From Public Participation to Co-Creation in the Cultural Heritage Management Decision-Making Process

Abstract

According to the ongoing discussions of researchers, practitioners, and international legislation, the prioritization of top-down decision-making processes in public participation is questionable due to their ambiguous outcomes in various contexts associated with the management of cultural heritage. The main aim of this paper is to highlight and identify co-creation as a sustainable and significant bottom-up methodology that has a wide range of applications, especially in the domain of Cultural Heritage Management (CHM). It is presented as an alternative to the already existing, less democratic, and passive public participation decision-making processes. Examining the evolution of the terms and the processes, together with the common aspects and differences between public participation and co-creation is another goal of this paper. Based on these aims and goals, after conducting case study analyses in various contexts and comprehensive theoretical reviews of the international charters and ongoing practices associated with both key terms, “public participation” and “co-creation”, this paper introduces results that have the potential to solve the existing problems in public participation models and frameworks and successfully integrate communities into the CHM decision-making process through the implementation of the co-creation methodology.

1. Introduction

Like many ongoing participatory processes in the 21st century, public involvement in various geographies can be seen as a complex and multifaceted system that mostly incorporates a network of participants, such as users, managers, authorities, experts, NGOs, and academicians, to deal with heritage in the most appropriate manner, following the internationally accepted legislation and regulations. Hence, applying the CHM decision-making process includes and engages various participants and disciplines to achieve successful management plans and a better and sustainable future of heritage. “Involving citizens in the decision-making process requires careful planning, thoughtful preparation, and flexibility to change procedures on the demand of the affected communities” [1].

The general terms, such as “decision making” and “public participation”, associated with cultural heritage and its management have various uses and meanings, depending on the context in which they are being used. Such processes always embody complex planning problems due to the different perspectives of the involved stakeholders [2]. Public participation is an important issue within CHM, and effective participation is a process that is vital for enhancing long-term sustainable management of heritage [3]. In that sense, public engagement in CHM is also seen as a multi-dimensional, multi-attribute, and multi-value problem [4].

The importance of participatory approaches began to spread very rapidly in the 1980s as new empowerment streams in general and in the cultural heritage field as well [5]. Public participation in CHM decision making has been promoted by the Burra Charter since 1979, where the local community and stakeholders strongly encouraged its presence throughout the whole process of CHM decision making [6].

Furthermore, like most recent international documents on public participation flaws, in 2005, at the Faro Convention, organized by the Council of Europe, Committee Ministry, it was mentioned that creative methods are required for better development and management of heritage goods, together with active civil society participation. Moreover, ensuring that heritage makes contributions socially, culturally, and economically, civic initiatives should be provided by institutions and communities to develop their decision-making capacities [7]. The motto of the Delhi Declaration in 2017 is “from all the people, by all the people, for all the people”. Collaborative decision-making processes and community-driven conservation and local empowerment regarding CHM will always facilitate effective and well-reasoned solutions [8].

What can also be detected in the research engines and literature today is that particular practitioners and experts are claiming that public involvement and its already established frameworks, such as the IAP2 Spectrum (International Association for Public Participation) and ladder models [9,10,11,12], cannot work and be applied (certainly not as before) in various situations due to its haziness regarding decision-making processes [13].

Furthermore, a very strong need for a change can be detected, which will bring sustainable, actionable, and creative approaches when making decisions regarding the management of heritage, as opposed to a passive, uncritical, and inefficient view of the term, “public participation”, which is unsustainably present in the decision-making processes only to fulfill the democratic perspective [5].

In line with these initial discussion points, it can be argued that the term, “public participation”, should be re-examined and re-evaluated due to the mentioned difficulties, so that it can be applied in various complex contexts, and we can adapt to its evolving and constantly changing character [14]. Managing cultural heritage can be seen as a multi-value problem because it concerns a wide spectrum of personal and inter-personal value benefits for societies, if managed properly [4]. Thus, according to the authors of this paper, if communities are not aware of the values of their heritage and are not successfully involved in the process of decision making, unsustainable solutions will arise, and the benefits from heritage management will be fewer. In that sense, today, co-creation seems to be considered as a keystone for social innovation, particularly in the different public domains [15]. It can be seen as a sustainable and significant bottom-up approach that can be implemented to integrate with and meet a community’s needs, create innovative public services and support the decision-making process, and promote democratic, transparent, and non-ambiguous decisions, which will raise the awareness of the values of the cultural heritage among the stakeholders [2,15]. Nowadays, co-creation is considered to be an attractive solution for various emerging problems in different sectors, mostly where citizens and public organizations/authorities are working together and deal with societal issues, leading to more sustainable, creative, and actionable results [16]. Similar to co-creation, co-production is fundamental to the process of public service delivery and is closely linked to the co-creation of value, both for service users and for society [17]. Co-production, as a concept, captures a wide variety of activities that can occur in any phase of public services in which state participants and lay participants work together to produce common benefits and better use each other’s assets and resources [18,19,20].

Since the aim of the paper is not to elaborate on public service delivery, only the term co-creation in relation to CHM will be used.

This paper’s research aim is to bring up and highlight co-creation as a significant bottom-up methodology that has already been implemented successfully in various fields in practice and to present the common aspects and differences between public participation and co-creation, which are the outcomes of CHM. Additionally, our aim is to investigate the evolutionary possibilities of the term, public participation, and allow for more actionable, creative, and sustainable solutions to the ongoing flaws of the public participation processes in CHM decision making.

Based on the arguments presented in this study, the paper includes five sections. In the first two sections, the practices of public participation and models in CHM will be presented as a theoretical review. In addition, four case studies in which the already applied public participation processes, selected from both developed and developing countries, are used and will be analyzed to detect the mainstream and outcome of public participation processes in CHM. Co-creation, as a significant bottom-up methodology, will be presented in a theoretical review in the third section. In addition, a comparison of the abovementioned key terms will be explained in the fourth section. In the fourth and fifth sections, the results, conclusions, and implementation of co-creation in the cultural heritage management domain will be presented.

2. Methodology

According to the above-defined research aim, the methodology of the study was composed of 4 steps: a literature review on public participation and co-creation, a case study analysis, a comparative study, and the implementation of co-creation in the CHM decision-making process.

The literature survey of the general aspects of public participation involvement and decision making forms the first step of the methodology. The engagement of communities and stakeholders during the whole process of heritage management is not provided, as expected, in various contexts. All aspects regarding the decision-making processes—regardless of the field in which they are applied—should be seen as complex issues, because they require balance among the various entities that are involved and proper management [2]. Regarding the literature survey of particular international policies and charters in the domain of CHM, public participation, as an already existing approach, is found to be ineffective and unsuccessful, because it is not applied as initially recommended in the ICOMOS Burra Charter [5].

Additionally, in this section, public participation frameworks and models directly related to CHM decision making are reviewed and criticized. According to this study, there are ongoing problems, ambiguous results, and criticism associated with these frameworks and models.

Accordingly, in the second step, case studies (developed and developing countries) that have already applied public participation models in their CHM plans are analyzed in terms of the community involvement in the decision-making process that resulted in ambiguous outcomes.

Since the first 2 steps of the methodology presented signs of the weakness of public participation in CHM, based on different sources, a new concept, co-creation, and its methodology as a bottom-up approach, along with the steps involved in integrating it into decision making and its applicability in the domain of the CHM decision-making process, are reviewed in the third step of the study.

According to the literature review and the analysis of the case studies, it was possible to make a direct comparison between public participation and co-creation in order to understand and extract their similarities and differences in the fourth step.

Accordingly, the possible implementation of the co-creation methodology in the CHM decision-making process and how it might affect and correct the flaws and the mainstream in public participation by involving all stakeholders in a prioritizing, balanced, creative, actionable, and bottom-up decision-making process is presented in the fourth part of the study.

3. Public Participation and Its Practices in CHM Decision Making

Public participation, as a collaborative process, is generally defined as a process that allows people (especially the disadvantaged ones) to influence the given legislation and policies and design alternatives, funds, etc. [21]. According to some researchers, participation can generally be defined as a process that:

“Allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise so that their government can make policies with the benefit of information that is widely dispersed in society” [22].

The terms participation, engagement, and involvement have been used extensively in participation literature [23,24,25]. Public participation is a process in the CHM that has been described and defined using multiple similar expressions, for example: “citizen engagement”, “civic engagement”, “citizen participation”, “public involvement”, “public engagement”, “public participation”, and “stakeholder participation” [26]. The term, “public participation”, will be used in this paper.

Since 1980, new empowerment streams and democratic movements, such as public participation, have increased in Western countries in the field of CHM [27]. The interest in public participation quickly became popular, and it was widely accepted as a “new trend” in participatory approaches [28,29]. Since then, importance has been given to the disadvantaged and affected participants, aiming to give them the right to influence the policy and decision-making processes relating to cultural heritage issues [21]. It is a human right, which needs to be given to affected people through the proposals of the upper echelons of society, to participate in the decision-making process to improve their social life. Besides, the public participation process can be present in different ways in today’s societies, for example, through public meetings, surveys, open house gatherings, and advisory boards/committees for the citizens [13].

The CHM decision-making process generally includes an identification (location, building, materials, values, etc.) of the actors involved (experts, building owners, organizations stakeholders), an analysis of the existing social fabric, the decisions of the conservation actors, a definition of the potentials (typology, methods), a definition of the financial changes (funds, donations), final decisions, and a management plan for future use in relation to sites/buildings (international or local organizations, owners, etc.) [2]. Regarding the Burra Charter, the CHM decision-making process is defined in three phases, in all of which public participation needs to be considered [6] (see Table 1).

These three crucial phases, defined in the Burra Charter process chart, should be accompanied and supported by the most important set of participants in the process and the creative involvement of the community and stakeholders throughout the whole CHM decision-making process. Since 1979, with the Burra Charter, public participation has been introduced and encouraged as a crucial step that needs to be present throughout all stages in the CHM decision-making process. Nowadays, this traditional (one-way) approach and process results in many obstacles, both in theory and practice, offering ambiguous, unsustainable, and unpredictable outcomes for the future management of cultural heritage, if communities are not directly, actively, and thoroughly involved from the initial stages of the process. The role of public participation in already established models and frameworks should be questioned and re-evaluated due to their limitations, the distrust of communities, and possibilities for improvements.

3.1. Review and Critique of the Existing Public Participation Models in the CHM Decision-Making Process

The term public participation has been profoundly examined and studied by several scholars, such as Sherry Arnstein in 1969, where an existing model with eight levels was developed to determine and analyze the stages of involvement of the citizens’ power and participation in decision-making processes [9]. Moreover, Guaraldo Choguill, in 1996, explored the ladder of community participation, precisely for the under developing countries, and in 1997, Rocha defined the empowerment of citizens again using the ladder model [10,30]. Most recently, Piu Yu Chan, in 2016, updated the ladder model, which was initially defined by Arnstein’s model, in 1969, as a ladder model of participation for CHM [11] (see: Table 2). In that sense, these models show that the more passive the level of citizen participation is, the more top-down the mastering/managing of the cultural heritage will be [12]. Hence, CHM decision making and a comprehensive evaluation will be undertaken by experts, authorities, and the political agenda, and in that sense, unsustainable decisions will be taken.

Both Arnstein, in 1969, and Chan, in 2016, concluded that level 1, which is self-management (Table 2), is almost impossible to reach, since the final approvals always depend on the power holders/governments.

They also agree on the fact that the communities/lay citizens should not have the absolute power to make decisions regarding the heritage management process and neglect the experts’ knowledge. Instead, above all, there should be a balanced interaction between the users/citizens, experts, and the authorities, which will produce proper ideas and not just passively fulfil the democratic requirements, leading to the process into confusion and noise [31]. According to Chan, meaningful public participation should avoid the “collective bad” by focusing more on “how the CHM process should be conducted” and less on “what should be achieved” [12,32]. The “grassroots-led negotiations” level in the ladder model of Chan, where the community has major managerial power or affects the making of the CHM decisions overlaps with the co-creative methodology, providing clues as to the similarities and differences between the terms that will be discussed further on in the paper. In addition to the ladder models briefly explained above, the Spectrum of Public Participation is defined as another mainstream framework of public participation by the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2), founded in 1990 (Table 3).

The effectiveness of the Spectrum of Public Participation, established in the previous century, has been discussed and questioned. Thus, Larry Susskind, in 2008, through interviews with the members of the IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum, discovered that the biggest barrier in involving citizens in public participation is public distrust of such processes, because people feel manipulated when they are involved and allowed to have an influence, while the decision was already made by the powerholders [33].

Moreover, he claims that as public participation has become increasingly required and routinized through regulatory processes, the exercise of tokenism and fake public participation processes has become widespread [33]. Furthermore, there is another strong criticism made by Les Robinson in 2016 in his article, entitled “Is the Spectrum dead?”, concerning the Public Participation Spectrum.

As a practitioner, Les Robinson claims that this model is still central and being used as a main conceptual framework for community consultation/public participation in local governments, despite being functionally useless [37]. In other words, he is indicating that, nowadays, in practice, citizen involvement and community consultation can never be realized as described theoretically through the steps in the Spectrum. Most recently, in 2017, Les Robinson’s Public Participation Spectrum was criticized by a leading authority on Public Engagement and Consultation, Rhion Jones. He stated that:

“The fundamental weakness of the Spectrum is its haziness over decision making” [13].

Additionally, Jones claims that the Public Participation Spectrum is based on the Arnstein ladder model from 1969, and that particular steps (such as the consultation step) have been completely outdated for more than thirty years and do not meet the requirements nowadays regarding decision making. Instead, such steps (as the consultation step) should have broader perspectives that will respond to and ensure the decision makers have benefited only if they have different kinds of up-to-date views from stakeholders, before making any decision [9].

“Therefore, if public participation efforts are not carefully managed, it may delay decisions, increase conflict, disappoint participants, and lead to distrust of the communities; this may occur even after issues have been framed and decisions made” [32,38,39]. Additionally, the disproportional engagement and prioritization of the expert’s knowledge, rather than the local knowledge, creates additional problems in public participation processes [40,41]. Local knowledge can effectively be integrated with professional knowledge, and it can help to extend professionals’ contextual frames and produce sophisticated outcomes that are different from the initial concept developed before the public participation process begins [41,42]. The less distance between citizens and authorities, the more likely the participants will contribute to active and correct decision making in a way that will achieve a deeper sense of empowerment [39].

“The main aim should not only be cooperation among leaders, such as mayors and CEOs, but also collaboration at many levels of the organizations involved, particularly between an organization and ordinary citizens, thus avoiding hierarchical arrangements” [43].

According to the statements above, it is possible to conclude that, recently, there have been ongoing discussions of limitations and criticism of the existing public participation processes, models, and frameworks in practice, depending on the geography and region. Moreover, the existing models of participation are still allowing for unsustainable decisions to be made by authorities and an unbalanced presence of various entities’ perspectives [35].

Since the existing models are already directly related to and adopted in the CHM decision-making process, they should be questioned and re-evaluated thoroughly. Tokenism, haziness, unsustainable decision making, a lack of transparency, and a lack of actionable, creative, and meaningful/genuine participation of the communities are some of the problematic characteristics that public participation, as a framework, methodology, and model, presents in the CHM decision-making process [9,32,33,37,44,45] (Figure 1).

Consequently, most of the initial ideas are generated top-down and are imposed by experts or authorities/governments and are thus not coming from the user’s needs. Even though the universal values regarding the protection of cultural heritage, such as its integrity and authenticity, are rarely negotiable, the initial factor of community involvement in heritage management processes is their awareness of the general historical values of heritage sites.

If communities are not aware of the values of heritage buildings, and there is no successful involvement of the communities in the CHM decision-making process, then the management of heritage will not be sustainable [46,47]. One of the possibilities for improving the already existing ambiguous and problematic aspects, models, frameworks, limitations, and criticism of public participation processes that are occurring throughout the decision-making processes in CHM is to update it with the new terminology and methodology, such as co-creation.

3.2. Lessons Learned from Case Studies of Applied Public Participation Practices

In this part of the paper, due to the word limitation, four recent case studies out of ten will be elaborated. They are selected from different geographies (both from developed and developing countries) that have been internationally recognized by ICOMOS and UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. The selected cases analyzed from developed countries are:

• The Rocks, Sydney, Australia (2010);

• The Old Town of Regensburg, Germany (2012);

• St. Albert, Canada (2013);

• The City of Graz, Austria (2013);

• The Old and New Towns of Edinburgh, Scotland (2017–2022).

The selected cases from developing countries are:

• Luang Prabang, Laos (2005);

• Xianrendong, China (2007);

• Khami, Zimbabwe (2010);

• Danube Region, Serbia (2014);

• Zambezi Source National Monument, Zambia (2019).

The selected four case studies involve the application of CHM plans in the last decade. The selection/evaluation criteria of these four case studies is based on the aspect of the level of effective/ineffective involvement of the local communities in the decision-making processes regarding the cultural heritage plan developments.

These four extracted cases were examined and evaluated according to the following specifications/criteria:

• Name of the case study and author and the year they were published/applied;

• Problems detected;

• Aims of the projects;

• What is the level of participation of the local communities in the decision-making process?;

• Who is the decision maker?;

• What are the possible outcomes and future solutions (if any) regarding the detected matters?

In this paper, only the conclusions and the results from the four recent analyzed case studies will be presented as notes in a comparative table (Table 4) [48,49,50,51].

After a contents analysis of the selected case studies from the developed countries, it is possible to understand that they have a common attitude towards the public participation/consultation process in CHM. The processes can be described as active, transparent, inclusive, and democratic, since opportunities are given to the citizens to participate in the decision-making processes through organized meetings, forums, workshops, social media surveys, etc. These opportunities given to the public and communities are not just to fulfill the criteria of international legislation and requirements. Instead, in the City of Graz, the authorities and facilitators/Working Groups of the CHM plans are taking feedback from the public consultation process in order to reach a balanced decision-making process and improve the present condition of their heritage [48]. These processes are similarly practiced in the co-creation methodology as well. Moreover, the communities in the developed countries in which the case studies took place are being informed regularly by the authorities about the decision-making processes through organized forums, booklets, websites, social media, etc. Furthermore, another common element of the cases is that the public consultation/participation does not involve just one phase from the CHM plan. On the contrary, in some of the cases, it is repeated every two years in the form of gatherings, workshops, and meetings with communities and interested individuals in order to achieve a proactive monitoring of the plan and early identification of problematic developments.

Hence, in the Edinburgh Heritage Management Plan from 2017 to 2022, which is ongoing, we can follow a public consultation/participation process that has the tendency to be related closely to the co-creative methodology as well. In this case study, it is possible to confirm that there is a strong need to improve community engagement and co-production [49].

In that sense, it can be concluded that the public participation processes found in developed countries were applied through different platforms that are mostly depoliticized and are aiming to raise the awareness of the citizens about the importance of the common protection, management, and maintenance of the heritage. Furthermore, the active participation/consultation and the collaboration/empowerment levels of the public participation approach (model) show the similarity between these concepts and their potential to be co-related and developed into a co-creation methodology.

What was detected in the case studies of developing countries is that the only decision makers in the CHM are authorities and institutions, who do not even inform, involve, meet, or consult with the communities and its citizens. This is one of the main reasons why most of the heritage places are being isolated and neglected and are not being managed properly.

In the case of the Danube Region in Serbia, communication strategies and active systems should be established between local communities and authorities to improve the transparency of the work of the governmental bodies [50]. Furthermore, depoliticized and democratic events should be organized through forums, meetings, workshops, social media, etc., that are informative and raise awareness about the importance of engaging both citizens and authorities to cooperate and collaborate. Another detected issue in the Zambezi case shows that manipulation is present due to a lack of professional involvement in the decision-making processes. In this sense, alternative co-management mechanisms among the different entities are suggested instead [51].

In sum, after analyzing the case studies of the developing countries that have “applied” public participation models, such as the IAP2, there are some missing links and weak points in the CHM decision-making processes. The meaning of public participation should be re-evaluated and revised due to the unbalanced, passive, and problematic one-way communication issues between the authorities and communities, especially in developing countries. This is one of the main reasons why these case studies are quite distinctive from developed countries. Moreover, the decision making in the CHM practices in such countries are unsuccessful and passive due to the unbalanced powers, non-democratic processes, and control and communication channels between the local communities and authorities.

It can be concluded that the weak point of public participation is generally due to a lack of awareness of the importance of active citizens’ involvement in the decision-making processes in CHM, the absence of managerial skills in those who are leading the decision-making process, the absence of communication channels and transparency, and a lack of democratic and open platforms between authorities and the public (Table 4). The other disadvantages are contextual, “suggesting that some communities are poor candidates for public participation initiatives, and measurable outcomes may be better achieved with other decision-making methods” [43]. In that sense, active and creative participation is needed, and different ways to fulfil the criteria in the heritage management process, as defined in the international documents, have to be found [8,14].

3.3. Co-Creation as a Bottom-Up Methodology

Co-creation, as a current interdisciplinary bottom-up methodology, was initially introduced as a management initiative at the beginning of this century. This contemporary, actionable, and creative approach focuses particularly on the involvement of the users’ needs and ideas in the decision-making processes. Co-creation, as a term, became rapidly popular after the 1990s and started to be used especially in overcrowded marketplaces, companies, and business and management strategies to generate new common values and outcomes for the users (customers) and organizations (companies) [52,53]. Co-creation can be defined more precisely as a mixture of two concepts. Basically, the first element, “co”, in co-creation represents the social capital, and the second element, “creation”, represents knowledge productivity and the creation of new ideas [54]. The “co” element—the social capital—can be defined as the important value of social interactions, which is required to create sustainable relations and active engagement between public organizations and citizens [15,19,55,56,57].

Furthermore, knowledge productivity can be defined as recent knowledge collection to create innovative and contemporary products, processes, or services [58]. Additionally, co-creation can be seen as a very broad tool or methodology as well, because it allows for and encourages more active, spontaneous, and playful involvement from the customers/users to create valuable rich experiences and benefits for the customers/users [59]. Co-creation, as a creative and human-oriented process, can generate drastic novelties in different fields and bring benefits that are common for all participants/entities. The only way to create real value in the market is to make companies and consumers participate in the process of co-creation [60]. In that sense, co-creation has the following characteristics:

• It is an activity or process between the company (authorities) and the consumer (user);

• It requires the joint collaboration of both sides;

• The objective is to create real value for both sides [60].

The rise of co-creation is also considered as a learning process in which participants can learn how to use each other’s capabilities to develop new ways to confront challenges coming from the public sectors [61]. The already established framework of co-creation is pushing the public organization/authorities to consider unconventional sources of knowledge, pieces of information, and experiences, which are shifting the already well-established traditions and scenarios on different levels, especially knowledge creation within professional–citizen relationships [62].

Co-creation is related to the democratizing principle and the bottom-up approaches [61]. In that sense, the bottom-up approaches are involving people who are willing to participate and improve the content by sharing their knowledge.

According to Raymond, bottom-up and top-down approaches and their structures can be compared to the structure of a bazaar and cathedral [63]. On one side, the bazaars have a specific logic, organic patterns, and an order and often offer visitors’ unpredictable ways and the possibility to lose themselves (Figure 2). On the other side, cathedrals are always highly planed, well-ordered, controlled, and attractive, but they are less spontaneous and organic. Therefore, co-creation can likewise be related to the bottom-up approaches, because, as a method, it always offers organic and unpredictable ways and solutions to problems, such as the bazaar structures. It invites the creative and collective processes of teamwork [54]. Top-down approaches are always related to decision-making processes by authorities, which are imposed and less participative and creative in finding solutions to problems.

Furthermore, the co-creation methodology is defined and explained with the “four academic phases of teamwork” [64]:

• Analysis (observation);

• Concept generation (co-generation);

• Restitution (action);

• The time to metabolize the innovation (integration).

These crucial four phases are cyclical, multi-layered, and allow each member of the team to involve/contribute in the beginning of the process creatively and innovatively, and they give opportunities to the working team to adjust to any changing aspects of the context (Figure 3).

“The co-creation methodology looks at the person and his/her ability to create and innovate: it is a part of the transformative engine within the dynamics of a group in action [64]. The co-creation methodology is constantly evolving as an open-minded mainstream (enabling a wide range of disciplines and stakeholders to collaborate) and approach that will change the traditional practices, processes, and decision making, as well as what we create, how we create, and who can create [65]. As a creative and human-oriented process, it has the ability to generate drastic novelties in different fields and trigger innovative and sustainable solutions, when implemented in particular domains. Moreover, for that purpose, it allows for the cultivation of skills, such as creative thinking, expertise, inspiration, group knowledge [54,59]. To reach innovative and inventive proposals, each member that participates in a co-creative group/team should at least have the capacity to collaborate in a positive and stimulating manner, have expertise in the proposed topic, and “think out of the box”, without setting any boundaries.

Unlike public participation, the co-creation methodology actively encourages communities to take part in the decision-making processes, with all relevant groups engaged in the process. In that sense, through the organization of relevant co-creative workshops and meetings, the communities raise awareness about the importance of playing a part in the decisions about the management of the cultural heritage. There is a possibility that co-creation, as a bottom-up approach and wide range multi-disciplinary methodology, could update the term, “public participation”, or give contemporary answers by facing and solving the difficulties that arise with the decision-making processes found in the CHM field.

4. Public Participation vs. Co-Creation

However, theoretically, public participation in the cultural heritage domain was initiated as a bottom-up and participatory approach [27]. Unfortunately, according to recent practitioners’ statements and the examined cases studies of different geographies, it is evident that most of the authorities prefer to make their decisions upon heritage issues and problems top-down, without considering communities and their direct participation in the decision-making processes [13,32,37,44,45,48,49,50,51] (Figure 4).

This makes public participation a less democratizing principle. In that sense, co-creation, in practice, is contrasted with the public participation approaches and became rapidly popularized (by Prahalad and Ramaswamy) after the 2000s. After 2016, co-creation started to be implemented progressively in institutions and governments as well (such as the Co-creation Toolkit [66]), where most of the participants (experts, volunteers, local communities, and managers) work together with the authorities, until the most creative, actionable, beneficial, and sustainable solutions are reached bottom-up. Referring to Prager and Wiek (2016), it is possible to confirm that both of the processes of public participation and co-creation have several aspects in common [45,67]. Both of the processes require the active and voluntary-based engagement of the users (Table 5).

Evident Major Differences between Public Participation and the Co-Creation Methodology

Public participation and co-creation, as methodologies/procedures, are already being used and practiced in various cases to ease the decision-making processes and to bring mutual and beneficial outcomes for the stakeholders, institutions, organizations, and environment users. After extended literature surveys and case study analyses regarding public participation in CHM, it can be estimated that these two methodologies, public participation (which already resulted in ambiguous outcomes in practice in the CHM domain) and co-creation (which has already been successfully applied in different fields and has the potential to be applied in the CHM domain), share several common aspects but also major differences [48,49,50,51]. It has been clearly stated and is well known, from International Policies and Documents regarding the CHM [5], that public participation should be encouraged and engaged and should contribute actively to the CHM decision-making processes throughout the whole process. Therefore, the prior implementation of the co-creation methodology in the CHM decision-making process has two main aspects that should be considered:

Public participation, in practice, as seen in the case studies, is usually involved in the later stages of the decision-making processes in heritage studies, even though it is sometimes rarely considered as valuable and important. This is because most of the ideas and requirements are being imposed by the authorities or the experts at the beginning of the project and are not derived from the real needs and problems of the users [50,51].

Public participation is presented as a less democratizing approach that belongs to one-way oriented (ladder models or the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation) and top-down approaches, and it is usually introverted, because in the end, the experts and authorities predominantly decide over the public’s opinion or needs. The public participates in the process as passive participants and rarely engage creatively with new ideas. Public participation is lacking creativity, and it is a hierarchical process, which may lead to limiting and ambiguous results in relation to heritage management projects in the future.

Another similarity is considered in the production of the actionable knowledge from participants that collaborate, learn from each other, and respond to a problem [44,67]. Unfortunately, not all public participation processes will result in practical outcomes. Public participation has limitations and stops at the point where actionable knowledge is produced, but practical outcomes are difficult to reach. In that sense, co-creation could be seen as an upgraded version of public participative processes, because it can contribute actively by pushing the production of practical and sustainable solutions that can have positive long-range impacts and consequences in the future management of cultural heritage [3,68]. Co-creation starts with the steps, “collaborate” and “empower”, in the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation, because “genuine participation” is a prerequisite for co-creation [45] (Figure 5).

5. Implementation of Co-Creation in CHM Decision-Making Process

When it comes to implementing co-creation in practice in other domains or in CHM decision-making processes, genuine participation can be seen as an essential prerequisite for co-creation, because co-creation moves from actionable knowledge to a real change, and it is a step further when it comes in the production of practical, sustainable, applicable, and concrete outcomes from the decision-making processes [3,45,67] (Figure 6).

Typically, co-creation is initiated by trained facilitators (hosting various types of meetings, workshops, forums, online surveys, co-creative platforms, and data collection), who extract the real values and needs and generate common solutions to the problems, together with the impacted stakeholders/users [69]. As a tool and method, it has the potential to be included from the early stages of the cultural heritage decision-making processes.

This allows all participants in the process, together with the authorities and experts, to participate in the common generation of the ideas and solutions for sustainable heritage management in the future (Table 6). Encouraging the participants’ contribution in decision-making processes will increase local organizations’ confidence, reinforce the relations between parties, and decrease the conflicts between authorities, NGOs, etc. [3,70].

Accordingly, there are four phases of the sustainable teamwork decision-making process in co-creation that correspond to the Burra Chapter steps (explained in Table 1): Observation, Co-generation, Integration, and Action (Table 6).

• OBSERVATION STAGE = Understanding the Significance (explained in Table 1): interested entities are involved to collaborate from the beginning of the process. There is more than one expert elaborating on the problem and establishing and encouraging genuine participation in a friendly, open, and democratic environment for communication (empower).

• CO-GENERATION STAGE = Policy Development (explained in Table 1): implementing co-creation in the CHM decision-making process means there is no hierarchy; all participants (authorities or communities) are treated equally, and everyone is welcomed to generate an idea or solution to a problem. There is no dominant attitude, and ideas are not imposed by the experts or authorities.

• INTEGRATION STAGE = Management in accordance with the Policy (explained in Table 1): experts in co-creation act like facilitators that are leading the process. They extract and integrate the co-generated ideas to reach to most beneficial and sustainable solutions.

• ACTION STAGE = Management in accordance with the Policy (explained in Table 1): co-creation should be considered a spontaneous and unpredictable process, because every participant is actively involved through creating, designing, and proposing and not just passively observing. Co-creation is a cyclical and dynamic process; it is not a one-way process.

Co-creation prioritizes teamwork and a multi-disciplinary atmosphere. If communities are being considered and involved actively, together with the facilitators and stakeholders, in the initial/early stages in the CHM decision-making process and throughout the whole process (as previously suggested in the Burra Charter), the outcome of such a process can be the most transparent, sustainable, active, creative, and practical decisions.

6. Conclusions

Public participation and co-creation, as participatory approaches, share several common aspects and can be differentiated and compared based on the actionable knowledge and participation. Public participation stops at the point where actionable knowledge is produced in decision-making processes. Additionally, it is being problematized and questioned by scholars and practitioners, because it is not being implemented as suggested by the international legislation and charters, it is outdated, and it is a less democratic and transparent decision-making process. Most commonly, in our case study examinations, we also showed that there were various reasons why public participation is easily misused and mistreated and causes an unpredictable, unsustainable, and inefficient management of heritage. Aspects of the decision-making processes, such as transparency, equality, and sustainability, are not fully present in CHM. On the other hand, co-creation is initiated with actionable knowledge because every participant in the process of decision making is treated equally, and ideas can be generated by all the participants and are not imposed by the authorities. As underlined previously in the paper, co-creation requires genuine participation (Figure 6, p.18). In that sense, co-creation moves from actionable knowledge to real changes and represents a step further when it comes to the production of practical, sustainable, applicable, and specific outcomes of decision-making processes. The universal and flexible characteristics of the co-creation methodology can bring various benefits in CHM decision making and allow for a sustainable management of heritage that is suitable for all contexts.

Moreover, the proposed co-creation methodology, from the research findings stated in this paper, opens new possibilities for correcting the flaws and mainstream of public participation by successfully involving all entities/stakeholders in a balanced, creative, and actionable decision-making process. Moreover, it provides clues as to how the co-creation methodology could be integrated with the CHM decision-making process (Table 6). There is a lack of detailed research studies on co-creation and the CHM decision-making process, which can be extended in the future by inspecting further possibilities (testing the impact of co-creation on CHM decision making by organizing various types of co-creative workshops, toolkits, platforms, social media activities, webinars, raising awareness about the co-creation methodology, etc.) and proving the beneficial impact of the co-creation methodology in the CHM decision-making process.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, O.G. and B.O.V.; methodology, O.G. and B.O.V.; software, O.G.; validation, O.G. and B.O.V.; formal analysis, B.O.V.; investigation, O.G.; resources, B.O.V.; data curation, O.G.; writing—original draft preparation, O.G.; writing—review and editing, O.G, B.O.V.; visualization, O.G.; supervision, B.O.V. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This manuscript is the result of research work that did not receive any funds for the preparation of it is research. This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Not applicable.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures and Tables

Figure 1. Decision-making outcome of public participation in CHM [9,12,13,32,33,44,45].

Figure 2. Cathedral and Bazaar (top-down vs. bottom-up approach) diagram comparison [63].

Figure 3. Phases of the co-creation methodology [64].

Figure 4. Timeline of the development of the terms: public participation in CHM and co-creation and its implementation in practice.

Figure 5. Overlapping phases of IAP2 and co-creation [13,32,37,44,45,67].

Figure 6. Decision-making outcome of co-creation in CHM.

Table 1

CHM decision-making process [6].

STEPS	THE BURRA CHARTER
UNDERSTAN SIGNIFICANCE	1. UNDERSTAND THE PLACEDefine the place and its contextInvestigate the place: its history, use, associations, fabric2. ASSESS CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCEAssess all values using relevant criteriaDevelop a statement of significance
DEVELOP POLICY	3. IDENTIFY ALL FACTORSIdentify obligations arising from the significanceIdentify future needed resources, opportunities, constraints, and conditions4. DEVELOP POLICY5. PREPARE A MANAGEMENT PLANDefine priorities, resources, responsibilities, and timingDevelop implementation actions
MANAGE IN ACCORDANCE WITH POLICY	6. IMPLEMENT THE MANAGEMENT PLAN7. MONITOR THE RESULTS AND REVIEW THE PLAN

Table 2

Ladder models of participation and their limitations.

No.		Ladder Models	Limitations
Year	Author	Ladder-Type	Notes
1. 1969	Sherry Arnstein	Ladder Model of Participation 8 levels of Citizen Participation 1. Citizen Control2. Delegated Power3. Partnership4. Placation5. Consultation6. Informing 7. Therapy8. Manipulation	Problems in defining the conceptual and contextual levels and how participation should progress when all stakeholders are involved [8,34].
2. 1996	Guaraldo Choguill	Ladder Model of Participation 8 levels of Community Participation in underdeveloped countries1. Empowerment2. Partnership3. Conciliation4. Dissimulation5. Diplomacy6. Informing7. Conspiracy 8. Self-Management	Ambiguous results in developed and underdeveloped countries (problems in the contextual levels) and a one-way process [10,14].
3. 1997	Elizabeth Rocha	Ladder Model 5 levels of Empowerment 1. Political Empowerment2. Socio-Political Empowerment3. Mediated Empowerment4. Embedded Individual Empowerment5. Atomistic Individual Empowerment	Imposing of unsustainable decisions by authorities, not all entities included equally, and no participatory structure [11,35].
4. 2016	Piu Yu Chan	Ladder Model of Participation 8 levels for CHM1. Self-Management2. Grassroots-Led Negotiations3. Partnership4. Advisory5. Consultation6. Informing7. Protection/Conservation8. Education/Promotion	Manipulation and tokenism in CHM decision making, distrust in authorities, and fake public participation process [12,13].

Table 3

Public Participation Spectrum of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), founded in 1990 [36].

INCREASING IMPACT ON THE DECISION [Image omitted. Please see PDF.]
	1. INFORM	2. CONSULT	3. INVOLVE	4.COLLABORATE	5.EMPOWER
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION GOAL	To provide the public with balanced and objective information, to assist them in understanding the problem, alternatives, opportunities, and/or solutions	To obtain public feedback regarding the analysis, alternatives, and/or decisions	To work directly with the public throughout the process to ensure that public concerns and aspirations are consistently understood and considered	To partner with the public in each aspect of the decision, including the development of alternatives and the identification of the preferred solution	To place final decision making in the hands of the public
PROMISE TO THE PUBLIC	We will keep you informed	We will keep you informed, listen to and acknowledge concerns and aspirations, and provide feedback on how public influenced the decision	We will work with you to ensure that your concerns and aspirations are directly reflected in the alternatives developed and provide feedback on how public input influenced the decision	We will look to you for advice and innovation in formulating solutions and incorporate your advice and recommendations into the decisions to the maximum extent possible	We will implement what you decide

Table 4

Comparative table of the case studies and notes on participation approaches in the applied CHM plans [48,49,50,51].

CASE STUDIES	DEVELOPED/DEVELOPINGCOUNTRY	TYPE OF PARTICIPATION MODEL	NOTES ON PUBLIC PARTICIPATION APPROACHES
1. The City of Graz, Austria (2013)	developed	Professional/empowering—IAP2, similarities with co-creation)	Empowering collaboration and decision making between authorities, experts, and communities
2. Danube Region, Serbia (2014)	developing	Unintentional/passive—IAP2	Manipulation and lack of communication channels and information
3. The Old and New Towns of Edinburgh, Scotland (2017–2022)	developed	Interactive—IAP2 (similarities with co-creation)	Creative and innovative public consultation processes and decision-making process between authorities and communities
4. Zambezi Source National Monument, Zambia (2019)	developing	Professional/passive—IAP2	Manipulation, imposed decisions, and lack of professional’s involvement

Table 5

Similarities and differences between public participation and co-creation [45,67].

	PUBLIC PARTICIPATION	CO-CREATION
SIMILARITIES	Both require the active engagement of users Voluntary involvement Participants learn from each other (producing actionable knowledge, decisions, and how to respond to a problem) Both processes aim for an outcome that is a result of the collaborative efforts of the participants
DIFFERENCES	Not all types of participation are appropriate and active More likely that the public will be mistreated, manipulated, or involved after decision was made. Public participation stops at actionable knowledge	Collaborative process (different stakeholders take part) More successful in solving shared problems related to urgent matters, stakeholders share the same interests in problem solving if they cannot solve it on their own Co-creation does not stop at actionable knowledge (requires practical outcomes)

Table 6

Implementing co-creation in CHM decision-making processes.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION		THE BURRA CHARTER	CO-CREATION
PHASES:			PHASES:
1. INFORM	1a. Involved in later stages of the cultural heritage decision-making process (sometimes rarely considered as important)	UNDERSTAND THESIGNIFICANCE1. Understand the place2. Access cultural significance	1. OBSERVATION	1a. Collaboration involved at the beginning and early stages of the cultural heritage decision-making process (Collaborate)1b. There is more than one expert (Empower)
2. CONSULT	2a. There is only one expert (leader)2b. Experts and authorities are dominant and manipulative
3. INVOLVE	3a. Ideas are given by experts, authorities, and communities, and the public is sometimes involved in the process3b. Authorities and experts are generators of ideas/solutions/policies
4. COLLABORATE	4a. The public is mostly passive, there is no collaboration, and the public is only informed, completely neglected, or manipulated4b. Public participation became a hierarchical process (top-down)	POLICYDEVELOPMENT3. Identify all factors4. Develop policy5. Prepare a management plan	2. CO-GENERATION	2a. All participants are equal (everyone can generate ideas, workshops, or formal/informal meetings)2b. Ideas are generated by anyone (experts, communities, or authorities)
5. EMPOWER	5a. Public participation is a one-way oriented, limiting process, rarely reaching the Collaborate and Empower phases5b. The outcome of the project is not guaranteeing sustainable future heritage management (unpredictable/ambiguous)	MANAGEMENTINACCORDANCWITH THE POLICY6. Implement the management plan7. Monitor the results and review the plan	3. INTEGRATE	3a. Experts are co-creation facilitators of the decision-making process and extractors3b. The public is actively contributing/creating (workshops, forums, online platforms, data, and feedback collecting)
			4. ACTION	4b. Co-creation is a practical, creative, and multi-disciplinary cyclical process4c. The outcome from the applied co-creation methodology is successful in future heritage management (transparent/sustainable)

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