This book explores the concepts and practices of participation and community engagement in cultural heritage, examining the impact of the participatory turn in the heritage sector and the key opportunities and challenges it presents.
Participation has become a widely used umbrella term in the discourses of heritage institutions, practitioners, and scholars alike. This participatory turn represents a shift towards the active involvement of communities, stakeholders, and the public in decision-making processes, moving away from traditional top-down approaches towards more inclusive and collaborative models in which diverse voices contribute to cultural heritage. While the pluralisation of heritage narratives, meanings, and practices can sometimes give rise to societal tensions, this book argues that broader participation is essential for unlocking heritage’s transformative potential and future-oriented impetus. The book explores these issues through 15 case studies drawn from across the globe and organised into three thematic sections: social inclusion in heritage practices, the role of digital tools in heritage participation, and participatory heritage management and governance. These case studies contribute to emerging debates on expanding the spaces where heritage participation and community engagement take place.
Interdisciplinary in nature, this book is intended for scholars and professionals working on cultural heritage, participation, social inclusion, digitisation, management, and community and audience engagement. It is also well-suited for undergraduate and graduate courses that critically examine heritage participation and community engagement in today’s pluralistic societies.
Tuuli Lähdesmäki is a professor of art history at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She specialises in critical heritage studies, heritage policies and politics, cultural memory, identities, and narratives of Europe.
Johanna Turunen is a senior researcher of contemporary culture studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her work is focused on the intersections of critical heritage studies and post- and decolonial theory.
Andrei Terian is a professor of Romanian literature at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. He researches intangible cultural heritage, specialising in the textual heritage, cultural memory, canonisation, and digitisation.
Renaud Garcia-Bardidia is a professor of cultural studies at the University of Lorraine and an associate researcher at the University of Burgundy, France. His research addresses the digitalisation of cultural consumption practices and the evolution of cultural institutions in this context.
