Public participation in cultural heritage, with particular regard to conservation, has been a concern ever since the Venice Charter, and it still is to this day. This approach has also been highlighted in World Heritage documents. The Faro Convention adopted a shift in focus from the conservation of cultural heritage values to the value of cultural heritage for society. Accordingly, cultural heritage institutions inevitably have to apply a participatory approach in order to achieve sustainable conservation. Moreover, a number of papers have focused on the importance of public participation in heritage conservation and tourism management. This chapter studies the concept of people's participation in cultural heritage conservation and management in international charters and documents. It also takes into account various methods and approaches in Human-Computer Interaction studies, which have valuable resources for user engagement in designing services by people for people, in order to propose an effective, applicable people-participation approach to cultural heritage management.
TopIntroduction
Public participation in cultural heritage, with particular regard to conservation, has been a concern ever since the Venice Charter (1964) and it still is to this day (Europe, 2017). This approach has also been highlighted in World Heritage Documents. The Faro Convention (Europe, 2005)adopted a shift in focus from the conservation of cultural heritage values to the value of cultural heritage for society. In this case, it is necessary to engage the public and local people in all stages of cultural heritage conservation and management (Dian & Abdullah, 2013). According to this convention, cultural heritage institutions inevitably have to apply a public participatory approach. Moreover, several papers have focused on the importance of public participation in heritage conservation and tourism management (Kong & Yeoh, 1994; Steinberg, 1996).
The term ‘public participation’ refers to a variety of formal processes that incorporate public concerns, needs, and values into governmental decisions. Public participation consists of identifying public concerns and preferences and addressing them during decision-making through techniques such as public meetings and hearings, advisory committees, interactive workshops, interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, and other methods (Creighton, 2018). Public participation applies different values and aspects for reaching the best results.
According to the core values provided by the International Association for Public Participation-IAP2, it is widely accepted that people who are affected by a decision have the right to be involved in the decision-making process. This public participation must assure that the people’s concern will affect the decision. In addition, “public participation promotes sustainable decisions by recognizing and communicating the needs and interests of all participants, including decision-makers” (IAP2, 2019). The engagement of those affected by, or interested in, a decision must be facilitated by interactive methods for achieving maximum participation. In this respect, useful and trustworthy information will help people to participate in a meaningful way. Finally, the results of participation must be published for communicating to participants how their input affected the decision.