can be regarded as iconic in terms of heritage and therefore warrant attention for future preservation and presentation in the public domain.

In the late 1990’s, France embraced the recommendation of the Council of Europe to create the “Heritage of the twentieth century” label and attempt to face the threat hanging over this recent architectural heritage. Since then, understanding and recognition of this legacy have improved, but resolute action remains necessary to go further. This is why the labelling scheme has recently changed. By becoming “Outstanding Contemporary Architecture” label, it focuses, from now on, on the issue of intervention conditions on buildings, between preservation and conversion, as well as support to the contractors involved. These refurbishment issues, qualitative and respectful of the existing buildings are a burning issue on a European level, through diverse initiatives.

While sites associated with the cultural heritage of armed conflict are self-evident in the landscape, sites associated with arms limitation treaties are usually conspicuously absent. The Washington Arms Limitation Treaty 1922 was arguably one the most significant treaties of the first half of the twentieth century. It can be shown that some heritage items associated with this treaty are still extant. Just as the Treaty required multinational goodwill and cooperation, the preservation of some of that heritage will also require multinational collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a Smart Heritage computational system that automatically produces a wide range of design proposals for new timber Gothic churches based on an intelligent interpretation of an architectural database of historic churches. The system enlists the software 'Houdini' and a digitally archived dataset of 19th Century timber Gothic churches. The cases presented here focus primarily on timber churches built in Wellington, New Zealand. Through a process of analysis and deconstruction of these historic churches into their characteristic architectural components, spatial organisation and geometric relationships, the system assembles them into novel designs based on high-level design parameters. This paper details this computational system, its development, its operation and its outputs. The role of the system that has been developed is two-fold. One is designing in an architectural heritage context, and one is as an aid to historical architectural investigations, or what can be called digital forensics. The particular outputs are automatically generated hybrid churches that capture the historical design values and complexities of Gothic inspired churches in New Zealand. However, the broader applications are as an investigative tool for historians, and as an objective generative tool for those involved in heritage reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bangladesh has one the richest and the most diverse stock of cultural and architectural heritages. But the condition of heritage structures has consistently degraded over the years due to natural and manmade causes. As a developing country commitment is given to the civic and social sectors, on the contrary renovation and maintenance of heritage buildings and sites is seen as financially non-viable proposition. Especially Rajshahi, a store house of the heritage buildings but some these have been demolished due to development courses taken by the authority. Therefore, conservation of these heritage buildings (in original form, or with suitable modifications without destroying architectural integrity) became the need of time. But selecting buildings for conservation is a matter of dispute between policy makers and stakeholders unless the process is transparent & consistent. The major concern for conservationists and authorities in creating such framework is selecting the attributes and how to evaluate these attributes numerically under which structures can be evaluated. This paper discusses the potential of Multi-criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method, to select heritage sites to be conserved. The application of this method is illustrated for several heritage buildings of Rajshahi, Bangladesh and future study can be carried out on its basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweden is often described as a country where secularization has come comparatively far. At the same time, state and church have remained relatively close, especially before the enactment of the decisions of increased separation of church and state in 2000. Sweden is also a country where the built heritage of the established church enjoys a strong legal protection. When relations between the state and the established church were reformed in 2000, this protection was left in place. This article offers an analysis of the significance ascribed to ecclesiastical heritage in the form of Church of Sweden heritage churches in government policy, focusing on the process leading up to the separation of church and state in year 2000. Using Mircea Eliade's understanding of the sacred and the profane as a starting point for my analysis, I contextualize the significance of heritage churches is in the wider context of a post-Christian, and more specifically post-Lutheran, secularized society. I suggest that the ongoing heritagization of Church of Sweden's church buildings could be seen as a process where they are decontextualized from the denominationally-specific religiosity of the Church of Sweden, but rather than being re-contextualized only as secular heritage, they could be more clearly understood as becoming the sacred places, and objects, of a post-Lutheran civil religion and generalized religiosity, i.e. not simply a disenchantment, but also a re-enchantment. This could be understood as a continuation of traditions of approaching memory, and the sacred, developed in a society characterized by the near hegemony of the established church in the religious sphere, but also in partially counter-clerical movements, such as the Romantic movement.

In a comment on two recent articles on the archaeological impacts of metal detecting, this paper advocates clearer and more valid measures of those impacts and more nuanced classification of the legal and cultural environments in which metal detecting takes place. The need to rely on open-source, online data for transnational analysis makes the former challenging but not impossible. Using the example of Canada, the paper shows that jurisdictional and other complexities make simple “permissive” and “restrictive/prohibitive” dichotomies unhelpful, and suggests using multivariate analysis that accounts for such factors as presumption of ownership, locations of metal detecting, availability of finds reporting, and whether heritage legislation concerns artifacts or only sites. This is essential for development of sound, evidence-based policy on the metal-detecting hobby.

This work aims to discuss the production of the representation of Bixiga in the General Inventory of Environmental, Cultural and Urban Heritage of São Paulo-Bela Vista (IGEPAC-Bela Vista). It is considered that contemporary political geography can be analyzed based on representations, government decisions and protest movements, aspects analyzed at Bixiga within the framework of heritage policy. The analysis of the documents produced to demand the classification of the Teatro Oficina as heritage or the request for the creation of a public park in the land adjacent to the building will show that the group associated with the theatre has mobilized various existing laws on heritage to challenge the governments decisions and build new representations for the neighbourhood.

Depicting the temporal and spatial evolution pattern of global world cultural heritage systematically and finely is the basis of heritage recognition and protection. In this study, 869 world cultural heritage inscriptions (through 2019) were selected as the research objects, and the times and types of each World Heritage site were manually annotated from more than 5000 pieces of data. Through time series modelling, the advantages of and changes in heritage declarations in different regions and periods were analysed, and the impact of heritage strategy on the number of heritage sites included in each region was evaluated. The results showed that the implementation of heritage policy greatly impacted each region, especially on the number of heritage sites in Asia and the Pacific region. Using the heritage era to carry out modelling analysis, from the perspective of the integrity of historical heritage cultural types, it is considered that there may be cultural heritage sites in the Caribbean and Latin America that have not been given enough attention. The modelling analysis results of era attributes can support the fairness of heritage determination. By calculating the frequency and peak value of heritage sites at the national scale, the frequency and peak value of each country in the top 10 list are used to characterize the ability of national declarations of cultural heritage and reveal the differences in the ability of each member country to declare heritage sites and the heritage era. By calculating the distribution density of the heritage era, this study finds that the world's cultural heritage is not concentrated in the Middle Ages (600–1450) but the periods of Reformation and Exploration (1450–1700) and Progress and Empire (1850–1914). The above analysis shows that there are imbalances and strategic adjustment effects concerning regions, countries, eras and types in World Heritage list development. The composition types of heritage are complex, and the combination types have obvious changes in different periods. It is suggested that the strategy of world cultural heritage collection should be further optimized to fully guarantee the balance of regions, countries and types, and the heritage value should be fully considered in heritage protection with more diversity and complexity of types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changing nature of heritage over recent decades has stimulated a focus on intangible heritage – the understanding of which specifically from within the UK built heritage paradigm remains inconclusive. This is problematic when considering developments in policy and practice that demonstrate a steady dismantling of a material focus. To gain sector-specific insight into how the intangible heritage of buildings is conceptualised, a series of 16 semi-structured interviews were conducted with built heritage professionals. Data were collated into eight themes (stories; history; events; memory; use; discord; craft; emotion) and an explanatory model developed, revealing the understanding of intangible heritage as a collection of 'narratives' that contribute towards an overarching building 'story'. Both 'buildings' and 'people' were acknowledged as co-authors of this story; however, professionals did not acknowledge their own role within the storytelling process. This downplays their role as curator of heritage, as well as their personal experiences that inevitably shape the storytelling process. Findings suggest built heritage practice should be reconceptualised as a storytelling activity. This will offer greater opportunities for intangible heritage to be consolidated within the built heritage paradigm, by encouraging professionals to see themselves as narrators of intangible heritage as well as custodians of physical heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amongst his many interests, Henry Cleere was particularly active in the field of cultural resource management. This interest included the bringing together of two important volumes of comparative studies on the evolution and form of heritage management systems internationally. His broader writings also included a number of articles exploring heritage management in Britain, placing this within an international context. In encouraging comparative research on heritage management, Henry Cleere was following a tradition which saw fervent activity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain. The context was the increasingly noisy debate around the need to strengthen the Ancient Monument Protection Act which had been adopted in 1882 but which was in danger of becoming redundant. A key resource for this early debate was the comparative information on protective systems outside Britain contained in books produced by a Scottish Solicitor in Glasgow, David Murray, by an English Professor of Fine Art in Edinburgh, Gerard Baldwin Brown, and in a series of Government reports by 'Her Majesty's Representatives Abroad.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This policy review discusses the November 2018 Report on the Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics – more commonly known as the Sarr-Savoy Report – submitted to the French president. The report provides an analysis as well as a number of strategies for returning a number of cultural items and artworks to African nations that were acquired by France during the colonial era. The report also claims that its aim is to establish a new relational ethics between France and African nations through heritage work and institutions. In this policy review, we will discuss the arguments and observations contained in the report, as well as the main recommendations it makes. Additionally, we will provide an overview of responses to this report, and of the realization and implementation of the report's recommendations halfway through its five-year timeline. Finally, we will engage with the ethical and professional dimensions that stem from this important moment – a moment that represents a turning point in current restitution debates for French museums, libraries, and archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological workers in North America are often envious of the supports, initiatives and legislation that other regions have enacted to engage with the detecting community. It seems many cultural heritage laws used to protect sites elsewhere are just not viable, cannot be enforced or are seen as not applicable in the Americas. This leaves North American archaeologists attempting to alter or create new initiatives at a distinct disadvantage. This paper explores municipal by-law creation in two communities in Ontario, Canada, and their complex relationships with metal detecting communities striving to have access to the past through their search for archaeological objects. It reflects on public engagement and the perceptions of power in these two contexts and how Canadian archaeologists manage their authoritative positions. Finally, it considers the power dynamics that prevent metal detectorists from engaging with archaeologists and municipalities, and the concerns that archaeologists have over engaging with the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article tells the story of a request for registration as a 20th century heritage historical monument located in the border area between France and Switzerland. The adopted positions could reflect an enthusiasm for modernity and a consensus for protective processes. But let’s not be mistaken, and historical, geographic, political and cultural considerations must be mobilized to understand the various motivations for this approach. This is surprising in a local context of mistrust towards national and federal policies and authorities, but also with regard to heritage approaches.The renovation of the Salève cable car started in 2016, embodies a feeling of belonging to the same territory on both sides of the border. Its modernity, hidden by successive works, is now fully assumed. The Geneva (Franco-Swiss) governance of the local grouping for cross-border cooperation (GLCT) wants to restore it in all its radicalism. Inaugurated in 1932, the year the free zone was confirmed to the detriment of France, the cable car is thus the expression of a unique History, neither French nor Swiss but from Geneva.

UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) program, with its emphasis on the intergenerational transmission of expressive culture, has been characterized as part of an emergent "East Asian paradigm" of heritage at the international organization. Through an examination of the cultural dynamics of Kutiyattam Sanskrit theater in both policy and practice, this article stakes a claim for India within this global heritage paradigm shift. In so doing, it suggests the possibility of a wider "pan-Asian" heritage paradigm at work, distinguished by an emphasis on the intergenerational transmission of expressive culture as well as a recognition of its continually changing nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the global struggle to protect not-yet-excavated archaeological sites from looting, despite legal strictures, the playing field remains badly tilted against the site guards, customs officials, antiquities police, and prosecutors who lack the financial resources to enforce existing laws. To supplement and give teeth to the strict, but ineffectual, legal regime now in place, economic theory points to a policy solution: a "pollution tax" on antiquities purchased by residents of "market" countries, designed to internalize the social costs of looting so that the industry either takes measures to clean itself up or pays the government to prevent or mitigate the harm the industry causes. Tailored to fall more heavily on antiquities with weaker provenance or extremely high prices, and channeled into an antiquities-protection "superfund" (as was done to clean up toxic chemical sites) or via existing governmental agencies, a Pigovian tax on antiquities could provide a sustainable funding stream for more robust monitoring and enforcement efforts against the illicit market as well as for better site security. Archaeologists and dealers may find the idea of this kind of tax repugnant, but such feelings may be overcome through sustained discussion and negotiation explaining the benefits to both sides of a more licit regulated market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweden is often described as a country where secularization has come comparatively far. At the same time, state and church have remained relatively close, especially before the enactment of the decisions of increased separation of church and state in 2000. Sweden is also a country where the built heritage of the established church enjoys a strong legal protection. When relations between the state and the established church were reformed in 2000, this protection was left in place. This article offers an analysis of the significance ascribed to ecclesiastical heritage in the form of Church of Sweden heritage churches in government policy, focusing on the process leading up to the separation of church and state in year 2000. Using Mircea Eliade's understanding of the sacred and the profane as a starting point for my analysis, I contextualize the significance of heritage churches is in the wider context of a post-Christian, and more specifically post-Lutheran, secularized society. I suggest that the ongoing heritagization of Church of Sweden's church buildings could be seen as a process where they are decontextualized from the denominationally- specific religiosity of the Church of Sweden, but rather than being re-contextualized only as secular heritage, they could be more clearly understood as becoming the sacred places, and objects, of a post-Lutheran civil religion and generalized religiosity, i.e. not simply a disenchantment, but also a re-enchantment. This could be understood as a continuation of traditions of approaching memory, and the sacred, developed in a society characterized by the near hegemony of the established church in the religious sphere, but also in partially counter-clerical movements, such as the Romantic movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Built heritage forms a vital part of many cities' building stock. It consists of historic buildings that are conserved for future generations because they are attributed with value. Despite this ascribed value, the conservation of heritage in an urban setting can create conflict with a city's demands to develop. This paper first reviews the understanding of value within the heritage discourse and discusses extrinsic and intrinsic definitions. Then, using Vienna as an example, a Qualitative Content Analysis of texts from the disciplines of conservation, the law, building standards and city planning was undertaken. These texts form the basis for the city's heritage policy, but as they are not harmonized, potential areas of conflict can arise. The findings show that the most striking difference lies in the definition of value, which some texts either define as being intrinsic or extrinsic. This difference in definition in the fundamental marker of heritage and the lack of coordination between various agents involved was identified as the main source of tension in Vienna's heritage policy making. A unified, extrinsic definition of value would aid the efficient management of built heritage within an urban setting and allow for suitable development and maintenance of a historic city center as a sustainable living space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Analysis of the state-of-the-art non-linear storytelling applications that are currently in use in the cultural heritage domain. • Design and evaluation of a prototype computational model that fuels audience engagement and collaboration of cultural organizations. • Assessment of the developed prototype model (with its associated strategy and policy-planning) in terms of users' acceptance and its adoption as future/standard part of digital-city services in the semantic web. • SWOT analysis as a result of a qualitative and a quantitative evaluation, pointing out strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the proposed model. Abstract Cities are complex, networked and continuously changing social ecosystems, shaped and transformed through the interaction of different interests and ambitions. They are linked to places, where various aspects of past events are projected and expressed by means of personal memories and narrations (urban memory), representing a promise for future: a vision of freedom, creativity, opportunity and prosperity. At the same time, technology is currently promoting unprecedented changes in urban areas, which are often marked as smart city developments. This paper studies the history of cultural and creative industries, bringing forward the dedicated digital storytelling strategies that promote active audience engagement in urban cultural heritage. A collaborative model is proposed and analyzed (in multiple perspectives), aiming at providing an integrated manner for heritage documentation, management and dissemination. The development deals with the Digital City of Thessaloniki, Greece, a big city, not a boundless one, rich in culture, but with rather poor heritage management mechanisms. The research focuses on theoretical and practical aspects for the citizens' collection and interpretation of "digital heritage" documents (artifacts, places, etc.), resulting in a model that fuels audience engagement and collaboration of cultural organizations. Model-design is validated through state-of-the-art review and formative evaluation processes (both qualitative and quantitative), with an associated SWOT analysis that points out strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Although the proposed methodology has been adapted to the needs of a particular (digital) city, the current paper goes beyond a case study, as it brings forward novel technological and methodological guidelines, which could be successfully deployed in districts with similar cultural, geographical, and technical features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the World Heritage listing process for the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal to understand the sociopolitical meanings of heritage in contemporary China. Over the past four decades, the efforts of the Chinese government have been clearly geared towards improving governance over heritage sites by designating them as state properties, which requires the selection and evaluation of cultural heritage sites on the specific political meaning based on historical, aesthetic, or scientific value. In the process of World Heritage listing of Chinese heritage sties, the model of ‘state properties’ had to be compatible with UNESCO’s understanding of ‘heritage’, as well as economic benefits of heritage. Drawing on the data collected from the process of World Heritage listing of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, this paper explores the integration of the social meanings of heritage into the ‘authorized’ values criteria, facilitating multiple uses of ‘heritage’ through collaboration among UNESCO, Chinese heritage officials, and local communities. It argues that practices of heritage that consider social meanings will integrate local communities’ understandings into political meanings of heritage on basis of central government’s interests. This paper shows how the social meanings of heritage create a dialectical relationship to enable a ‘living’ cultural process in the preservation of ‘state properties’. In addition, the social meanings of heritage allow all potential stakeholder groups to negotiate with the heritage bureaucracy, as well as strengthening the role of local interests in heritage policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past 30 years have witnessed a radical shift in European politics, as new far-right wing parties have entered national parliaments. Driven by discontent, fear and the notion of cultural struggle, they have gradually come to twist the political conversation around their core issues. For many far-right parties, cultural heritage is one such issue. While this ought to put them on the radar of scholars studying heritage politics, the topic of far-right heritage policy remains largely unexplored. This article seeks to ignite this field of enquiry by taking a closer look at what far-right heritage policies actually look like. Focus is set on three Scandinavian far-right parties with seats in national parliaments: the Danish People’s Party, the Progress Party in Norway and the Sweden Democrats. By examining the notion of heritage put forth in their party manifestos and the heritage priorities expressed in their parliamentary budget proposals, we consider the weight of their rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay questions the notion of the land (terroir) as a production mode of heritage. Examining the case of Québec, and particularly that of the Laurentides area, it highlights the heritage processes at work in the “mouvement du terroir,” or land movement. It illustrates how heritage and heritage imaginations are contributing to the construction of the regions and the new rurality in Québec by means of new productions, new products or produces, and agro-heritage routes. The modes of territorialization at work reveal the attempts that are made to create new referents and new markings in order to define the regional space. In short, from a critical perspective, this essay shows the fruitful nature of the calls to heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the question of why South Africa's cultural museums and the South African Museums Association (SAMA) should take action on climate change. What is the relevance of climate change to the future of cultural museums and to SAMA? A literature survey of research on the predicted impacts of climate change on South Africa demonstrates its sociocultural effects. Museological work is considered in support of the argument that museums are social institutions with a social responsibility at the core of their mission. These premises motivate the argument that cultural museums have a responsibility to engage with the impacts of climate change in their public programmes and that to do so is crucial to their social sustainability of museums in the medium to long term. The article considers why climate change has so little presence in the work of South Africa's museums, and concludes that this is due to what Pendlebury (2013) calls the "authorised heritage discourse". This paper contends that the development of an ecological model of heritage practice is an appropriate means through which to adapt the authorised heritage discourse to encompass climate change work. To do so is concomitant with the present socially-oriented goals of the heritage sector, and is in fact crucial to the success of the sector's transformation project. The broad character of such a model to be developed in future work is outlined in the final part of the article, drawing on the ecocritical work that has been done in cultural studies and on the concept of cultural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]