Ister-Granum EGTC

The 6th meeting of the stakeholders of the WaVE project (Water-linked heritage Valorization by developing an Ecosystemic approach) was held on 27 September 2021 at the Danube Museum in Esztergom, with the participation of the invited experts and mayors of the region. Péter Nagy, director of the Ister-Granum EGTC welcomed the participants and briefly presented the objectives of the meeting. Then Katalin Bunyevácz summarised the activities of the project during the 6 months that passed since the last meeting, and described the main events to be expected in the near future. Following the international meetings of the last months that were held online, a face-to-face meeting is expected to take place in Ravenna from 14 to 17 November, to which some HTCS (local support group) members will also be invited.

A notable project in recent months has been the launch of a pilot project by the EGTC to test good practices learned from foreign partners in the region. As a first step, the Ister-Granum EGTC has created a heritage inventory of built and intangible heritage, covering 15 pre-defined municipalities during the summer. The inventory was the result of several months of research. It describes the built heritage of each settlement, and also includes the remains of water-related crafts (milling, fishing, sailing, boating). In parallel with the research, a game was launched, with a video call inviting the inhabitants of the region to write water-related stories and legends.

A video series is currently being produced as part of the pilot to showcase some of the assets collected in the inventory. The videos can be viewed on the Kalandos Dunakanyar (Adventurous Danube Bend) Facebook page and on its YouTube channel. The next set of activities of the pilot will focus on the development of thematic paths and their compilation in an online guidebook.

The main achievement of the pilot was the establishment of projects that contribute to the development of water-related heritage. Project workshops will be held on 2 occasions, one in September and one in January, where the collected project elements will be combined. The meeting also included an interactive discussion, during which participants shared their thoughts on the pilot and the outlined interventions.

The Ister-Granum EGTC and the Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Danish partners work closely together, participate in knowledge transfer events, exchange good practices and actively involve the local stakeholders in the development process within the framework of the 4-year-long WaVE project, which was launched on 1 August 2019 and implemented with the support of the Interreg Europe Programme and the Hungarian State to preserve and develop water-related heritage.

As a result, action plans will be drawn up for the development of water-related heritage in each region. The Ister-Granum EGTC will develop concrete projects as part of the action plan, which will be submitted mainly for the calls for proposals of the future Slovakia-Hungary Cooperation Programme. For more information about the project, please visit Interreg Europe and the Facebook page.

Source of the article: Ister-Granum EGTC