Memory Landscapes: Reclaiming Cultural Power for Health Equity

Memory landscapesⁱ – the physical and symbolic terrain such as memorials,
monuments, commemorative events -- serve people and societies to build meaning,
establish collective identities and values. These landscapes that we inhabit offline and
online are vital cultural generators of health shaping our resilience, wellbeing and sense
of belonging.^iiiiiiv

Today’s sweeping political and technological changes present unprecedented challenges to public memory. Rising authoritarianism has triggered unrivaled efforts to appropriate, distort and erase progress made thus far to expand and revise public memory particularly for groups historically denied representation. The risk extends beyond the erasure of traditional data by affecting broader forms of data that affect our health: lived experience, cultural heritage, identity and accurate accounts of events^v. And, as AI, large-scale data platforms and Big Tech define how information is stored and accessed and privacy laws in the open digital environment create ‘black holes’ for memory preservation, formidable new obstacles are emerging.

At this turning point, exchanging global experiences and strategies is of paramount importance. For example, strategies for shifting and securing input from marginalized communities within public commemoration; experiences with the power and challenges of social media networks; efforts to safeguarding the integrity of historical discourse in the face of new political pressures. Timely exchange of learnings is essential for creating an inclusive, participatory and accurate public memory^vi,
and ultimately for driving social justice, healing intergenerational trauma and fostering belonging necessary for leading healthy lives.^viiviii

The growing evidence base on the historical determinants of health and the role of cultural heritage in mental health and wellbeing offers a unique chance to position memory work as a health equity agenda. Leaders across geographies - bridging memory studies and health equity have an opportunity to build a unique cross-boundary alliance and bring new thinking and approaches to regenerative approaches to reclaiming, preserving and engaging with untold histories across physical, conscious and digital spaces.

Support for this program was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.

Date

Dec 01 - Dec 06, 2026

Session no.

S949-01

Contact

Mary Helen Pombo

Director, Health

Julia Escriva Moreno

Program Manager, Health

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Content overview

Overview Session Information Application Endnotes Co-curators Partner

Overview

This program will address a set of key questions — What does a people-centered, public memory landscape look like? How can memoryscapes reflect the past of the most marginalized groups in a participatory and regenerative way, especially in the wake of erasure and amnesia? Beyond recognition, how can public remembrance serve communities intergenerationally to foster belonging, support healing, and promote health equity, especially the youth of underrepresented communities? What examples around the world offer learnings for building participatory and inclusive public memory landscapes, especially in today’s geopolitical times?^ix

The sessions will seek to explore tried and tested memory-making strategies and enabling conditions used for shaping shared historical infrastructure and measuring their health and wellbeing effects. Together, the cohort will examine underlining enabling conditions, such as institutional power shifts, counter-memory activism, community leadership, and digital safeguards that are required for stewarding public memory across spaces.

Participants will bring insight based on existing efforts and research for transforming public institutions and memoryscapes, and will learn from 4-6 case studies around the world seeking to embed belonging, wellbeing and health equity into everyday landscapes that hold and transmit public memory. These case studies will represent a diverse set of approaches and contexts, such as place-based memory work, digital landscapes, traveling and transcultural memory, counter-memory strategies, pluralist and regenerative approaches.

Session Information

Session Format

This session will engage 50 participants from around the world in a hybrid, collaborative format. It will include virtual meetings and culminate in a five-day residential session at Schloss Leopoldskron, the home of Salzburg Global and itself a site with a layered cultural history and contemporary role as a global convening space.

The session will build on Salzburg Global’s principles of participatory engagement, allowing participants to shape the agenda by identifying key areas for cross-border learning and action and play an active role in delivering the session. They will also be encouraged to bring forward their expertise and real-world challenges to generate solutions that are relevant and impactful in their settings and beyond. The agenda for the on-site session will be developed following co-development calls and group discussions at the first online meeting and evolve before and during the sessions.

Participant Profile

The session is designed for historians and social scientists; memory scholars and community leaders; creative professionals from public arts, transitional justice and digital experts who use memorialization for political and social reimagination; public health practitioners, health equity and narrative medicine researchers; trauma, mental health and belonging experts who use memorialization projects to facilitate healing from historical trauma; heritage and preservation professionals integrating narratives into heritage governance; indigenous leaders, culture bearers and people with lived experience applied to public memory landscapes; urbanists, urban researchers, cultural placemakers who are reimagining public and institutional spaces to make them more inclusive of marginalized community; policy and decision makers, and media who possess power to disrupt institutional amnesia; youth advocates, people working with their community heritage to foster long-term belonging.

Participants will be already immersed in participatory, inclusive public memory initiatives for historically marginalized communities and/or be in positions to influence community, organizational and/other structural change.

Key Questions

Participants will explore the following questions during the session:

How can a participatory, inclusive and accurate public memory landscape be imagined in the future How would a future-facing landscape commemorate, honors and uplifts the experiences of historically marginalized groups across offline and online spaces in ways that foster healing, belonging and equity?
What needs to be preserved, restored, reclaimed, and reimagined to support participatory and inclusive public memory landscapes in the long term? What are the necessary enabling conditions at the local, regional and national levels that would allow public memory infrastructure and approaches to evolve, while also remain resistant to misuse and false narratives? What conditions should be considered in the face of AI and big tech?
What is the evidence base for the impact of public memory on health and wellbeing?
What infrastructure, initiatives and strategies that are shaping participatory and inclusive public memory work well and less well? What are the indicators of success? What strategies are safeguarding marginalized histories within physical infrastructure and digital ecosystems? How do these efforts impact belonging, social connection and health equity? What are the lessons learned?
How can public memory landscapes support intergenerational healing and belonging, especially younger generations that inherit narratives they do not witness?
What cross-boundary opportunities, partnerships, reforms, innovation across memory and health to advance participatory, inclusive and accurate public memory landscapes?

Session Goals

This session will seek to:

Community Development. Establish a cross-boundary, international network dedicated to action at the intersection of memory and health.
Strategies. Identify strategies to advance participatory, inclusive, accurate and regenerative public memory landscapes, such counter-memory strategies, regenerative memorialization, post-memory and intergenerational transmission, digital strategies, and approaches to building the evidence base that links memory landscapes to health equity.
Collaborations. Develop collaboration and actionable plans to advance inclusion and participation within the everyday infrastructures that embed historical truth and cultural preservation into health and civic infrastructure.

Application

Applications are now open! Fill out our brief application online by clicking here.

Application questions

To help you prepare, here's what to expect from Salzburg Global's application portal. Note our recommended guidance for applying to this session. Responses should be short (1,000 characters max.)

Describe an innovation, tool, strategy, or practice you are leading that uses participatory, inclusive and accurate public memory landscapes (PIAPML) or/and describe your research or expertise that can advance participatory, inclusive and accurate public memory landscapes. If possible, please include any relevant links, publications, or attachments about your work at the end of your response.
In your work, how do you understand, capture, and account for the impact of PIAPML on community healing, belonging, equity, or health equity?
This program aims to explore how to challenge dominant historical narratives of oppression and disrupt entrenched power structures. Please describe how your work has actively pushed against systemic inequalities to ensure a community's lived experience was accurately represented.
What goal in your work do you hope to advance using the program’s learnings (ambition, challenge, etc.), and what is a concrete example of how you plan to collaborate with this global community to help bring that vision to life?

Selection process

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. We will select applications based on the most exceptional case presented and the diversity of context represented. Successful applicants will be invited to a short interview by August/September. Our team may get in touch for further information on your application.

If you have any questions about the application process, please contact Mary Helen Pombo, Director, Health, Salzburg Global.

Endnotes

i: The program adopts a broad sense of the term "memory landscape", which includes, however is not limited to memorialized tangible objects . It incorporates memory practices and shared meanings and narratives in physical, digital and imaginary spaces. It also recognizes the political, historical, geographic and social process by which memoryscapes are made, unmade and remade.
ii: (Verbunt et al. 2021) Cultural determinants of health for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – a narrative overview of reviews (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8359545/#:~:text=Cultural%20determinants%20are%20associated%20with,captured%20 in%20policy%20and%20practice.)
iii: (Wilson et al. 2017) Social memory and the resilience of communities affected by land degradation: Social memory, resilience and land degradation (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310388187_Social_memory_and_the_resilience_of_communities_affected_by_land_ degradation_Social_memory_resilience_and_land_degradation#:~:text=Abstract,responding%20to%20land%20degradation%20issues.)
iv: (Li et al. 2025) Impact of urban and cultural landscape heritage on mental health: a systematic review and meta-synthesis (https:// pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12462159/.)
v: A Mercy in the Telling: Memory, Story, and Public Health Evidence (https://preventioninstitute.org/videos/mercy-telling-memory-story and-public-health-evidence).
vi: We draw on emancipatory-oriented frameworks to inform the program framing of participatory, inclusive and accurate memory landscapes, such the 'Popular Memory' approach coined by the CCCS Popular Memory Group of University of Birmingham. The program will explore memory in multidisciplinary ways across digital and living heritage that uplift untold, hidden or unacknowledged lived experiences, cultural heritage and knowledge systems, especially those of historically marginalized knowledge systems. It will also consider participatory approaches along the entire continuum of memory development and renewal.
vii: (Subica & Link 2023) Cultural trauma as a fundamental cause of health disparities (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/ PMC9006767/#:~:text=Intergenerational%20cultural%20trauma&text=Extensive%20research%20has%20highlighted%20 several,2019;%20Sotero%2C%202006).
viii: (Hussein et al. 2020) Towards Psychosocial Well-Being in Historic Urban Landscapes: The Contribution of Cultural Memory (https:// www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/4/4/59#:~:text=Abstract,its%20importance%20in%20urban%20environments.)
ix: (Koch & Smith 2025) Future Memory Practices (https://library.oapen.org/bitstreamhandle/20.500.12657/102223/9781040150733. pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.)