NETWORKING IN PRESERVING THE FIRST WORLD WAR MULTICULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE DANUBE COUNTRIES

NETWORLD is a project funded by the EU Interreg Danube Transnational Programme, led by the Soča Valley Development Centre (SI) and implemented in partnership with 13 other project partner organisations from 9 Danube countries.

The NETWORLD partner organisations have joined forces to combine the sustainable use of the common cultural heritage in the Danube region with high quality cultural tourism: In nine countries of the Danube region, the architectural heritage of the First World War is to be preserved and used for cultural tourism in order to provide impulses for regional development. The project is based on the spatial needs of the partner countries and the challenges of preserving and protecting World War I sites.
The objective is to strengthen common and integrated approaches to the preservation and management of the cultural heritage of the World War I as a basis for sustainable development and growth in order to promote mobility, sustainability, shared memory and cultural tourism.

The strategic background of NETWORLD is the awareness that the countries of the Danube Region share a common history, which combines a rich cultural heritage, including historical sites, with a lack of transnational knowledge.
Cooperation between the partner countries is identified as a key tool to improve sustainability planning. There is a need to align the World War I heritage with the EU's Europe 2020 strategy/policy and to establish a link between cultural heritage and different tourism products. The added value of the project lies in the enhancement of the cultural, social and economic heritage of the World War I.

The overall aim of the project is to raise awareness of the First World War heritage and its sustainable use for the development of quality cultural tourism.

The project has 3 specific objectives:

1. to apply a systematic approach to the management of WWI heritage resources and to improve cooperation in the Danube countries
2. to increase the number of visitors to World War I heritage sites by providing diverse and high quality tourist routes
3. to promote awareness of a shared past by strengthening institutional capacities for the promotion of the World War I heritage, youth exchanges and educational tools

These objectives will be achieved through a wide range of activities within the project:

• The systematic recording of the built heritage in the 9 partner countries and the creation of an online database covering the First World War sites in the Danube region
• Analysing the tourism potential of these sites and developing a strategy and management plan to promote the architectural heritage of the First World War
• To increase the awareness and the number of visitors to the World War I heritage by providing high quality tourist brochures and by demonstrating the common transnational brand "Walk of Peace" in the Danube region
• To promote the value of peace on the basis of a common commemoration of the World War I through intensive public relations and the implementation of educational activities, exhibitions and events at selected sites in the partner countries