Within SoPHIA, the consortium aims at creating a Social Platform, a vast and diverse community of stakeholders from different fields and disciplines interested in interventions in historical environment and cultural heritage sites in Europe, that will work together towards the definition of quality standards and of guidelines for future policies and programmes. With the constant active participation of the social platform, our work on the research and policies developed in this field will be organized around four main analytical dimensions – social, cultural, economic and environmental impact - which constitute perspectives to identify the most important challenges and opportunities linked to cultural heritage interventions in Europe. We will structure the analysis through a targeting process in two stages: a first exploration of the general topic and the current situation as regards policies, assessment and quality of interventions, including best practices, and the creation of a draft holistic impact assessment model; and a second moment that involves going into specific topics in depth by analysing specific case studies selected during the first phase to confirm or adjust the first phase findings. The second stage will analyse case studies with the model based on 3 axes: people, domains and time. The final step of the project will consist in synthetizing the findings against the results of the analyses performed and drafting recommendations for both practitioners and policy makers for the future of good quality interventions in cultural heritage. The analysis and policy papers will focus on European heritage, however, the final aim is to propose models and standards that can potentially be applied internationally.

META-MUSEUM aims to create empathic encounters where citizens can understand the CH transformative nature through active participation, emotional involvement and co-creation; to develop the “TransforMeans theory” and related new professional skills, based on Neuroscience evidence; to provide cultural professionals with principles and tools for designing cultural experiences and to monitoring the effectiveness of communicative/narrative solutions; to reach different segments of citizens, included disaffected public and non-public; to foster empathy, confidence and resilience toward contemporary changes; to validate an appropriate measurement of empathic responses, confidence and resilience in CH users, via Neuroscience’s method. META-MUSEUM adopts a transdisciplinary approach and a strict interrelation between theoretical and experimental work. The first one will explore and develop in-depth the “TransforMeans theory” principles, develop stimuli to make people understand the CH transformative nature and encourage co-creation and personal interpretation. The experimental work will measure the audience's cognitive, psycho and neurophysiological responses to stimuli, and interpret indicators related to confidence and resilience (intended as a capacity to positively react to changes). The “TransforMeans theory” principles will be tested in 3 different settings (pilots): 1) traditional cultural setting: museums; 2) non-cultural setting: hospitals (WITHOUT focusing on “therapy results”, but only on the CH power on people particularly lacking in confidence and positive thinking); 3) hybrid setting (physical and virtual), in urban contexts and via social media. The META-MUSEUM objectives mobilise multidisciplinary expertise, provide evidence-based principles and guidelines; promote better and more democratic access to CH, improve personal participation and CH understanding, enhance confidence, and address the SDG4, SDG10 and SDG11.