Co-Creating the Future of Heritage: What Eleusis, Milan and Ballina Can Teach Us

Learn about the co-creation process of the HeritACT project to ensure that everyone is taken into account when crafting cities' heritage's future!

What if the buildings we walk past every day,  the old church with broken windows, the abandoned farmstead on the city’s edge, or the quiet civic square, were reimagined as engines of climate action, creativity, and community resilience?

This is exactly what HeritACT is facilitating. And now, we’re able to share a behind-the-scenes look at how three European towns, Eleusis (Greece), Milan (Italy), and Ballina (Ireland), are leading the way in reactivating heritage through participatory processes that blend technology, local knowledge, and bold imagination.

The recently published article “Co-creating strategies for heritage reactivation: HeritACT pilot cases in Eleusis, Milan and Ballina”, written by the University College Dublin, part of the HeritACT team, reveals a powerful insight: when you hand the mic to local communities, heritage becomes more than preservation, it becomes transformation.

Using a three-stage co-creation process, the HeritACT team worked with residents, municipal staff, artists, and stakeholders to map out their goals, identify barriers, and co-design strategies tailored to each town’s unique context.

“This bottom-up process didn’t just generate ideas, it shaped roadmaps rooted in real needs, lived experience, and shared ambition.”

What Happened in the Three Pilot Towns?

Eleusis, Greece: Governing the Legacy of Culture

Famous for its ancient myths and modern industry, Eleusis had just come off a high-profile year as European Capital of Culture. The challenge? How to sustain the cultural momentum. The focus here was on governance: creating a model to ensure public spaces and heritage buildings activated during the year don’t fall back into neglect.

Key idea: Build partnerships with underrepresented communities, apply digital tools like AR/VR, and co-create a governance model that lives beyond the project.

Milan, Italy: Cascinas as Community Hubs

In Milan, the project zoomed in on “cascinas”, historic farmsteads now embedded in urban areas. These places hold potential to become green, inclusive, cultural hubs. But they face barriers: bureaucracy, underfunding, and lack of visibility.

Key idea: Use design thinking to engage communities in shaping the cascinas’ futures, turning them into resilient neighbourhood anchors that combine sustainability with heritage.

Ballina, Ireland: Breathing Life Into Vacancy

Ballina’s challenge is a familiar one across Europe: how to reverse the decline of its historic town centre. Here, the strategy was about activating vacant religious and historic buildings through temporary cultural uses, community events, and new partnerships, all with a view toward building long-term community resilience.

Key idea: Turn underused heritage into social glue, and a tool for tackling climate, mobility, and social fragmentation.

From geo-tagged surveys to interactive online whiteboards and cross-city knowledge exchange, HeritACT piloted a set of digital-first, human-centred methods. These tools didn’t replace community dialogue, they amplified it. And they’re now part of a growing toolkit for cultural heritage innovation.

This is not just about three towns. It’s about a scalable model for Europe. Heritage reactivation, when done with and for communities, can:

  • Strengthen social cohesion

  • Spark local climate action

  • Boost cultural and economic vibrancy

  • Protect places people care about — and make them matter again

The co-creation work laid the foundation for the next big phase of HeritACT: co-recognition, co-envisioning, and co-implementation. In other words: creating together, planning together, and making it happen, together.

If you want to learn more about the different findings of the paper, you can read it on the Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development website

So, whether you're part of a local council, a cultural group, or just someone who believes that old places can have new lives, this is your moment to join the movement.

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HeritACT Consortium Meeting Recap: Advancing Heritage Co-Creation and Sustainable Engagement