ASSESS – Culture, Heritage and Building Impact

Evaluate Your Idea’s Cultural, Heritage and Building Impact and Turning it into Action!

This section of the GRASSROOTS project helps you integrate cultural, heritage, and building preservation into your eco-health idea. By assessing its impact, you can refine your idea to celebrate and protect local traditions, historical landmarks, and building assets, ensuring a lasting positive legacy. Let’s evaluate your idea’s cultural, heritage, and building impact and create actionable strategies to align with sustainable practices and community values.

How this Works! 4 Steps

Explore the environmental impact questions, tools and resources provided to evaluate your environmental impact and develop eco-friendly strategies:

1ANALYSE and Download the Cultural, Heritage and Building Impact Assessment Questions to guide you in identifying and minimising impact.

2WATCH and ANALYSE Expert Videos to visually simplify key concepts such as site restoration, preservation and sustainability.

3EXPLORE Innovative Ideas with Tailored Tools that will help you bring your eco-health idea to life with inspiration from practical, real-world examples. This section showcases sustainable ideas in site preservation, restoration, arts and culture.   Learn how to integrate heritage-friendly practices and use digital tools to make a positive impact.

4ACCESS Our Culture, Heritage and Buildings Impact Toolbox to help you easily measure, educate, share, and digitally implement sustainable culture and heritage methods.

Step 1: ANALYSE with Tailored Questions

ANALYSE – Download the Cultural, Heritage, Building Impact Assessment Questions designed to help guide you in identifying and minimising your impact.

Q. What cultural, heritage and building sites will your idea interact with?

Exercise: Think about where your idea will take place or what sites, traditions, or building elements it will involve. Could it affect places or practices of cultural or historical importance? This includes heritage sites, historical buildings, and cultural festivals.

  • Make a List: Write down the key cultural, historical, or building sites, landmarks, or traditions that your idea will engage with.
  • Get to Know Them: Research their significance. What makes them special? Are they listed as protected or under threat? For example, a building might be historically significant due to its age or design, or a festival might hold deep cultural meaning.

Plan to Care: Think of one or two ways your idea can support preservation, such as promoting awareness, using culturally respectful materials, or involving local communities in safeguarding these assets.

Step 2: WATCH and ANALYSE

WATCH these Expert Videos that break down complex culture, heritage and building impact concepts in a simple and engaging way. They will help you understand key culture, heritage and building issues more clearly.

Description

This video Highlights innovative projects that protect archaeological sites, intangible practices, and architectural treasures. Learn how ten significant cultural heritage preservation projects have made a substantial impact on preserving global heritage.

Step 3: EXPLORE Innovative Ideas

EXPLORE – Innovative Ideas with Tailored Tools that will help you bring your eco-health idea to life with inspiration from practical, real-world examples. This section showcases sustainable ideas in site preservation and restoration and arts and culture.   Learn how to integrate heritage-friendly practices and use digital tools to make a positive impact.

Site Preservation and Restoration

Arts & Culture

Step 4: ACCESS the Toolbox

ACCESS – Carefully Selected Tools in Our Culture, Heritage and Buildings Impact Toolbox, to help you easily measure, educate, share, and digitally implement sustainable culture and heritage methods.

This next section introduces practical and affordable tools designed to reduce culture, heritage and building impact while enhancing your business efficiency. These tools will help you evaluate your idea’s impact on cultural, historical, and building landmarks, ensuring that practices are sustainable, respectful and that you operate your business responsibly.

Artivive

Artivive is an augmented reality (AR) app and platform for creatives to create augmented reality artworks easily. Stand out with the easy-to-use creator tool and start wowing customers, communities, friends, family, and clients. Artivive merges traditional art with augmented reality technology to create captivating experiences.

GRASSROOTS ideas can use Artvive to create interactive murals and street art focused on cultural heritage and arts preservation. Through the app, participants can view these artworks and experience animated content that brings cultural stories, historical landmarks, or restoration efforts to life on their smartphones. This innovative tool combines traditional art with modern technology, offering a dynamic way to engage audiences in the preservation and restoration of cultural heritage. Artivive can be used to highlight the importance of safeguarding local heritage, showcasing restoration projects, and promoting the value of cultural preservation in public spaces. It provides a unique platform for enhancing educational experiences and raising awareness about the importance of arts and heritage conservation.

Artsteps

Artsteps is a global web multiplatform for creating and navigating 3D Virtual Exhibitions and Spaces, with highly interactive and stimulating storytelling capabilities. Easily integrated directly into every website, virtual exhibitions and pavilions become portable around the world.

GRASSROOTS ideas can use Artsteps to create virtual exhibits or galleries to showcase cultural artifacts, historical images, or local artwork online. This tool is ideal for curating online museums, offering an interactive space to share cultural heritage and preserve history digitally. Artsteps can be used to highlight local craftsmanship, environmental conservation, or historical preservation efforts, bringing these topics to life in an engaging virtual format. It’s perfect for creating immersive educational experiences, offering virtual tours of heritage sites, or promoting eco-tourism through visual storytelling. Artsteps provides a creative way to connect audiences with culture and history while minimising the culture, heritage and environmental impact of physical exhibitions.

Historypin

Historypin is a collaborative platform that connects communities with local history by allowing the sharing of photos, videos, and stories tied to specific locations. It enables participants to contribute images and narratives related to heritage sites, creating a visually rich and interactive resource.

For GRASSROOTS ideas this tool is ideal, supporting heritage and cultural preservation efforts by enabling participants to contribute and interact by pinning historical content related to heritage sites to maps. By pinning these contributions to maps, Historypin helps create an engaging, visually rich resource that brings local history to life. Historypin enhances educational tours, helps preserve cultural heritage, and enables a deeper connection between participants and the places they visit. It’s a valuable tool for eco-tourism businesses focused on local history and community engagement.

Field Papers

Field Papers is a valuable tool for documenting historical, cultural, or conservation areas during fieldwork. It allows users to print customisable maps that can be taken into the field to manually record observations, which can later be digitised for future reference.

For GRASSROOTS initiatives, Field Papers is an ideal tool for on-site documentation and community mapping. It’s perfect for tracking restoration efforts, heritage sites, and conservation areas. Entrepreneurs can capture detailed data during site visits and later digitise it for planning and progress tracking. The tool integrates community input, supporting conservation projects and eco-tourism routes. Field Papers enables seamless field-to-digital documentation, ensuring the success of eco-tourism and sustainable development. It also allows for scanning and digitising handwritten notes, making it a versatile solution for mapping, data collection, and site management.

Google Earth Pro

Google Earth Pro is a powerful tool for mapping and visualizing heritage sites, natural landscapes, and conservation efforts. It allows users to track changes over time, making it an ideal tool for documenting the impact of eco-health tourism initiatives.

For GRASSROOTS ideas with Google Earth Pro, you can showcase preservation actions, such as before-and-after views of building restorations, environmental clean-ups, or conservation projects. The tool’s ability to capture detailed geographic data and create high-quality visual presentations makes it an invaluable asset for eco-tourism ventures focused on environmental and cultural preservation. It supports both public education and long-term planning for sustainable tourism. Use it for mapping heritage sites and tracking the progress of preservation efforts. By documenting changes to landscapes or structures over time, you can provide visual evidence of conservation successes, helping to raise awareness about the importance of preserving cultural and environmental assets. You can create detailed maps to promote eco-tourism routes, highlight conservation areas, and support educational efforts about sustainability.

Clio Muse

Clio Muse is an app that enables the creation of digital, self-guided historical and cultural tours using geolocation technology. The app offers over 550 audio tours across 29 countries, allowing users to access a wide range of cultural assets, such as landmarks and heritage sites, with detailed descriptions, history, and images.

For GRASSROOTS ideas, Clio Muse is an exceptional tool for enhancing cultural and heritage walks. The app enables GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs to create interactive and educational experiences where participants can explore locations through engaging audio content. As they visit local landmarks or heritage sites, users can learn about the historical significance and cultural context of each location, enriching their overall experience. This app brings nature and cultural walks to life by providing in-depth information that enables a deeper appreciation for the environment and local heritage. It offers a convenient and accessible way to explore cultural assets while promoting sustainable tourism practices. By leveraging Clio Muse, GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs can provide participants with an enriching, educational journey that aligns with sustainable culture, heritage and tourism values.

Maptionnaire

Maptionnaire is an interactive platform designed to collect community input through custom maps. It enables users to create surveys and gather feedback by allowing participants to mark specific locations on the map and share their opinions.

For GRASSROOTS ideas, Maptionnaire can be used to collect community input on environmental, cultural and heritage concerns, preservation areas, and conservation efforts. By enabling participants to mark locations of local significance and share their opinions directly on the map, this tool enables community engagement and informs decision-making. It is especially valuable for planning sustainable initiatives such as nature walks, eco-tourism routes, or heritage preservation projects. Maptionnaire supports community-driven conservation efforts and helps promote local involvement in environmental planning.

Google My Maps

Google My Maps: is a web-based mapping tool that allows you to create custom maps by marking specific locations, adding text, images, and videos, and sharing them with others. You can use it for personal or professional purposes, such as planning a trip, organizing a project, or showcasing points of interest. 

For GRASSROOTS ideas you can use this tool to create custom maps to showcase culture and heritage walks, educational stops, local culture, street art, music, local artisans and more. You can enhance each location with detailed descriptions, photos, and links to provide an interactive experience. This tool is great for eco-health tourism because it helps map out routes and connect participants with local ecosystems, conservation efforts, and cultural heritage sites. By integrating information about cultural landmarks and linking to workshops on conservation and heritage, you offer an engaging and educational experience enabling a deeper understanding of local environments and communities.