Exploring the Potentials of Rural Tactical Action for Co-Creating Heritage: The Case of the “Minante” Project

Abstract

Tactical action has been spreading around the world as a way for citizens to make significant changes in their environment without much need for materials or external support. Whether it is considered relatively radical, or relatively mainstream, or even politically co-opted, this process seems to motivate people to actively shape their daily environments, including when they are seeking ways to revive local heritage. Through the action and research project “Minante,” with the explicit aim to connect values of sustainability, participation, and aesthetics in line with the EU’s New European Bauhaus initiative, a form of tactical action has been supported in a rural area of northern Portugal. This has raised questions about the potential specificities of the rural context (while tactical action has been studied mostly in urban areas), and about the related questions of heritage and ownership in such locations. This article discusses these themes with recourse to theory and to the empirical findings of the Minante project. Ultimately, the article proposes a move toward tactical collaboration that does not focus much on the urban versus rural dimension but rather on how collaboration occurs, and what kinds of (material and immaterial) ownership play a role here, co-determining the impact in terms of natural and cultural heritage.