Event-Age: Engender creative heritage through urban events.

Since the Renaissance, the great events of the city’s history have offered the opportunity for artists, men and women of letters and rulers to represent, describe and govern the city1, each according to their own sphere. The foundation of all this human activity lies in its two-fold capacity for projection, that is, in being able to translate reality synthetically into a particular language, as well as knowing how to invent and stage imaginary futures. Design, in its role as the enabler and mediator of knowledge and creativity, is both the basis and the process of planning visions that anticipate the future and new identities.2 Additionally, it gathers up and identifies the feeble signals of a future that can already be found in the present3. This contribution presents a literature survey on actions, practices and process for urban recycling and reactivation, assuming urban events and the concept of creative heritage as strategies to cultivate future identities of the city. In the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, the paper examines the state of the art on this phenomenon through the analysis of some case-histories, comparing the hybrid range of practices and processes, overall temporary uses and events, set by a wide range of formal and informal actors. The intention is “to forge connections between cultural heritage as things and spaces on the one hand, and as ideas and people on the other” as stated in the Creative Heritage’s manifesto.