Project partners held local stakeholder meetings within REDISCOVER

In line with the project’s main objective to build on currently undiscovered potential in the Jewish cultural heritage of cities, and develop contemporary tourism solutions, as a start of the thematic activities of the project, a community focused survey of tangible and intangible Jewish heritage portfolios of each participating partner city is to be created. To accomplish it, a participatory approach is applied, with a strong emphasis on local stakeholders’ participation in the process. To mobilize local stakeholders, project partners of the REDISCOVER project held Stakeholder Meetings locally between 1 November 2018 and 20 December 2018.

During the stakeholder meetings local stakeholders had the opportunity to get acquainted with the most important activities, outputs and objectives of the project. Also, the importance of local stakeholder groups, their involvement right from the initial stage was emphasised, and the role stakeholders played during project implementation was outlined as their key members actively taking part in the dissemination of results and multiplying existing knowledge and experience or new ideas.

Among the members of the local stakeholder group a wide range of professionals and stakeholders are represented, including local governments, tourism organizations, experts, local bodies responsible for preserving cultural heritage, representatives of the local chambers of commerce, members and prominent figures of the local Jewish Community. A very first instance of the significance of the local stakeholder group in shaping the project was the role it played in deciding on the theme of Personal History Files, which is a series of social media posts on visions, ambitions and key members of the local stakeholder group. During the local stakeholder meetings an important issue was to determine who the prominent figure to be interviewed should be. Among the interviewees we can find outstanding members of the local Jewish Communities, experts with deep knowledge related to Jewish Cultural Heritage, practicing tourism professionals. The series of video recordings produced under the generic headline „Personal History Files” is going to published through the Facebook profile of the project: https://www.facebook.com/rediscover.interreg/

During the meeting, work started to lay the foundations of the local repository of Jewish Cultural Heritage by discussing methodological aspects. A key issue in it was to determine the main categories along which tangible and intangible heritage elements will be enumerated, and city level inventories shall be compiled. In general, we can find synagogues, cemeteries, other sacral buildings, residential buildings, schools and social institutions among tangible heritage elements, although the main focus is on the intangible, so far hidden cultural heritage elements, like songs, music, dance, literature, cuisine, crafts, sciences, testimonies, oral history, legacy of outstanding personalities. In many cases, a tremendous amount of information is available related to local Jewish Cultural Heritage, which makes an appraisal system to evaluate their tourism potential also necessary. Local repositories will eventually form the basis of a joint, web-based tourism service and attraction portfolio available for the general public.