The project aims to connect planners and stakeholders in different regions to study and discuss good and bad practice in relation to built heritage. The project will specifically focus on built heritage in rural areas and the urban-rural partnership, as well as cultural heritage as an instrument of regional development. Achievements: Achievements so far The CULTURED project looked for best practices of market oriented valorisation of cultural heritage as an instrument of regional development. Best practice guidelines (split up into practical and into policy recommendations), a well working partnership, intensive knowledge exchange, an enlarged network of partners active in the field of heritage and high quality dissimination products are the most relevant outputs. Via setting up innovative partner demonstration projects the project positive influenced rural areas suffering from disparities, and instead of that actively contributed to more balanced European regions. Five thematic partner workshops took place (in Spain, Hungary, Latvia, Ireland and Wales) touching specific heritage angles (heritage policy, legislation, restoration and added value). To share information and reach a large audience a final conference (in Flanders), a Joint conference (in Italy) and three regional seminars (in Flanders, Lithuania and Spain) were organised. In the 10 demonstration project concepts, which have been elaborated by the project partners and in total covering nine countries, 27 regional policy documents and instruments were addressed. 8 best practice cases were identified, among them the innovative reuse of the former mining site of Winterslag in Flanders (Belgium), the regeneration of elements of the historical mine heritage of Blaenavon (Wales), the revalorisation of the historical Fortresses of Naarden (the Netherlands), the succesful entrepreneurship and the promotion of wine in the Balaton region (Somogy) and the redestination of a former Paper Mill (Italy). Main achievements also cover an elaborated methodology- the thoretical framework of the 'Wheel of Cultured' and their adaptation to the partner demonstration projects, five filled in thematic templates on heritage specific issues each of them corresponding to a workshop. CULTURED has via the participation in of the organisation of meetings active invested in the networking with other heritage related projects, in particular with INHERIT and QUALICITIES but also with ASCEND, CULTMARK, REVIT (Interreg IIIB) and HERMES (Interreg CADSES). To reach as much as possible stakeholders and interested parties a website was set up, 7 newsletters and 3 brochures were produced and dissiminated, CD's delivered on the main achievements, as well 18 press releases, 20 smaller articels/appeareances and 3 articles were published in the different media. A poster exhibition was hold at the day of the Final conference. More than twenty staff members having increased their professional capacity thanks to the active participation. For 5 demonstration projects are concrete plans to apply for other funds (for further implementation). In total 555 participants could be reached via the different events.