CULTURAL HERITAGE AS A DRIVER FOR STORYTELLING
2. Cultural Heritage for Storytelling the City
The strong narrative potential of CH hasn't still been exploited yet, at least not completely. It's being wasted from an urban branding and marketing perspective. The material provided by CH is precious and is being underrated as a communication asset for planning the future of the city.
As a universal form of expression, CH might be used as a valuable propeller for those narratives based on the combination of images and texts, memories and imagination. Culture and heritage, understood as the information that is preserved from generation to generation, are the memories of the past that shape the world where we live today. CH and stories are a common and collective resource.
2.1.
CH, Storytelling and Urban Branding
Storytelling has emerged in the last years as one of the most efficient tools for branding and marketing. From this marketing perspective, including psychology inputs, the potential of narration has been profoundly researched. Narration has been proven as a very effective way of engaging the audience, creating a personal link between the characters in the story, the storyteller, and, finally, the brand. That is why content marketing and storytelling are, nowadays, so close, sometimes indistinguishable.
The listener of a story is connected to the storyteller. Marketers know that human beings cast their experiences necessarily through narrative forms. The story appears as a link, establishing a special kind of relationship that allows the distribution of ideas and beliefs. In a marketing perspective, storytelling appears as a very effective method to connect the brand to potential customers. This connection is even more powerful because is not rational but emotional. It is strongly built through empathy.
CH has
an extraordinary
resistance against
the effect of time
2.2.
Connecting CH to Urban Futures
Art and heritage have a special relationship with time. As the age-old adage goes, ars longa, vita brevis: Art is long, life is short. Art can achieve a level of permanence beyond the aspirations of any mere mortal, which is, in part, why it is so attractive to us. We use timelessness, too, to determine which art is great art, and which one was a passing fashion.
CH is complex by itself, it contains different types and categories, from the material to the intangible. CH is related to urban development and its policies in a wide sense. It is not possible to understand it as an isolated issue. CH initiatives are connected with broader goals: economic development, social equality, education, mobility, access, migration, employment, pollution, climate change... A CH project (or a CH story) it is (or it should be) inseparable from those issues.
The city needs to find a way of connecting the past to an evolving future. And there is something ethereal, airy, difficult to catch in that position
