About 30 experts from PROCULTHER-NET Partners and stakeholder institutions will discuss how to build and maintain a community dedicated to the protection of cultural heritage at-risk that can serve as a reference for all thematic communities within the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network to strengthen Union Civil Protection Mechanism capacities
On 4 and 5 October 2023, Mainz (Germany), will host 30 experts in disaster risk management and cultural heritage from all the PROCULTHER-NET Partners and from international and national stakeholder institutions, including ICCROM and the Ministries of Culture of France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey.
Drawing on the extensive network of contacts and technical and operational content built up, PROCULTHER-NET is laying the ground for the establishment of a thematic community focused on cultural heritage protection in emergency: now the time is ripe to provide elements for its composition, governance and sustainable running.
In fact, this event is the culmination of a long process that began with the previous project PROCULTHER (2019-2021) and the past activities carried out within the PROCULTHER-NET, mainly the reflections made by the Partners during the Workshop “Pointing out the key elements for setting up the PROCULTHER-NET Community”, organised back-to-back with the Initial Planning Meeting in September 2022, the needs arisen by the “Ex-ante feasibility study on the establishment of a thematic community” developed to facilitate the identification of the contents and processes on which to build the experience of a best-practice incubator, and by the survey to map stakeholders’ interest in the capacity development process, revealing the concerned actors’ drive to join the capacity-building processes to be developed within the project.
The participants will be gathered in Mainz with the aim of defining the main elements for the implementation of a roadmap towards a cultural heritage protection community. They will then be split in separate working groups, each of which required to develop and abide by the founding elements of sustainable thematic communities within the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network. The experts, following the guiding principle of the Knowledge Network’s integration within the overall structure, will propose the community’s objectives and outputs, a possible governance system and structure, including a potential regulatory framework and financial system.
The thematic communities should be able to work as a coordinated system capitalizing on the necessary expertise and skills to ensure due consideration and inclusion of the aspects related to the protection of cultural heritage within the Union Civil Protection Mechanism – UCPM. Moreover, the creation of thematic communities would help facilitate the long-term processes required by the capacity building development and knowledge transfer needed in all fields of expertise involved in the management of emergencies.
In view of improving the preparedness and response capacities within the UCPM, this pathway could also serve as a reference for other thematic areas and, more generally, within the activities of Civil Protection and disaster risk management agencies at local, national and international level.
