SoPHIA Stakeholders’ Workshop: Towards Policy Recommendations for Holistic Heritage Impact Assessment (SW) was held in a hybrid format broadcasted from Dublin on September 23rd and 24th, 2021. It gathered over 50 participants: members of the Consortium and of the Advisory Board as well as stakeholders from the SoPHIA Social Platform. The SW was a closed event by invitation only.
The SW was framed within the third phase of the SoPHIA project and provided, on the one hand, for a last discussion on the definition of an effective holistic impact assessment model, as well as the quality standards and guidelines for future policies and programmes in Europe. The SoPHIA project has been looking for the right approach to understanding the goals of heritage projects more holistically and introduce a balance in evaluations of their success. Instead of prioritizing formal accountability, a wider perspective has been sought to give a full account of outputs, results and outcomes related to cultural interventions, by providing a deeper reflection on the desired, expected and non-expected impact(s) of the interventions on cultural heritage (CH) supported by EU funds, as well as those coming from Members States and local authorities, and evaluating their sustainability and resilience.
Discussions at the SW were guided by the following questions:
- Are the main challenges identified sufficient?
- Are there innovative research streams other than those suggested?
- Are there policy recommendations others than those suggested?
The SW aimed to foster exchange and debate on the recommendations to be put forward in the Policy Briefs and the other policy related deliverables.
