HeritageCIRCLE

Heritage is never neutral. The buildings, sites, and stories we choose to preserve, reuse, or forget carry the weight of contested pasts: colonialism, conflict, displacement, and division. HeritageCIRCLE (Collaborative Innovation for Responsible, Critical and Localised Engagement with Europe's Dissonant Heritage) is a Horizon Europe project that takes this dissonance seriously, not as a problem to hide, but as ground for honest civic dialogue about what societies value, and why.

HeritageCIRCLE brings together 13 partners from 11 countries: governmental bodies, universities, NGOs, and networks of cultural and creative spaces, to build a Community of Practice with unprecedented reach across heritage policy, management, and research. Over 42 months, the consortium will develop a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) that sets out future directions for heritage work in Europe, grounded in democracy, social justice, and peaceful coexistence.

Dissonant heritage cannot be resolved by sanitising it or looking away. HeritageCIRCLE works from the position that dissonance should be addressed openly, through Careful Dialogues, a framework for responsible, reflexive engagement with difficult heritage across local, national, and European contexts.

The project draws on 20 peer-learning case studies, six incubators, and three real-world pilots in Malta, Germany, and Ukraine, spanning participatory governance, sustainable tourism, and plural and inclusive education. These place-based experiences feed directly into two connected groups:

• The Community of Practice (CoP): practitioners, researchers, and civic actors who work directly with dissonant heritage. They test tools, co-create the project's recommendations, and meet regularly to reflect and learn together, growing to 300+ members over the project's lifetime.
• The Community of Interest (CoI): a wider circle of over 30,000 people, including local authorities, educators, journalists, tourism operators, and heritage professionals, who follow HeritageCIRCLE's work, use its resources, and are welcome to join the CoP at any point.

Both communities connect through SPHERE (Space for Productive Heritage Engagement), HeritageCIRCLE's open digital hub. SPHERE hosts the project's tools, methods, and recommendations alongside documentaries, podcasts, and stories from the pilots and case studies, all freely accessible and searchable. It will stay online and maintained well beyond the project's end, so the knowledge it holds keeps working for the sector.

HeritageCIRCLE is delivered by a consortium of 13 organisations across 11 countries, each bringing a distinct piece of expertise to the table:

• Metropolitan Research Institute (MRI), Hungary: coordinates the project, bringing extensive experience managing European research initiatives.
• KEA European Affairs, Belgium: leads the development of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda.
• Trans Europe Halles (TEH), Sweden: connects HeritageCIRCLE to its network of 180+ independent cultural centres across 40+ countries and hosts SPHERE's digital infrastructure.
• Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna, Malta: anchors the project's heritage trail pilot on the ground.
• ICLEI European Secretariat, Germany: leads the growth of the Community of Practice, drawing on its network of local authorities in over 125 countries.
• Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, Malta: leads work on the Guide to Dealing with Heritage Dissonance, grounded in national heritage governance.
• Technische Universität Wien, Austria: leads the production of a multimedia exhibition sharing HeritageCIRCLE's findings with wider audiences.
• Ro3kvit Urban Coalition for Ukraine, Ukraine: leads pilot action planning, including a model for integrating dissonant heritage into post-conflict recovery.
• University of Newcastle, UK: leads the project's policy recommendations and brings global expertise in ethical heritage interpretation.
• Zentralwerk e.V., Germany: hosts a pilot developing educational tools for engaging with dissonant heritage in schools.
• Internationales Kulturcentrum UFA-Fabrik, Germany: partners on educational pilot activities from a grassroots cultural perspective.
• Eutropian, Italy: contributes to peer-learning research and the project's wider stakeholder engagement.
• Zalet, Serbia: contributes research expertise to shaping the SRIA's methodology.

HeritageCIRCLE is building an open, growing community, not a closed research project. As the Community of Practice takes shape, municipalities, cultural organisations, researchers, and civic actors from across Europe will be invited to contribute, test tools, and shape the project's direction. Follow along here and on SPHERE for updates, resources, and ways to join in.

HeritageCIRCLE is funded by the European Union under grant agreement No 101288484, through the Horizon Europe programme (HORIZON-CL2-2025-01, Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.