Methodologies and Tools for the Reactivation of Minor Cultural Heritage

“Mutant cities” are ones that function as living organisms, constantly mutating, and requiring tailored approaches for the management of the conditions and needs of their inhabitants. This concept fits well with “Exponential technologies” which refer to advanced and continuously evolving technologies, enabling rapid and radical changes in the world of industrial production and society. When combined, these concepts make up the Smart City 3.0, which underlines the ability of all individuals to share their opinions and help decision-makers find reliable and practical solutions for addressing social, environmental, and governance challenges of cities. This also applies to minor cultural heritage; thanks to participatory engagement mediated by digital technologies, it can experience new modalities of enjoyment and with it new resources and energies to be valorised. Today’s cultural heritage policies foster active citizen involvement, both to increase awareness and civic sense and to create new opportunities for cultural heritage, citizens themselves, and public administrations. This contribution highlights the opportunities of modern digital technologies in the process of minor cultural heritage valorisation. The result of this analysis is a project methodology that facilitates engagement between experts and non-experts as a mechanism for promoting the production of new values and meanings for heritage use. It focuses on the research activities of the “Fabbrica del Carnevale” project, which realizes a co-design model to revive the carnival tradition of San Giovanni in Persiceto (Italy) and the “Safely-connected” project, which adopts a phygital logic to create an open-air urban market in Saint-Germain-en-Leye (France) during the pandemic.