Co-Creation Model in Cultural Heritage Management Decision-Making Process

Co-creation as a recent interdisciplinary methodology comes as a management initiative. This contemporary, alternative and creative approach is user-based and focused more on the involvement of the user’s needs / local communities and ideas rather than the traditional one-way patterns that are passive and focused mainly on the experts, authorities and top-down decision-making. The extensive meaning of the term “cultural heritage” is already defined as “multi layered / multi-paradigmatic” which implies to all the man-made and natural inheritance worldwide”. The CHM (Cultural Heritage Management) decision-making process as the multifaceted system incorporates mostly a network of participants such as users, managers, authorities, experts, NGO’s and academicians to deal with the heritage legacy in the most appropriate manner following the internationally accepted legislation and regulations. Also, the CHM decision-making process includes and engages various participants and disciplines in order to be achieved successful management plans for a better future of the heritage sites. The main aim of this study is to test co-creation’s impact in CHM decision-making process. Hence to propose a model that will present the applicability of co-creation in CHM. Furthermore, to check if co-creation is more suitable rather than already existing public participation approaches and if it will bring benefits and improvements in the field of CHM. Also, another aim of this thesis is to present how this relatively new term which has a wide range of possibilities could be underlined and applied into the domain of CHM instead of the already existing, less democratic and passive terminology of public participation in the complex decision-making process. Additionally, to check and prove whether the model could be beneficial for various geographies and contexts. This thesis is elaborated through 5 Chapters initially by defining the problems, research questions, hypothesis, methodology and limitations (Chapter 1). Extensive literature reviews on main keywords such as: public participation, CHM and co creation are provided in the theoretical chapters (Chapters 2 and 3). Examined International Legislation (Charters and Documents), models (Ladders, IAP2 Spectrum, Co-creation wheels, Platforms, Toolkits), case studies from various contexts (developed and developing countries) are provided to identify the weak points of the implemented public participation practices in CHM decision-making and detect their similarities and differences with the co-creation methodology (Chapters 2 and 3). All data collected is reflected in the last chapter of the thesis through the formation of the co-creation model for improved, bottom up and sustainable CHM decision-making by the stakeholders (Chapters 4 and 5). Keywords: Public Participation, Cultural Heritage Management, Decision-making process, Co-creation