LEGACI is an artistic-academic collaboration, aiming to explore the potential of participatory artistic methodologies in relation to difficult heritage, policy and policy-making. By the use of arts-based participatory methods, the partners aim to achieve active inclusion and participation in heritage processes and meaning-making and to show how these methods can lead to new knowledge, and heritage transformation, thus contributing to best practices in critical heritage engagement.
In 2022, the partners, based in the Netherlands and Spain, looked into the Faro convention - a European treaty for the protection of cultural heritage and the rights of citizens to access and participate in that heritage. The research leading up to the project showed that different groups find symbolic and practical barriers for their participation in heritage-making. Also we found that the current interpretation of the FARO convention is primarily concerned with preserving heritage that we wish to keep, not in transforming heritage that we would like to preserve differently.