The Organization of World Heritage Cities (OWHC) would like to thank the Council of Europe as well as the city of Marseille for having been invited to participate in the “Marseille Forum on the Value of Heritage for Society and the Social Value of Heritage”. At that meeting, which took place on September 12 and 13, 2013, the persons representing the OWHC were:

• Mr. Nuno Domingo, representative of the city of Evora and director of the Historic, Cultural and Heritage Centre;
• Mr. Vitor Batista Medeiros Brasil, representative of the city of Angra do Heroismo and senior technician for Promotion and Culture;
• Mr. Denis Ricard, secretary general of the OWHC.

The Marseille Forum was organized by the city of Marseille, its region, the Council of Europe, and the European Union to bring together the states parties to the Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (2005) in order to draw the first conclusions and to follow through with it.

The city of Marseille was chosen for the implementation of the Faro Convention based on an original concept of heritage tours inviting the local population to rediscover, by walking with a guide, the local heritage. The theme of this meeting, “The social value of heritage or the value of heritage for society”, promoted the idea of heritage as a factor of stability and of continuity, a resource to be exploited for and by the citizens in order to help them to reinforce social cohesion in its diversity, to improve their quality of life and to expand democratic participation.

The OWHC now intends to analyse the observations of Marseille in order to identify the conceptual outlines that could eventually apply to the member cities of the Organization.