How many ways does the word “heritage” mean? And how many heritages do we have in Europe, that too often are abandoned or forgotten? In September Europe has celebrated Heritage Days and in Brussels in particular, the event was accompanied by the announcement of the opening of a European House of Memory, coming soon.

By chance, that was anyway significant, we arrived in Brussels just two days after this event, for the second edition of the ICS Europe, dedicated to the same theme, which we have faced with our usual international and interdisciplinary spirit, giving special attention to European issues.

Because, as we have said many times in this column, we are convinced that it is Europe, despite or perhaps precisely because of the crisis that it faces now, is  the key to a new model of well-being and participation, where communication is not only an instrument, but a principle of the relations, a profound logic that prefers confidence to seduction, values ​​to products, and chooses to involve the consumer.

Trust, engage and share. The future of public communication depends on these keywords. But it is a future firmly rooted in some models of the past, and maybe it's time to recover and revitalize, in search of a new avant-garde. Think about it: Homer was the first storyteller. And the first great example of intercultural dialogue has seen the light thanks to the eclecticism of the Roman Empire.

This is not to repeat the worn out arguments for a return to the past but to reverse the look turning the past from the dusty archive of testimonies to the living source of repeatable and readjustable patterns. Because this is what distinguishes this heritage: its transmissibility, the ability to generate and re-generate. And that's what we’ve asked the participants to our summit: help us rewrite the future.