EVoCH Platform at RESTAURO Fair 2015: experiences and indicators in Europe

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Following the event, held during the RESTAURO Fair, all the attending members of the EVoCH Platform congratulated the organisers, and expressed their great interest in the cases of best practices discussed, which covered the various micro-macroeconomic scales involved in promoting cultural heritage, and the economic returns derived from it.

Particular interest was aroused by the study produced by Ernst & Young Portugal on the returns of the Patrimonio.pt Fair, run by the company Spira, and the Strategic Report on the Heritage Sector in Catalonia, commissioned by the Catalan Cultural Heritage Agency, in Spain. A case study was delivered on the Lifecycle of heritage management, produced by the University of Pavia in Italy, in collaboration with the universities of Módena and Reggio Emilia in Italy and Comillas in Spain. Meanwhile, the Director General of Heritage of the Junta de Castilla y León explained how the EVoCH principles have been applied to the recently-approved Strategic Plan for the Cultural Heritage of Castilla y León, known as Plan PAHIS 2020.

The meeting also enabled new entities with relevance for the project to join the Platform as promoter members, following express requests to become more actively involved from the Catalan Cultural Heritage Agency and the Association of Italian Cultural Heritage Companies, Assorestauro.

Based on some of the models discussed at the meeting, the EVoCH Platform could go on to serve as a meeting point between countries to establish a common methodology for studying the economic return of cultural heritage, taking into consideration comparable studies undertaken in other European regions, which could be used to carry out social marketing and demonstrate the significant returns, from both a social and economic perspective, generated by investment in cultural heritage.

Meanwhile, the Italian Ministry of Culture, the joint organiser of the event, (the initial idea for which came from the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Junta de Castilla y León), expressed its pleasure not just with this initiative and the interesting proposals put forward, but also the offers of joint collaboration between the two countries in this field and on other projects relating to Culture, and Cultural Heritage in particular.

Lastly, taking advantage of the fact that representatives from the cultural heritage fairs of Spain, Italy and Portugal were all present, a meeting was held among the three countries’ leading fairs, AR&PA, Restauro y Patrimonio.pt., to establish ways in which they could work together.