Building on the saying “birds of a feather flock together,” at the beginning of 2023, we launched the LATENT/EMERGENT community of practice and learning, focused on revitalizing abandoned spaces. Our explorations and visits to ecodestinations confirmed that abandoned spaces abound everywhere. However, there is also a growing desire to recognize and reaffirm these spaces as fundamental pieces of the history and identity of the communities they belong to and to present them as cultural subjects that can generate debate, social change, alternative economic activity, and ecotourism.

We found consensus on the need to counter the phenomenon of abandonment and physical neglect of these spaces by positioning it as a topic in the public space and discourse. We need to talk about this, and we can do so practically—by professionalizing restoration and conversion solutions, creating opportunities for collaboration and support for those involved in revitalization, and even through better legislation.

The complexity and diversity of revitalization work dictate how people organize around spaces (from local initiative groups, associations, and foundations to broad engagement ecosystems and international working networks) and the level of multidisciplinarity and professionalization. Cultural managers, heritage interpreters, artists, sociologists, urban planners, architects, photographers, and enthusiastic amateurs can be part of a revitalization project. This blend of skills, interests, and passions makes working with heritage highly appealing and promising, creating an extremely vibrant field that continually generates creativity and innovation. All these aspects must be integrated into the revitalization process.

About the mission and activity of the community

Within the community, we aim to nurture and encourage this potential while bringing together resources to address the structural challenges faced in heritage conservation and management work. We create opportunities for learning and exchange, grow the field through critical debate and knowledge-sharing, and facilitate collaborative relationships, while also offering new perspectives and ideas.

Here are some numbers: there are 55 active members in the community, we’ve organized 5 online learning sessions with both teams involved in revitalization and Romanian specialists, as well as international experts, two exploration and work events at Banffy Castle with Transylvania Trust, and in Șona with the Ștefan Câlția Foundation and the Șona Noastră Village Association. The community is open to everyone actively engaged in revitalizing spaces, willing and open to participate in learning, collaboration, exploration, and exchange sessions. Here is the sign-up form.

Our approaches

One of the methodologies we proposed to the community was heritage interpretation, which involves communications strategies, critical educational techniques, and sustainable development filters to make heritage accessible to the general public, as well as curatorial work. We chose this theme as we feel it’s important and also complementary to the restoration of heritage buildings and the (re)engagement of the space by the community. In the session dedicated to interpretation, we invited Valya Sterigioti, interpreter and trainer in interpretation at Interpret Europe, Diana Iabrașu, coordinator of the photographic archiving initiative of the village of Șona and the documentary and storytelling project Albastru, and Iuliana Dumitru, a socio-anthropologist working in the cultural field and curator in the Cultural Projects Department at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. The event is available >>> HERE (EN).

The pressing need to professionalize fundraising efforts in revitalization work led us to Jan Kroupa, an expert in fundraising at the Czech Fundraising Center, who guided the most recent learning session within the community. We’ll share here a few thoughts that have shed some light on this topic:

“Fundraising is the art of not asking for money, but asking people what they care about.”
“When you decide to start fundraising, be serious about it and trust that it can be done.”
“Your duty is not to raise money, but to create an oppoortunity for your potential sponsor/donor to be involved in your vision, to take part in what you’re building.”

More on this + the online session >>> HERE (EN).

Wanting to stay connected to European realities and international best practices led us to Paul Boutsen, a pioneer in reimagining post-industrial regions in Limburg, Belgium, and to Ilinca Păun Constantinescu, initiator of the revitalization program for the Petrila Mine. The two brought us closer to the phenomenon of shrinking post-industrial cities and their potential. They described how working at the intersection of sustainable local development, architecture, tourism, art, and culture operates, as well as the types of organizational and governance ecosystems that can form during industrial revitalization processes.

You can watch the whole session >>> HERE (EN).

In our first knowledge transfer session with Luca Ciubotaru from Rădăuțiul Civic and Irina Leca from studiogovora, we discussed the initial thoughts and attempts at revitalization. Difficult and somewhat solitary, these efforts have had, from the beginning, a great power to catalyze and mobilize both the initiators and the community. The recording is available >>> HERE.

Curiosity and the need to meet like-minded people with similar concerns and challenges, as well as the eagerness to explore advanced revitalization projects—and thus, complex ecosystems of intervention— brought us to Banffy Castle in the spring and the village of Șona in the summer. At Banffy, we encouraged the community’s imaginative power through a facilitated workshop aimed at designing a support and scaling mechanism for initiatives to bring latent spaces to life (which we then further explored and developed into a project called Heritage Stewardship Support Program).

The future of L/E

We plan to facilitate further opportunities for exchange and learning, develop capacity-building programs for organizations working on heritage sites, build sustainable financial models for revitalization endeavors, develop public policy proposals co-written with the community and build partnerships with other local organizations to help grow and professionalize teams; in parallel, organize recurring events that will strengthen trust in the revitalization movement.

credits feature foto: TuneIn Photography

Check out our Resources section for all the recorded knowledge transfer sessions within the Latent/Emergent community and other materials.