The H2020 project, SoPHIA (Social Platform for Holistic Heritage Impact Assessment), got off to a great start in Rome when Professor Michela Marchiori and the Roma Tre University played host to the first meeting on 30th-31st January 2020.

The project, which is funded under the call H2020-SC6-TRANSFORMATIONS-2018-2019-2020, which concerns Socioeconomic and Cultural Transformations in the Context of the 4th Industrial Revolution,  is seeking to create a research-based holistic assessment model for measuring and assessing the impact of interventions on heritage in Europe. The project began with a review of relevant academic and policy literature where cultural heritage is critically studied from environmental, cultural, social and economic perspectives.

The first meeting discussed the methodology which is used in the literary review. It also devised plans for shaping a draft assessment model based on the summary of insights from the review. The project partners include Roma Tre, the European Museum Academy (EMA) as well as the cultural policy and development organisations INTERARTS in Spain, EDUCULT in Austria and IRMO in Croatia, the National Technical University of Athens in Greece and the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology in Dublin, Ireland. PASCAL, represented by Rob Mark, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, is a member of the advisory board which will critique the project and offer a range of international perspectives.

It is our hope that PASCAL members can bring some new ideas and dimensions to the project and we hope to seek your views on key issues arising. This new partnership also represents a collaboration between the European Museum Academy and PASCAL.

Rob Mark & Henrik Zipsane

Some photos of the First meeting of SoPHIA in Italy, 30-31 Jan 2020 (click to enlarge):