  Including local participation in cultural heritage management has always been
a concern since the Venice Charter so far (1964). In addition, the Faro
Convention (2005) shifted focus from cultural heritage values to the values of
cultural heritage for society. In this case, it is necessary to achieve the
maximum engagement of stakeholders in all stages of management. Nowadays, the
concept of community engagement in all stages of cultural heritage management
is accepted for almost everyone. But the idea of citizen participation is a
little like eating spinach: no one is against it in principle because it is
good for you. If we accept that community engagement is good for us, the
problem is how to let people participate? Not only communities are not very
aware of their rights on their cultural heritage, but also cultural heritage
authorities are unwilling to involve people in their decision-making process.
Suppose, in an ideal society of course, people know that the cultural heritage
is their properties and they would like to manage their assets by themselves,
and authorities have realized that they are not omni-knowledge and omni-potent,
there is still an unsolved problem, no one knows how we want to implement a
people-centered approach in cultural heritage context. This how is referring to
two main issues related to community engagement approach; lack of recognized
method, on the one hand, and determining an appropriate tool, on the other
hand. This paper is proposing a practical model and a simple tool for including
local community in decision-making process in the Bisotun World heritage Site.
