Wikipedra

Various locations, Barcelona, Gerona, Lérida, Tarragona, Cataluña.
Medal/Award in the category Citizens engagement and awareness-raising in the year 2022.

Applicant: Landscape Observatory of Catalonia.

Reason for the award :

Wikipedra is a best-practice example for citizens’ engagement in the conservation of tangible heritage, together with the intangible heritage to which it is connected. An impressive number of participants were involved in building the archive of dry-stone structures, demonstrating the success of the project partners in exploiting citizens’ science for developing a knowledge database that could save the dry-stone heritage from oblivion

  • © Jordi Grau Oliveras
  • © Jordi Salinas
  • © Jordi Grau Oliveras
  • © Jordi Grau Oliveras

Wikipedra utilises citizens’ science to develop a knowledge database that could save the dry-stone heritage of Spain and border regions from oblivion through a website and mobile app.

Wikipedra is a collaborative database that is built solely from citizens’ contributions. Dry-stone heritage, such as huts or cabins, lime and tile kilns, constructions for storing water, walls and other structures were widely inventoried by means of maps, photographs and fact files in the collaborative database. As well as giving the constructions’ location, the database describes their state of repair, typology and architectural features. In the 10 years since the project’s launch, more than 514 contributors have taken part and inventoried 30,928 dry stone constructions.

The project’s territorial reach has grown over the years to include more cross-border regions with Catalonia, both in Spain and France. It is Europe’s only participatory cross-border heritage inventory tool and can be easily applied to other areas in Europe, where there is also a significant presence of dry-stone structures and interest in preserving them.

wikipedra.catpaisatge.net

Others awards in Cataluña: