By providing job and research opportunities, the HeRe Lab plays a key role in empowering emerging heritage professionals and researchers in Italy. The Lab supports emerging professionals in working long-term within the World Heritage field, a working area that is still unstructured and underdeveloped in Italy. This makes HeRe Lab a pioneering example in the country.

Emerging professionals and researchers are involved in relevant  research projects and they are directly contributing to: drafting of Management Plans of World Heritage properties located in Tuscany; Heritage Impact Assessments; museums-related activities; international conferences and projects, as well as a wide range of activities directly related to heritage research and practice.

The success of HeRe Lab lies in its multidisciplinary team, made up of professionals dealing with a wide variety of fields such as World Heritage, urban planning, architecture, art history, development, and economics.. The University of Florence acts as a catalyst for their involvement, through the participation of different faculties in the Lab and in the use of holistic approaches for the creation of sustainable solutions for challenges affecting the historic centre. The Lab has also played an important role in advocating for sustainable strategies in the development of the city, by taking into account urban green spaces, social inclusivity, tangible and intangible heritage protection, economic growth, sustainable tourism, as well as the requalification and enhancement of architectural elements.

This Building Block aimed to develop a regional roadmap on MSP and sustainable blue economy agreed by the seven beneficiary countries, as well as neighboring countries involved in another regional activity focused on blue economy (WestMED Initiative): Algeria, France, Italy, Malta, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, Libya, Portugal and Mauritania. National Focal Points were invited to provide recommendations according to their relevance to five specific themes; these recommendations were then compiled in a survey and prioritized by the National Focal Points and other National Experts. The most voted recommendations were selected and rephrased (when necessary) to compose the regional roadmap.

This Building Block aimed to develop a multilingual storytelling tool to showcase both existing conditions and scenarios for the pilot in the Western Mediterranean. The objective was to present the data and information in a simplified and interactive way, and as such to turn complex concepts into notions easily understood by all stakeholders.

This Building Block aimed to analyze potential future conditions of the Western Mediterranean in order to build three scenarios by 2030: trend scenario; conservationist scenario; and integrated scenario. The developed scenarios DO NOT represent official proposals for the area; instead, they are a starting point for a multi-sectoral and cross-border dialogue about the desired future. A technical report was developed and made publicly available.

This Building Block aimed to analyze the current conditions of the Western Mediterranean. Policies, data and information on the marine environmental and main maritime uses were analyzed to identify use-use and use-nature conflicts and compatibilities, resulting in the development of a technical report publicly available. Spatial data was compiled to develop the maps about the different uses. 

This BB aimed to develop activities to improve stakeholders’ capacities on MSP and sustainable blue economy by helping them understand the big picture of the MSP process, as well as the role that they can play in such policy.

I) Training course for governmental representatives included both theoretical and practical sessions. The theoretical ones covered topics such as the concepts of MSP and sustainable blue economy, stakeholder participation and data and information. Moreover, the competent authorities had the opportunity to discuss national initiatives on MSP. Putting theory into practice, participants were divided into groups to play the MSP Challenge Game, representing planners and stakeholders. They defined the vision, objectives, indicators, actions and stakeholders of fictitious countries to simulate an MSP process. After, they developed sectoral plans and used the tokens available to negotiate space and develop an integrated plan coherent with the national objectives. They also had to link aspects of the plan with the achievement of the 17 SDGs.

II) Seminars for sectoral stakeholders

Thematic seminars were organized to highlight the need for MSP in the Western Mediterranean: international cooperation, multi-use of the ocean space, and spatial dimension of aquaculture and port infrastructures.