Activities

• A committed partnership between the international Stolberg industries to invest in the creative industries and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises  and forge new collaborations with universities in Aachen Maastricht and Liège, to make Stolberg a hub for heritage driven innovation and industry;

• to give office/shop-space to NGOs protecting the natural and built environment and facilitate volunteers and small local initiatives;

• to create a heritage flywheel of positive change that has a proven track-record in other countries.  Support programmes thtat could offer middle-class young families an opportunity to buy a listed building and start a business;

• to encourage the municipality to rigorously enforce the listed-building requirements, so that owners of protected buildings can be forced to either restore and restore well or sell;

• to empower local entrepreneurs to use local traditions and heritage in new products. These entrepreneurs could open shops on the Steinweg, the high street of Stolberg, to share their unique history and sell ‘regional’ products. Stolberg’s brewery tradition should be brought back to life;

• to actively respond and accommodate new social rituals, alternative lifestyles, technological innovations, and environmental ‘green’ necessities. To reflect and offer opportunities for the changing relationship between private and public space;

• to support new public transport concepts;

• to create a long-term marketing and city promotion plan that plays to Stolberg’s strength and potential. To acquire an official tourist city status to be able to open shops on Sunday and to invest deeply in an original and dedicated social media presence;

• to reach out across communities to increase sensibility towards heritage-led innovation and regeneration and promote new ideas through cross-cultural fertilisation;

• to make the city a test-case for climate-neutrality, to ‘green’ the city and work towards a restrictive-traffic city centre: use Monschau’s example of creating parking facilities for visitors and local residents just outside of the city centre;

• to strengthen the links with other European cities with similar histories and challenges and become an active partner in European initiatives, twinning activities and digital platforms for cooperation.