Doors of Change

Community and skills

Heritage, a living resource that gives value to all

Changes has already activated courses and a design summer school between researchers and companies

by Ilaria Manzini *

13 October 2025

La Valle dei Templi di Agrigento per una passeggiata archeologica con un percorso immersivo in situ e indietro nel tempo

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

What comes to mind when we think of Italy's cultural heritage? Perhaps the first image that comes to mind is the familiar and reassuring one of squares, museums, monuments, parks that tell stories from the past and intertwine with our emotions and memories. But today that panorama asks us for something more: not only to be protected, but to be brought into play as a living resource, capable of generating value, opportunities, community.

It is with this vision that the Changes Foundation - an acronym for Cultural Heritage Active Innovation for Next-Gen Sustainable Society - was born and operates. Our task is not simply to know and preserve, but to open up and enable: to make research, technology and business dialogue; to multiply the relationships between those who study, those who work in the sector and citizens; to propose innovative roles to heritage for the present time.

The Foundation is the operational heart of a nationwide partnership (there are twenty-five partners including universities, research organisations, companies) operating within the framework of the NRRP as a strategic hub for Italy's cultural heritage. It networks nine thematic spokes - from historical landscapes to virtual technologies for museums, from cultural resources for sustainable tourism to the resilience and protection of cultural heritage in the face of natural and man-made hazards - each designed to generate applicable knowledge and concrete services.

It is not a mere technological infrastructure: Changes is a laboratory of models, experiments, prototypes with a national scope. We want what works in one context to be adopted (and adapted) elsewhere: from the collections of large museums to widespread heritage sites, from large cities to small villages. On this horizon, the very concept of 'valorisation' changes: it is not just cultural marketing, but an inclusive process that starts from communities and activates local skills.

The models that inspire our work follow three fundamental guidelines. Firstly, research, business, institutions and civil society working together in a stable, not occasional way. We do not want top-down interventions, but cooperative platforms built on structural relationships. Secondly, the data (archival, 3D, diagnostic) that we develop must be fully accessible, interoperable and reusable, in compliance with international standards. The last guideline concerns social and territorial sustainability: in the spirit of the Faro Convention, which links cultural heritage, human rights and social and democratic development, Changes aims to reduce the gap between those who have access to heritage and those who remain on the margins.

These models guide the project choices. For example, the Spoke "Virtual Technologies for Museums and Art Collections" experiments with digital twins and immersive environments in an open format, with an eye to cost-effectiveness and replicability, not mere technological marvel. Or again, the Spoke dedicated to the protection of heritage against natural and anthropic hazards studies protocols to defend monuments exposed to climate change, proposing algorithms, sensors and predictive maintenance models, such as the "control room" for multi-hazard monitoring and real-time alert installed in L'Aquila thanks to the project.

If I had to summarise the challenges that Changes intends to face, I would choose three concrete priorities. The first is to create solutions with real impact. It is not enough to develop prototypes of excellence: we want to move on to the phase in which those prototypes become tools of daily use for museums, territorial systems and local administrations. To do this, we need stable infrastructures, coalitions between various actors at territorial level, and staff training. The second is to continue to cultivate new generations of multidisciplinary researchers, who can read humanistic codes and write software lines, but also dialogue with communities, local authorities and professionals. Changes has already activated courses and a summer school of co-design between researchers and companies to build this 'new mediation'. Finally, we aim to make heritage dialogue with communities and the contemporary world. In each project, we want communities (local, cultural, productive) to be an active part: not destined to

In recent months, alongside many colleagues, I have seen projects emerge that translate the abstract into concrete action: from the participatory digitisation of dialect archives to the environmental monitoring of monumental sites; from the development of environmentally friendly materials for restoration to immersive experiments for museums. Each small piece teaches us that heritage - if participated in and carefully designed - can regenerate territories.

And I say 'territories' in the plural because Italy is not a monolith: solutions that are valid in an urban context cannot be replicated without adjustments in inland areas; our challenge is to build an adaptive system, not a rigid model.

With Changes we are sowing the seeds for an Italy that thinks of heritage not as a past to be preserved, but as a key to building meaning and work, to make this common good par excellence the engine of a more authentic and sustainable development. If we know how to keep alive this connection between research and community, between technology and human care, we will really be able to change pace. This is the promise we are called upon to keep today: to make heritage become a true factor of transformation, not a monument of the past but a bridge towards the future.

(*) Scientific Director Changes Foundation