1 Heritage for Society: Cultural Policy & Management (KPY) Yearbook 3 (2011) The Value of Heritage for the Future Graham Fairclough Key Words: heritage, Faro, landscape, culture, people and society 1. Introduction – two Conventions and a „new heritage‟ The idea of heritage has long been deeply embedded in European culture and society. In the past ten or fifteen years, however, a „new heritage‟ has emerged that dwells much less on the objects of heritage and mostly on a view of heritage as the interaction between people and their world, and between people themselves, especially at intra-community level. This view of heritage is concerned with how people live; it lends the concept of Heritage a much greater power and influence. It is this people-centred perspective that makes the Faro Convention (Council of Europe 2005) different to previous heritage conventions of the Council of Europe (and of UNESCO). It makes it complementary however to the Florence Convention on the European Landscape (hereafter „ELC‟, Council of Europe 2000). It is not easy or sensible to discuss Faro without reference to the ELC because the two conventions are mutually supportive. They are two sides of the same coin, an appropriate metaphor because both suggest (contrary to received opinion perhaps) that landscape and heritage sit squarely at the very heart of the economy as well as of the environment. Indeed, landscape and heritage constitute important parts of the „social‟ leg of sustainability. Landscape and heritage are intertwined. Both act as unifying and integrating concepts to combine various otherwise separate aspects of the world into a stronger whole at the interface of people and place. Landscape is part of cultural heritage, and cultural heritage (for example, buildings, artistic traditions, living performances) cultural heritage contribute to the construction of landscape. Both are simultaneously material and perceptual. Landscape, it might be said, is how we perceive the present world, heritage is how we perceive and understand the past within that world. The Faro and Florence Conventions are challenging manifestos, for both how people live and how heritage has been „packaged‟ in the past. They do not offer the traditional simplistic solutions of older conventions or treaties full of prescriptions, proscriptions and prohibitions but invite us to think differently, in a more open, broader, more flexible and more collaborative way. They belong to a new generation of the Council of Europe‟s „family‟ of cultural heritage co nventions, and thus throw new, perhaps not entirely flattering, light on its older members, Granada (architectural heritage, 1985), and Valetta (archaeological heritage, 1969/1992). These were concerned (fairly unreflectively) with the „how‟ of heritage pr actice, whilst Faro and Florence offer an answer to the question „why‟. Granada and Valetta therefore appear in comparison as an older generation, with different assumptions and perhaps lesser social and political relevance to the 21 st century; it may be time to revisit them for the 21 st century.