Conservation of cultural heritage: from participation to collaboration

Abstract

The concept of participatory conservation of cultural heritage involves the investigation of ways in which community members can be encouraged to become active actors and collaborators in the preservation/restoration process of cultural heritage assets and, beyond that, promoters of tourism policies and processes and the cultural, ethnographic and religious values that such assets embody. This paper aims to present some forms of participation in the conservation of the cultural heritage process as an important part of integrated scientific conservation management, starting from an important series of documents on international policy in the field.