August 2025
The Secretary General of The Great Spa Towns of Europe is in Indonesia for the second edition of the ‘We Are Site Managers International Symposium’, from 23 – 28 August 2025.
Alongside other guardians of World Heritage from across the globe, our Secretary General is sharing expertise in heritage management to strengthen our global capacity and contribute to caring for our heritage sites around the world.
As our World Heritage Sites are facing more and more challenges, this symposium is a place for Site Managers to share knowledge, solutions and best practices. With continuous knowledge building and innovation, international symposiums like these help us all build a more resilient and adaptive World Heritage ecosystem.
The symposium is being held at the Ombilin Coal Mining Heritage of Sawahlunto (OCMHS). This UNESCO World Heritage Site reflects the mining technology exchanged between Europe and the East, alongside a unique fusion of local wisdom and global technology of its time. As well as an early industrial complex, OCMHS is a living monument to the socio-cultural transformations sparked by this intercultural exchange.
In a session on ‘World Heritage Community and Ownership’, Chiara presented the recent INTERSPACE Project, which developed a Youth Forum. The project has meant young people’s contributions now lead to real, concrete changes – not just remaining aspirational.
This theme of ‘World Heritage Community and Ownership’ was selected to echo the recommendation from the 43rd Session of the World Heritage Committee in Baku, Azerbaijan (2019) for the inscription of the Ombilin Coal Mining Heritage of Sawahlunto. The World Heritage Site was requested to develop an interpretation strategy for its cultural heritage to enhance public awareness, cultivate appreciation and deepen the understanding of the site’s intrinsic cultural value.
This session was an in-depth exploration of the strategies that have been – or could be – implemented to enhance public awareness, cultivate appreciation, and deepen understanding of the cultural value of a site. It aims to inspire strategies for developing interpretations of cultural heritage into diverse governance frameworks that can be implemented by various stakeholders.
Chiara Ronchini presented the INTERSPACE project and its Youth Forum, speaking about how The Great Spa Towns of Europe connected generations through co-design.
Her paper presented the co-design methodologies, showing how the initiative demonstrates how World Heritage sites can transform youth engagement from passive consultation to active partnership in heritage governance. The INTERSPACE project employed a systematic four-phase co-design process (Explore, Create, Disrupt, Act). The young citizens created six concrete policy recommendations formally adopted by the GSTE General Assembly. Results show a 78% increased youth civic engagement confidence, establishment of permanent governance structures and creation of sustainable cross- cultural networks spanning 375 total participants. The Youth Forum’s Call for Action directly influences management of the transnational World Heritage property, representing a fundamental shift towards inclusive heritage stewardship that ensures young people’s contributions lead to concrete changes rather than remaining aspirational. This presentation offered practical guidance for Site Managers, as well as other World Heritage custodians, seeking replicable frameworks for meaningful youth participation in World Heritage governance.
Here, Chiara is pictured with the other speakers:
🎙️ Yen-Lin LIU, PhD candidate, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, China
🎙️ Fangda ZHU, Specially-appointed Researcher, UNESCO World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asian and Pacific Region (Suzhou)
🎙️ Arianti Atong, Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC), Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
🎙️ Punto Wijayanto, Indonesian Heritage Trust (moderator)
We give our thanks to the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Indonesia (Kementerian Kebudayaan RI) for hosting the symposium.
Photos © Chiara Ronchini.