São João da Madeira is the smallest municipality in Portugal, with an area of only 8 square kilometres and one single parish. Nonetheless, in the early 20th century, as an increasingly vibrant industrial centre, it has conquered its political autonomy and, in 1926, its own city hall. At that time, São João da Madeira's major industries were shoemakers and hatters. After the 1920s, it has attracted many others, namely OLIVA, a foundry company specialized in the production of industrial machinery, as well as small domestic equipment (such as its well-known sewing machines), and VIARCO, an equally, soon come to be, famous pencil manufacturer.  
However, in the last four decades, the nation-wide deindustrialisation process affected most companies in the municipality. The reconversion challenge has, since then, been directed to touristic and artistic (re)interpretations and (re)uses of São João da Madeira's (post) industrial heritage. The former OLIVA factory is now part of the municipality's industrial tourism route, which features three museums and 13 still operating (manu)factories, including VIARCO. Furthermore, OLIVA has become a Creative Factory, hosting an Art Brut Museum, working and accommodation spaces for artistic and creative industries' residents, and supporting partner "industrial heritage sites" in the municipality. VIARCO has been a frequent collaborator, as the promoter of its own artist-in-residence programme, art exhibitions, workshops, guided tours, and other public activities, alongside its pencil production main activity.  
In this presentation, we will focus on the example of VIARCO's artist-in-residence programme, discussing its relevance for the heritage-making process that followed the still operating factory's incorporation in the municipality's touristic route. Moreover, we will analyse how the factory workers' (individual and collective) memory has played an important role in the creation process. Finally, on the other way around, we will discuss how the artistic (valorisation) process might have contributed for (future) understanding of the factory workers' memory's (intangible) heritage value.  From 2006, and, on a more regular basis, since 2016, until present day, the VIARCO Factory has hosted around 30 artists, from different backgrounds (drawing, painting, sculpture, video, photography, sound arts…), presenting itself as a case study for heritage (and memory) artistic (re)creation. 

My paper seeks to address two questions: How can projects aiming to preserve industrial memory aide the processes of deindustrialisation they are purportedly against? And what role are "activist" museums taking when they intervene within such conflicts? 
To address these questions, I will turn to the familiar scene of the 'Barcelona Model' of urban renewal from the vantage point of a very specific conflict centred around a factory, Can Ricart. Around this factory, a voiciferous neighbourhood-led campaign group emerged, (Salvem Can Ricart) demanding it be saved from demolition by the city government. The region the factory sits within is Poblenou, sometimes referred to as the "Catalan Manchester", which was at threat in the years 2004-2007 under a plan to regenerate the area. The struggle to keep Can Ricart became emblematic of the struggle to preserve a working class part of the city from "urban renewal" and transformation into a technology district. What came to be the "salvation" of the factory was a campaign to turn it into a museum. 
A key conflict emerged in the organising around this issue between those who preferred to keep the factory as a working space (even if it had to move to a new location or building) and others who would rather see the factory, one of the first in the city, become a historical site of memory. This argument was based on the claim that a museum of Barcelona's industrial life was absolutely essential to counter the erasure of working lives within official narratives of the city. 
My paper looks at the organising around the latter faction and in particular considers the group which formed around this issue, the Grup Industrial Patrimoni of the Fòrum de la Ribera del Besòs (Group for Industrial Heritage of the Forum of Ribera del Besòs) whose members included curators at major local cultural institutions including Museu D'Art Contemporani Barcelona (MACBA), Fundació Tápies and the then schoolteacher, now director of the Museum of Urban History (MUHA) Barcelona.
Drawing on extensive archival research in Barcelona, my paper will be particularly on relationship to the local contemporary art museum, MACBA and its interventions into this struggle which were under the auspices of Jorge Ribalta, the then Head of Public Programmes. These took the form in of the exhibition project "Com Volem Ser Governats?" (How do we want to be Governed?) which claimed to be a meditation on Foucauldian governmentality, undertaken in horizontal mode, grounded in the particular struggle around Poblenou. The museum engaged with the neigbourhood movements through the Fòrum de la Ribera del Besòs and produced numerous exhibition and discursive projects. I will discuss these projects and its overall intertwinement with the GPI, ultimately revealing the many contradictions present within MACBA's engagement with this site of struggle.

This paper sheds light on the reinvention of the industrial village of Saltaire, near Bradford, and the cultural reuse of Salts Mill, following the terminal decline of the textile industry in the North of England in the last decades of the twentieth century. Whilst deindustrialisation signalled the end of an era for the community that lived and worked in Saltaire, it also triggered a mobilisation around the conservation and rebirth of the mill, the commemoration of its former raison d'être as a place of work, and the promotion of Saltaire as a World Heritage Site. 
This paper seeks to highlight the role of the media, such as the local written press, and social documentary photography, in raising public awareness and fostering the local community's participation in the memory and reinvention of place. By shaping a new image of industry and heritage, one may wonder whether they also helped alleviate the pain and negative consequences induced by the closure of the mill in the late 1980s. These issues will be addressed by analysing press articles published before and after Salts Mill's reinvention, as well as photographs taken in and around the mill by Bradford-born social documentary photographer Ian Beesley since the 1980s.

Industrial culture while formed around production was also intimately connected with and shaped by the experiences and politics of social reproduction. Industrial culture or community cannot be interpreted as one single entity. A community of people who play bingo at the neighbourhood pub on Saturday nights could identify by place, affinity, or affiliation. A community could be defined by a place where people live, work, or play. The East End of Sunderland, United Kingdom, the home of a wide range of industries, similar to other 'rustbelt' regions, has experienced the trauma of change due to deindustrialization. The area was not only transformed as a consequence of deindustrialization and slum clearances but also marginalized. There are several ongoing heritage-led regeneration projects aiming to breathe life into the high streets of Sunderland and historic buildings located in Old Sunderland. While the projects seek to unlock the potential of the city, the on-going efforts in the regeneration area may contribute to the punitive aspects of the community and neighbourhood change, including its role in deepening social and spatial inequalities, fostering new rounds of privatization and gentrification, and enhancing the peripheralization of neglected communities instead of acknowledging others, welcoming and extending diversity. By looking into one of the community engagement workshops, I will discuss the notion of industrial heritage for different groups within the residents of a specific area and present the unexpected findings that indicate the connection to the past could be found in any form and conservation could be performed in various ways. Heritage may cultivate both diversity and inclusion if we look beyond the conventional ways of heritage thinking.