Launched on 1 December 2016, the Joint Programme of the Council of Europe and the European Union, "Building specialisation strategies on local participation and heritage resources" aims at strengthening community cohesion, promoting trust, dialogue and mutual understanding across diverse societies through participatory mapping and mobilisation of cultural heritage resources in municipalities members of the of Intercultural Cities network.

An open call for proposal has been lunched to identify the two territories that will take part to the pilot project. The ICC cities of Lisbon (Portugal) and Rijeka (Croatia) has been chosen to support the ICC Team to design a methodology and tools that will enable a wide range of cities across Europe to develop community cohesion strategies using cultural heritage as a resource.

In particular, the two cities will mobilise a local team (involving NGOs, Schools, Universities, Cultural Institutions, ...) that will receive training on participatory heritage mapping, as well as on Asset-Based Community Development. Based on this they will design an action plan to develop and test a methodological framework for the use of heritage at the local level. They will test specific approaches to the participatory use of diverse heritage resources and provide input for the overall methodology which will result from the Joint Programme.