Multi-cooperation of Cultural Heritage Conservation: The Cangdong Project of Guangdong Province

Abstract. In recent years, some workshops and research cases have arisen in China to seek for suitable ways for heritage conservation and development of historic villages. However, the issue of multi-cooperation has not been much mentioned in research works.

The case of Cangdong Project in Guangdong Province is a social enterprise. It is a center focusing on heritage education. It organizes tailor-made workshops for interested people from all over China and Hong Kong, Macao and overseas, including university courses for credits, summer/winter camps for primary and middle school students, as well as common people who are interested in heritage conservation. The purpose of the education center is to enhance heritage/cultural interest of the younger generations and common people, and try to work with local villagers to build a wealthy community. Nowadays, more and more villagers moved out for work and the countryside population in China is decreasing, this project also aims to create work opportunities for villagers through heritage conservation projects, so that the villagers can be willing to stay. The project focuses more in a sustainable way for community development.

It has been five years since the project was set up in Cangdong Village. The project team worked with villagers, city people, students, scholars, different levels of local governments, investors, Medias, charitable organizations, as well as the market of tourism. As such, a platform of multi-cooperation for the above parties has formed during the past five years. This paper takes the Project experience from 2010-2015 as the case to study multi-cooperation in the field of heritage conservation in China, as well as to discuss how to co-operate the subjective initiatives of different stokeholds.