Community-driven heritage care: developing an inclusive and sustainable landscape of care for Pionta

Abstract

This article examines the concept of ‘heritage’ in the context of ‘landscapes of care’, which approaches care as a means of fostering connections between humans and non-humans. Heritage care involves communities actively engaging with and benefiting from cultural heritage in various ways. Establishing a caring landscape for heritage involves empowerment, participation, and collaboration, as demonstrated by two community-driven heritage projects in Pionta’s cultural landscape. The first project aims to create a community that strengthens the emotional bonds between individuals and their cultural legacy by promoting acts of care. The second introduces diverse participatory and art-based methods that cater to the needs of the involved groups and foster a shared sense of care for their heritage. By using heritage education and serious games as empowerment tools, the projects show how collective heritage caring can change the visual, verbal, and mental representations of a marginal heritage landscape from the community’s perspective.