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In Flanders, preserving immovable heritage has focused mainly on ‘the bricks’ for a very long time. IDEA Consult conducted two studies to help the Flemish Agency for Immovable Heritage make the transition to a people oriented policy. We summarise the main findings below.

A paradigm shift: immovable heritage preservation viewed through a different lens

The first study, from 2022 was an examination of the current working methods of immovable heritage preservation, with the ambition of arriving at a ‘new rationale’ (underlying logic) for supporting immovable heritage preservation.

As part of this study, we researched the evolution of international and European charters and investigated 4 international benchmarks that apply different immovable heritage policies than in Flanders: Sweden, Scotland, the Netherlands and Denmark.  We mirrored these insights with the Flemish context through a number of focus groups with various stakeholders.

Protecting and subsidising are part of the DNA of Flemish immovable heritage policy. Ever since the 1964 Venice Charter, the vision of immovable heritage preservation has been based primarily on intrinsic motives: the desire to preserve and, if possible, restore the material and cultural-historical values of immovable heritage.

However, the funding available for immovable heritage preservation is many times smaller than what is needed for all the valuable heritage in Flanders. Moreover, the social context has evolved considerably since 1964. In order to take better preservation of immovable heritage, it is important to be able to conclude (new) alliances with other parties who do not necessarily start from the same motives, but nonetheless want to contribute to the preservation of immovable heritage.

The past decades, we have thus gradually seen more attention and space for other preservation motives: community building and remembrance, symbolic and philosophical values, education and experience, habitation and commercial exploitation, … However, support and funding in Flanders followed this evolution only to a limited extent, and is still largely based on the starting principles of the Venice Charter.

A proposal of quadruple paradigm shift resulted from the research, which has since been adopted as a guideline by the Flanders Heritage Agency:

Key underlying ideas in this paradigm shift, are:

• Heritage sites are not objects, but places that are rooted in spatial and social contexts and thus they exist in relation to this changing environment. Heritage places are beacons in an evolving landscape, and places that people want to make evolving use of and/or give changing meanings to.
• Immovable heritage preservation is ideally of importance to the whole of society. But if you want society to help preserve it, there must also be room for other motivations, reasoning and strategies than purely heritage-oriented ones. After all, personal and community-oriented motives, utilitarian, economic and ecological considerations can also be reasons for wanting to (help) preserve immovable heritage. The way we want to preserve our immovable heritage needs more dialogue between these motives, in equal balance with preservation considerations.
• Today, the Flemish Agency for Immovable Heritage does already provide room for a contemporary social and spatial perspective on immovable heritage, but it does not yet systematically encourage this perspective through the support it provides. To make this happen, the Agency wants to evolve from guardian of heritage values, to new roles: as beacon, coach and co-creative partner, in a network model with many partners. In due time, the Agency also wants to redesign its instruments, starting from this new perspective.

What might this desired paradigm shift look like in practice?

IDEA Consult’s second study, from 2024, built on this paradigm shift. Here, the focus was on exploring new cooperation models and principles for immovable heritage preservation with a particular focus on the relationship between Flemish and local governments.

In Flanders, local authorities play a dual role in caring for immovable heritage: on the one hand, they themselves own and manage a sizeable heritage patrimony; on the other hand, they also play a role in the policy monitoring of the immovable heritage on their territory owned by other types of actors. A screening of the heritage patrimony and characteristics of the local administrations, and an analysis of the heritage grants granted in the period 2015-2023, showed the following:

• Flanders has a large heritage patrimony: over 13,000 protected objects (of which over 11,000 are monuments, and to a lesser extent cultural-historical landscapes, town and village views, archaeology and nautical heritage). On top of this, though, there are over 75,000 identified objects: these are designated as valuable but are currently not protected.
• This heritage is unevenly distributed among local governments. The weight of the heritage patrimony is often not proportional to the carrying capacity of those administrations: smaller cities and municipalities often have a limited financial and staffing capacity, but in large cities the heritage concentration is so high that they, too, have difficulty maintaining this patrimony.
• Even though the allocated Flemish funding is considerable, it still is a drop in the ocean to preserve this costly and valuable patrimony to pass it on to generations to come. In practice, these funds are already being combined today with funds from other actors (local authorities, private actors, etc.) but the necessary stacking of funding often does not run smoothly: the funds are not found, or not in time, causing projects to be delayed or even halted, and in the meantime costs continue to rise.

How might the Flemish Agency for Immovable Heritage address these challenges? To answer this question, we revisited the learning lessons from the benchmarks of the first study, in particular the Heritage Deal in the Netherlands and the Heritage Zones in the UK, of which you can see a telltale video here. In a series of 3 multi stakeholder workshops, we explored the opportunities and challenges for the future, in which various local councils and Flanders Heritage Agency staff engaged in dialogue. The resulting concept of impulse programme demonstrates how the Flemish Agency for Immovable Heritage could put the desired paradigm shift into practice. Designed as possible experiment or test case, it obviously could not answer all the challenges in the field; it shows, though, how support can be shaped from new principles. It includes the following 5 key elements:

1. Start your journey from social needs, rather than heritage typology

In repurposing heritage, the starting point is not the heritage itself, but the creation of vibrant and/or caring neighbourhoods and districts. Immovable heritage is used as a lever for urban development, and at the same time the heritage site is taken care of and developed, too. In terms of content, two widely supported priorities were chosen: on the one hand, we put forward heritage as a place for social contact, both socially (e.g. cultural places, village halls, etc.) and with an economic angle (restaurants and cafés, shops, etc.). On the other hand, we looked at heritage as a place to live and care with a focus on, among other things, new housing and care typologies, space for care professions and child care, …

2. Strive for long-term sustainable solutions

Heritage preservation that seeks long-term sustainable solutions must balance three forms of sustainability: social, economic and environmental.

• By social sustainability, we mean the development of socially relevant visions and interpretations in co-creation from different perspectives, taking into account the carrying capacity of the heritage.​
• Financial sustainability means striving for financial viability, both of investment projects and recurrent operation and maintenance, in co-financing if possible, and using funding from immovable heritage as leverage to get other financiers on board.​
• Ecological sustainability means both an eye for sustainable, potentially circular material choices, contemporary energy solutions, and attention to ‘blue-green interlacing’ of project areas (water and greenery) which has positive effects on well-being in various ways (e.g. heat islands, etc.).

3. Collaborate and co-execute in a better way

The programme strives for more effective, better and faster implementation of heritage projects with multiple stakeholders.

• By strengthening ‘multi-voiced’ thinking on sustainable use and preservation of protected heritage, starting from different perspectives. The aim is to create shared visions for projects, and also to better align support and rules form a government perspective.
• By putting vision creation into practice: include support for vision as well as implementation projects in the programme
• By striving for co-financing and stacked funding from various public authorities and private partners. With an eye for restoration and renovation, but also for exploitation. In which heritage funding from the Agency, thanks to a new approach, works as a lever to get other financiers on board.

4. Give more decision-making power to the local level

New instruments should pay attention to the desired role shift and development among both the Agency and local governments and other stakeholders.

• This implies that e.g. the Flemish Agency for Immovable Heritagedoesn’t just impose decisions, but takes a seat at the table to collaboratively find solutions and decide on priorities.
• It also means greater decision-making power over the choice of priorities by local governments, considering both publicly and privately owned projects.

5. Work on practical learning, knowledge sharing and awareness-raising

Exploring new ways of working requires attention to supporting learning about the process, not just the outcome.

• By explicitly gathering and sharing knowledge as you go, the aim is to gather insights tooptimise support and regulation.
• By interlinking knowledge and understanding through locally embedded heritage networks. The idea is to strengthen of the role of Intermunicipal Heritage Offices and Heritage Municipalities as core nodes in these networks.
• By strengthening awareness of the potential of heritage as a place for societal aims   among local actors, including politicians, municipal services, regional structures, entrepreneurs and citizens.

Want to know more about these studies? Contact me.