D5.2 My Cult-Rural Toolkit

The two key objectives of the Ruritage Co-Monitoring Programme (Task4.4) are to document the impact of actions designed to enhance the cultural heritage values investigated by the project and to give the communities within Replicator sites the ability to monitor and evaluate such actions beyond the life of the project. The principles around monitoring such change are underpinned by the identification of the key benefits that can be derived from those cultural ecosystem services(CES) related to cultural heritage. These ecosystem services and their economic, social and environmental attributes will be identified through the Action Planning activity linked to Task 3.3. The community groups (local and visitors) initial values and perceptions of services will be recorded before the start of any actions linked to Task 3.3 and hence will form a baseline for the assessment of success. During the life of the project, monitoring and evaluation will then be carried out by the Replicator communities. The My Cult-Rural Toolkit has been designed and developed to assist and build capacity within Replicator communities to complete these assessment tasks. The toolkit employs both ubiquitous technologies and community workshops, in order to extend the reach of engagement. The toolkit contains three levels of data gathering: participatory workshop methodologies banded Tagscape (Mini-Landscapes, Object Mapping and Walking Maps), participatory geo-spatial methods facilitated by two mobile phone (tablet) Apps (‘RateMyView’ and ‘Landscape Connect’), and social media monitoring tools based on data mining techniques.