The historic environment of Europe is one of its greatest assets and an effective means of reconciling the needs of citizens, economy, community, environment, and society at large: But we cannot take it for granted! Our built heritage is valuable and vulnerable and securing its benefits now and in the future demands focussed action and investment from society, the heritage sector, and above all, the public authorities.Aware of these possibilities and challenges, New Dutch Waterline proposed the AT FORT project outline to significant European fortified heritage sites who share the firm belief that preservation of these sites, coupled with their economic exploitation can only be achieved by creative, mutual thinking, building on an exchange of experiences.AT FORT partners have set the OVERALL OBJECTIVE ‘to facilitate the adaptive re-use of fortified heritage sites by exploring solutions for successful approaches and methods to deal with enabling conditions and to createbetter frameworks for their exploitation'.Partners identified common fields of challenges that represent bottlenecks for the effective exploitation of these cultural values and defined 3 SUB-OBJECTIVES corresponding to the problem areas. They will work to: 1. Identify and further improve solutions and tools dealing with crucial enabling conditions of the adaptive re-use of fortified heritage sites2. Identify and investigate the transferability potential of various existing redevelopment models for multifunctional use of fortified heritage sites3. Elaborate effective (workable) governance models taking into account innovative PPP solutions, legal issues, models for brandingObjectives are accomplished by the integrated ”Conservation through development” approach, involvement of relevant stakeholders and capitalizing on partners’ experiences. The OUTPUTS of At Fort ACTIONS will directly contribute to the achievement of these objectives through the following MAIN PROJECT RESULTS:SELF ANALYSIS REPORTS reflecting the status quo and results achieved in each regionA MATRIX OF GOOD PRACTICES identifiedGOOD PRACTICE TRANSFER VISITS (Ateliers) exploring possibilities of transfersA TOOLKIT, which is a collection of good strategies for the sustainable exploitation of fortified heritage sitesIMPLEMENTATION PLANS for each partner region, describing the future actions planned to ensure that benefits of the exchange are not lost.POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS targeted to the local and regional level.The At Fort PARTNERSHIP includes 11 partners, representing 7 old and 4 new MS. Partners are local and regional authorities, public bodies and knowledge institutes with experience in the field of cultural heritage and with capacity to ensure direct continuity of the project results.Roles and task are distributed between the partners in a balan+A3155ced way, building on their existing experience and transferable know how, and exploiting complementarities in the best possible way. Achievements: The Interreg IV C project At Fort has started very well in the first 6 months of 2012. A Strategic Preparatory Meeting (Venice, 21st and 22nd of April 2012) was organised in 3 sessions: teambuilding (participants get to know each other through short presentations), content (division of tasks and methodology) and administrative issues. A Draft Project Implementation Plan was discussed by the Leadpartner including financial rules and procedures for SG and Policy Repr. The draft of the Partnership Agreement was discussed as well and a final version was agreed on. First task for the partners is to make a Self Analysis Report (SAR). A first draft of the outline was made and send around to all partners for comments. This outline contains two parts: one for describing the state of the art for each partner regarding the three themes (enabling conditions, multifunctional use and governance) and a second part for giving information about more organisational matters (methodology of SAR, proposal for content and preference of ateliers, good practises to be discussed in the Good Practise Engineering Workshop, final dates for completion). Based on the comments of the partners the final draft of the SAR-outline was finished and presented at the Preparatory Meeting in April. For this meeting the Pecha Kucha method was outlined to introduce the partners and their projects to each other. Furthermore the partner Komárom has produced the Communication Plan, in cooperation with the LP. The website and project identity (logos and templates) were launched. The website is (i) an internal communication tool, (ii) it will be used to disseminate key information on project objectives and implementation progress including planned events and their outputs to public. The website had already 368 visitors after the launch. On May 21st-23rd 85 people visited the At Fort Launch Event at the New Dutch Waterline in Utrecht, Netherlands. Examples of multifunctional re-use were visited, enabling conditions were discussed with both local stakeholders and experts. The results of different governance models were visited and reviewed. The partnership agreement was signed by the official representatives of the partners. This meeting was hosted by the LP chairman together with Mrs. Pennaerts, member of the Provincial Executive of the Province of Utrecht. Two press releases were made: the French partner made a press release for the regional partners in France and PP6 and the LP made a general press release for the launch event for all the partners. Both had results in several newspapers.