Researchers and community development experts from 12 European countries, coordinated by Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, analyse resource management strategies from the last 800 years in rural and urban communities to provide contemporary generations with strong examples of sustainable development. The activities will be carried out for three years within a research project funded by the European Commission under the HORIZON EUROPE financing mechanism with a budget of 3 million euros.

The project RESTORY – Recovering Past Stories for the Future: A Synergistic Approach to Textual and Oral Heritage of Small Communities will launch at the beginning of 2024, bringing together 20 partners – universities, public institutions, companies, and NGOs – from 12 European countries. RESTORY is the first Research and Innovation project on cultural heritage won by an academic institution in Romania, as well as the first investigation of this type coordinated by BBU within the HORIZON EUROPE funding programme.

The core of the project consists of a series of case studies inspired by the historical experience of the Transylvanian Saxons, who built prosperous settlements in the Middle Ages on the territory of present-day Romania, some still admired as part of the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. This model of successful practices in the sustainable management of material and human resources has placed a special emphasis on local schooling, on intuitive circular economy processes and on affective communication strategies in relation to inhabited places.

These early-established societal traditions that evolved alongside the Romanians, Hungarians, and Roma, dwellers of the same shared communities, create a remarkable symbolic vocabulary of regional cultural heritage and territorial identity. Their stories are preserved in contemporary accounts and community records, many to be found in poorly explored archives and libraries. The investigation will initially target an urban context, Sighișoara (Mureș county), and a rural one, Jelna (Bistrița-Năsăud county). Other settlements with a similar historical profile, such as Sebeș (Alba county), or villages like Brateiu, Buzd (both in Sibiu county) or Cincu (Brașov county) will deepen the area of exploration during the course of the project.

Subsequently, ten parallel research actions will be undertaken in Estonia, Finland, France, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Ukraine, all aiming to validate the relevance and general soundness of the medieval, modern, and recent traditions from Transylvania, strategies developed in pursuit of a better management of limited resources, especially over extended periods of crisis.