2022 World Heritage Interpretation Presentation Forum ‘Day 1’

Foreign foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you foreign For the past 50 years UNESCO has discovered and protected numerous World cultural and natural heritages thank you in 1972 UNESCO adopted the world heritage convention the 1980s saw an increasing the inscription into the world heritage list as well as a rise in the number of visitors to museums and

National parks the fall of the Berlin Wall acted as the collapse of the walls between politics societies and cultures however the world heritage sites have been jeopardized Again by War terrorism and new conflicts through the establishment of a global strategy UNESCO broadened the standards and took the first steps towards

Achieving a more balanced world heritage list the international Society founded the e-commerce Charter for the interpretation and presentation of cultural heritage sites the interpretation of world heritage Works to recognize how world heritage sites embody the spirit and memories of mankind rather than values based solely on tangible architectural Works in an

Effort to make progress towards this deepening of interpretation UNESCO approved the establishment of the international center for the interpretation and presentation of the world heritage sites or the whipping the whippic to be officially inaugurated in 2022 has engaged in activities to disseminate the interpretation and presentation of the world heritage by

Organizing online lecture series and webinars 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the world heritage convention thank you foreign Foreign foreign Thank you Foreign Ladies and gentlemen distinguished guests and colleagues welcome to the 2022 World Heritage interpretation and presentation Forum I’m Harry shim the head of the education and networking office for we pick very pleased to host this forum today this forum is organized by the international center for the interpretation and presentation of the

World heritage sites under the auspices of UNESCO that’s we pick we pick is a UNESCO Category 2 Center and financially supported by the cultural heritage administration of the Republic of Korea as the very first academic event of our Center and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the world heritage

Convention this forum aims to discuss the roles of Heritage interpretation and the we pick to contribute to the sustainable development goal uh this form is a two-day event on the first day we have eight presentations to discuss the challenges and efforts of Heritage interpretation and how we contribute to our future with world

Heritage focusing on capacity building and resilience based on these presentations panelists will talk about the future directions and role of wipik in the last session before we open the Forum we received a short video message of a welcoming remarks from Dr un chonche the director general of a cultural heritage

Administration of the Republic of Korea shall we please foreign Foreign foreign okay thank you so much for your encouragement Dr uh Trey now please welcome suhita the director general of UNESCO wipik who is going to announce the opening of this forum Mr please yes good morning the International Center for interpretation and presentation of world heritage sites under the auspicious of UNESCO

First of all I would like to extend my sincere grade 2 to the speakers and guess this for the 20 2022 World Heritage interpretation and presentation forum and I would like to welcome Dr hunger Korean national commission for UNESCO and professional Professor Han pilwon vice president of e-commerce Courier

Professor Kim jong-hee chair of overseas Korean culture Heritage Foundation I also extend my warm welcome to the professor Silverman Professor Mario’s antenna Secretary General of e-commerce and Dr baleni magar a manager of ecrom and all well known expert here and online our Center was officially established

This year our mission is to do research And archiving to strength capacity building and to encourage the understanding of diverse variable the heritage in 2005 United Nations had adopted sustainable development goals as core agenda to LGBT School unesco’s world heritage committee are taking Heritage interpretation and presentation as an important topic

Celebrating the fifth anniversary of world heritage convention we have prepared this forum to discuss how Heritage interpretation can contribute to the sustainable development to discuss in depth of the CV issue this forum will be held for two days the first day of this forum will address important issues of sustainable

Development including climate change conflict and community participations the second day we will share the outcomes of our research on the definition and concepts of Heritage interpretation community participations and the integration of human nature and culture is becoming more important in world heritage nomination and sustainable management

And this forum will Enlighten us to find solutions to these issues once again I would like to thanks all of the distinguished speakers panelists and guests joining this forum thank you foreign [Applause] for your detailed introduction and kind words now we have our congratulatory remarks from Dr kyung guhan the

Secretary General of Korean national Commission of UNESCO please welcome Dr Han [Applause] Ika um foreign it has also built a severe blow to the Heritage management not only world heritage sites but the experiences wonderful experiences enjoyed at the museums were deprived for many of the visitors because the museums had to shut down

UNESCO has sent out a commission a statement on how the museums play a significant role in the lives of individuals also promoting diversity in our daily lives the conservation and management and protection of the world heritage goes further Beyond Simple protection we now we are now thinking about how we can

Interpret the narratives the stories that lie behind the world heritage Heritage is indeed a significant aspect asset and to determine or interpret the significance of the heritage is very professional but also very subjective there are people who have built their identities and livelihoods on the narratives told through the Heritage and

Every individual has their own story to tell in connection to the Heritage so in this context we need to look into what heritage interpretation is the e-commerce Charter 2008 states that the interpretation is an over encompassing activity a very broad activity related to the enhancing of the experiences enjoyed by the individuals

Through Heritage and we at UNESCO the Korean national commission along with we pick have been working to promote and look into further into this this topic heritage has been built over a long period of time by many people in the process of connect making individual links to their individual

Lives so it is only natural that the Heritage sites have beared the voices of the individuals who have formed a community around the heritage we have also concluded that we have we would also like to emphasize that Heritage conservation promotes a sustainable development goals raising the public awareness of Heritage

Interpretation and to promote local participation is very important as we move forward the link between Heritage interpretation and the sustainable development is going to be viewed once again through this forum and I would like to thank the UNESCO will pick four once again putting together this wonderful forum

And also to the cultural heritage Administration for supporting all of these activities [Applause] thank you Dr Han for sharing your anthropological interpretation of a Heritage contributing to our lives and let me introduce the speakers who have contributed to this forum we have a professor Neil Silverman Massachusetts University of emergency in USA Professor

Mario Santana Quintero from carton University Canada and also as Secretary General of icomas we have a professor Peter Stone from Newcastle University and UNESCO chair in cultural property of protection and peace uh Professor Eileen obashley from Oxford Brooks University UK and Dr Ang Ming Chi general manager of Georgetown world

Heritage Incorporated Dr Valerie magari yes unit manager of a conservation program at ecrom Professor Tony dad Rico director of Heritage conservation at the University of Southern California and Professor young de Kim at Korea National University of cultural heritage and Dr kamini with asuria a senior advisor of ekram Professor Anna Lucia

Anarujo at Howard University USA Dr Emmanuel Gandara professor at National School of conservation and Restoration in Mexico Dr rohichigasu project manager of a climate change disaster risk management at Chrome and finally Dr Leticia letau independent Heritage consultant and lastly I would also like to address our invited guests as well except for those

Who have already given us the message so we have a professor Han pilwon the vice president of icomas Korea we have Professor Kim jong-hee chair of overseas Korean cultural Heritage Foundation Mr Kim ji sung director general of hcap Dr Chu in Suk cultural sorry the National Committee of Korea for cultural heritage

Mr Kim jong-giu the chair of a Korean National Trust yes so um moving on I would like to have a brief time to introduce our Center UNESCO we pick yes for uh that uh for so for the next 10 to 15 minutes I would like to have a brief introduction about the

Establishment of we Peak and its activities because it this year marks the official launch of the center so these are the outlines of my presentation so we pick as I also uh said that it’s a UNESCO Category 2 Center based on Republic of Korea and UNESCO agreement for the establishment of we pick

And reason for the establishment is to contribute to sustainable development through research capacity building and information technology on more inclusive understanding of Heritage interpretation the structure is that we have a director General and deputy director General and four departments and we have around 20 staff and the center is currently located in

Sejong city in the Republic of Korea so as I told you we have four departments which is strategy and planning office research and development office education and cooperation office and information and management office so I’ll share a little background history of the center so in 2018 the Korean government

Submitted the proposal for the establishment of this Category 2 Center on Heritage interpretation and Fast Very fastly the very next year at the UNESCO General Assembly they approved for the establishment of the center and in 2020 the Preparatory office for wikip launched in Korea and last year we did a Administration

Works for the establishment and run some pilot project and finally this year the we officially established the center so I’ll uh go around about the outcome in of the center in the research area we published the world heritage interpretation a review and annotated bibliography we compiled the world heritage interpretation Publications

Around the world so we categorized and summarized 1400 book chapters and 160 papers by themes and released it to the public and it’s currently available online and in the awareness raising realm we also have run the world heritage interpretation webinar series uh world heritage multiple memories it was about

The dissonant Heritage so we formed the six Global seminars discussing the resolution of the emerging issue of a decision Heritage the final session was held as a side event of the 44th world heritage committee and 5 000 views garnered with the involvement of the 24 experts in the program

So we’ll watch the 50 seconds of the gist of the webinar Yes it is hard work telling to visit histories but it is essential we’re more aware that there are multiple memories associated with places but if a nation state has a has a monopoly conflict between any national interest and the well the Heritage the outstanding values

It is in a sense inevitably now we have there’s this contradiction in Heritage where you know when it’s singular when it has one narrative it feels very powerful and strong but actually it’s quite vulnerable because if that one narrative is in any way challenged then it all crumbles

Yes that was the sort of a quintessential parts of the webinar and in the capacity building area we have around the world heritage interpretation and presentation online lecture series from 2020 some of the guests here are already participated in this series as well we organized the program focused on

Heritage interpretation in 2020 and Heritage presentation in 2021 with the participation of the international experts we hosted lectures with various themes such as world heritage convention digital media and Heritage cultural reconciliation and Community involvement so we garnered over 20 000 views globally and recently uh some University

In India you used this material as a course of a cultural heritage program and we also did an international cooperation uh we did a collaboration work with the global initiative our world heritage we collected International case studies of a sites of memory and hosted seminars on the collected case studies followed by the

Published proceedings and we also have the cooperation with the African World The Heritage fund the organization recommended a specialist for our programs and we did a collaborative discussions for the diversity inclusion this course so uh moving on to this year’s activities in the research Department we

Have a global working group going on on Concepts and definitions of Heritage interpretation and presentation and we also have the Heritage interpretation policy reviews and suggesting future missions and of course this forum is done by also the research department and we also did a thematic research on sites of memory

And finally we have Regional research on ouv attributes and values of the Heritage sites and in capacity building area we have a study going on on capacity building for world heritage interpretation and presentation and we have also have the Heritage manager capacity building program right after this forum in puya

For two days for that’s a pilot project in Korea for the awareness raising we as I told you we have online lecture and webinar Series this year we just finished our series last week it was themed breaching the Gap 50 years of the world heritage convention and finally we have this

World heritage interpretation and presentation editorial book publication and finally we have information sharing a department so information strategy planning for world energy interpretation and presentation foundational research is going on and we also have another uh basic research on study on world heritage presentation and its long-term strategy

And for the awareness raising we pick will be publishing a magazine called interpreting world or interpreting world heritage and it has already launched a newsletter last month um finally uh we’ll talk about our future so in the next three years we will be extending our personnels probably even to the uh foreigners as

Well and we have um goals to the finalizing our Concepts and probably the principles as well and for the next three years we hope to establish a research institute about the Heritage interpretation and we want to extend our capacity building programs and for the last four years

We our goal is to also to have a regional capacity building centers in some uh priority areas and also want to have an informational platforms globally so that was the um a short introduction about our Center so before we start the session one may I kindly ask all of our guests and invited

Speakers for a photo shoot to the stage so while our guests are taking photos we’ll have a 10 minute break for coffee or tea so we’ll be back we’ll be back to you in 10 minutes that’s probably 10 a.m in Seoul time thank you foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Thank you Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you Ladies and gentlemen we’re going to start the following session um in one minute I kindly ask for you to take your sis thank you okay um okay now we’re about to start our session one everyone visited thank you okay um I would like to introduce the moderator of the session one uh Dr

Sujang Li the head of the research office at we pick she had her PhD in conservation studies from the University of York and she worked for government more than 10 years and drafted Korea’s first conservation principle please welcome her on the floor thank you thank you very much

Thank you very much miss him uh good morning everyone the ladies and gentlemen uh good morning I’m as introduced I’m the head of research office of we pick I will be moderating the session one today and the first session will explore the efforts and challenges in sustainable development that we should

Consider for Heritage interpretation and interpretation we will begin with the presentation by miss Kung hyunji program Specialist of our Center she will be presenting about the role of Heritage interpretation in sustainable development scone flow is yours thank you good morning everyone I am hanji Kung a program specialist at

Research office of UNESCO we pick I would like to first of all say thank you to everyone for coming here today as one of the organizing members of this forum I hope my presentation will be on introductory presentation that you could get a glimpse of what the Forum will be

Talking about for the next two days foreign there are three main research areas that we are focusing on and there are theoretical research interpretation policy research and thematic research this presentation itself is about a research under interpretation policy research which this year has focused on the interpretation for sustainable

Development and how it works in the world heritage system okay okay um to begin with nowadays Heritage is managed in increasingly complex context and this requires the development of more suitable management approaches that need that meets the needs of both Heritage and society and there are also increasing numbers of Demands made that

Heritage should contribute to contemporary Society foreign how can Heritage take an active role in responding to the social issues and challenges that we have nowadays we assumed that this is possible this could be possible through Heritage interpretation mainstreaming the idea of sustainable development so we decided to look through the link between Heritage

Interpretation and sustainable development as well as how world heritage system can better support these two interpretation and sustainable development to make a better synergy foreign the interpretation policy research therefore aimed to find out how the interpretation is different in policy and practice how Heritage interpretation can contribute to sustainable

Development and how a world heritage can support the interpretation for sustainable development and finally we wanted to find out what we pick can do in that process For the research we did literature review on the linkages among Heritage interpretation and sustainable development in the world heritage system and how these affect each other then we had three times of Roundtable discussion to hear the opinions from the Heritage practitioners managers as well as policy experts foreign the relations between Heritage and

Sustainable development uh that we want to look first is understood in many different ways according to Logan and Larson first sustainable Heritage prioritize the protection of outstanding Universal value which therefore focuses on Heritage conservation but second Heritage versus sustainable development considers these two are threat to each other and sustainable development for Heritage

Refers to adopting development mental plans plans for the needs of Heritage conservation and lastly Heritage for sustainable development refers to the idea of protecting outstanding Universal value at the same time addressing the wider Social Challenges that we have the literature review took this idea of Heritage for sustainable development and

More as it is a more desired approach in the present Society because it responds to the demands of contemporary Society while the importance of the protecting the heritage is not compromised uh the idea of Heritage for sustainable development is very well addressed in the policy for the integration of a

Sustainable development perspective into the processes of the world heritage convention I’ll just call it 2015 policy from now on because it’s too long they they are the world heritage committee adopted this policy in 2015 to um to stay in line with the un’s adoption of the agenda 2030 which

Mainstreams the 17 goals of sustainable development and the policy recognizes the shift in society and Rising Global issues that the challenge the Heritage conservation objective should change to consider a broader range of economic social and environmental values so that the well-being of community can be protected while also protecting outstanding

Universal value of Heritage sites Now let’s have a look at the term Heritage interpretation this is very well-known definition of Heritage interpretation which is by Freeman Tilton he says that Heritage interpretation is an educational activity which aims to reveal meanings and relationships through the use of original objects by first-hand experience and by illustrative media

Rather than simply to communicate factual communication information and the ultimate goal of his idea of Heritage interpretation is to evoke the audiences to feel the necessity for preserving heritage another important and frequently referred definition of interpretation is the e-commerce Charter or nma Charter it says that interpretation refers to the

Full range of potential activities intended to heighten public awareness and enhance uh the understanding of cultural heritage sites and it adds on that it includes educational programs community activities and ongoing research training and evaluation of the interpretation process and most importantly Recent research of our Center we pick on the definition of

Heritage interpretation which will be the main topic for tomorrow’s session has defined the interpretation as a meaning making process through communication participation and experience it increases understanding and creates and encourages connections between people and Heritage places in the decision-making process of what is interpreted and how it promises Heritage

Interpretation based on an ethical approach and a consideration of the full range of Heritage values including outstanding Universal value as well as Community Health values and called considering all these definitions Heritage interpretation seems to involve broader and deeper range of activities including research education communication and meaning making rather than just delivering uh

The effects and I think it it is intended to give changes in people’s thoughts and Inspire them to support Heritage protection thank you yep and regarding the relationship between Heritage interpretation and sustainable development Heritage interpretation tends to follow the Paradigm shifts in Heritage management there has been a recent call to change

The role of interpreter from bed of the experts to one of facilitator just as expert-led identification and management of Heritage is being replaced by values-based and people-centered opportunities and this is this trend is in line with the sustainable development discourse though interpretation interpretation is often a common ingredient of many heritage-based

Sustainable development projects in reality but it is not expressly acknowledged sometimes interpretation the term interpretation and its activities are referred to with different names like Environmental Education conscious Consciousness raising public education public tour and so on so it is it could be a little bit difficult to come conceptualize and

Understand the term Heritage interpretation as a term that encompasses all these various activities and processes that are done for Heritage protection and this is even clear in the world heritage convention and the in the operational guidelines um in the operational guidelines the term interpretation is mentioned only

Six times throughout the whole text and mostly it was used in relation to building infrastructures for visitor centers in language interpreting only once it it was mentioned along with the education and awareness building so the conclusion of the literature review it can be said that even though interpretation can be a comprehensive

Activity of Heritage protection which could be also which could also contribute to sustainable development the world heritage system still needs more room for improvement to explicitly include and encourage such interpretation activities in practice and based on this literature review the uh there are three types of Roundtable sessions were arranged for the questions

Of how does Heritage interpretation contribute to sustainable development in practice and how can possibly world heritage system can support Heritage interpretation for sustainable development first uh so the first two sessions gathered Heritage experts with profound experiences in Heritage interpretation and engagement with the communities of the world heritage sites or uh to to

Share good practices of Heritage interpretation for sustainable development to examine its outcome in the last session invited Experts of Heritage policy to revisit the world heritage system from the sustainable development perspectives and the participants to the round tables uh presented their projects and shared how their interpretation in different

World heritage sites and Heritage places met the sustainable development goals in the dimensions described in the 2015 policy which are the inclusive Social Development inclusive Economic Development and environmental sustainability and thus fostering peace and security and here I would like to share one case of inclusive economic development that I

Think it’s quite uh impressive uh which is Jaipur city of India diaper City is the capital and it’s the largest city of the Indian state of largestan and the home to the Amer Fort and jontar mantar which were designated as World hertzside in 2019. it was uh I for me it was very

Impressive sorry impressive uh that the idea of inclusive Economic Development was very well considered from the early uh planning stage of the tourism development of the city uh the tourism SEC so there is a tourism sector plan which was initiated by the government of Rajasthan State and

It aims that it it is to create a future in which tourism promotes socio-economic development and conservation without sacrificing the historic and cultural fabric that makes Jaipur unique and they have also recently established the first handicraft policy this year and it emphasizes attracting investment for the promotion of cultural heritage and

Revival of traditional art and crafts so in that context the city has made a sector of a site as a craft walk craft walk where domestic International domestic and international visitors can walk along the city wall and communicate with The Artisans and buy their crafts

And I think this is a very good example of economic inclusive Economic Development because they are using both the living Heritage and Architectural tangible Heritage at the same time in integration and the benefit would go to the local community and would help the community to contribute to preserve heritage site in return

So um the panelists of the round tables moved on to an open discussion on the Heritage interpretation practices for sustainable development and how this can be supported in world heritage system they all agreed that the Heritage interpretation should be practiced in a way that steps out of inter institutional framework and that

Involves the community in the process as it can be inferred from the world at the bottom co-creation United in diversity and slow Heritage and slow Heritage at the LA at the last part for your information is it means making certain place or Heritage needs sufficient time because it takes inevitably long time to

Build trust between Heritage experts and communities and to make a collaboration a collaborative decision so we need to take enough time to make something work out of the Heritage interpretation yeah and the in conclusion um the word people multiple narratives trust long-term relationship or the idea that it is rather a lifelong practice

Not just one of uh practice seems to be the Gen uh the penetrating elements uh for Heritage interpretation with sustainable development approach in practice then um how can the world heritage system support the interpretation for sustainable development first is it is possible by providing a guidance to implement the 2015 policy

There are calls for specific guidance and strategy for Heritage practitioners raised during the Roundtable discussions for example um specifically how to involve the indigenous group or how to properly develop cultural heritage tourism to be in line with the 2015 policy uh but at the same time it was also

Considered necessary to have a guidance for the community that addresses their importance and roles in managing and interpreting Heritage sites because most of the policy guidelines at the UNESCO they are meant for the experts and Heritage professionals not the communities so it may be the time to explicitly involve the community as

One of the major bodies of Heritage interpretation within the Heritage world heritage system oh sorry and secondly it is possible by revising the operational guidelines to empower sustainable development there were multiple opinions that operate the operational guidelines need to be amended to reflect the sustainable development approach more firmly it may be

It could be amended to include a section in in the nomination dossier on how the interpretation can be practiced to contribute to sustainable development in addition All State Park it is the reality that now all the state parties are required to follow common set of criteria and principles in recognizing

The value of their Heritage while the ways all these different states parties recognize recognize the value of the Heritage sites and how they conserve and interpret the Heritage it’s all different therefore the operational guidelines need to acknowledge and integrate the regional Heritage values and conservation system as well as to

Acknowledge the use of traditional management system uh so um the operation guidelines need to I think they it need to use the stronger term uh rather such as requested or uh not like encourage or suggest um in that context it is the people who recognize the value and develop the ways

To best manage the heritage in their cultural and natural setting it is important to take a holistic approach and Inter integrate the interpretation of natural and cultural and tangible and intangible Heritage as all of these different forms of Heritage exist together so the operational guideline need to encourage

Integrating those divides in the future so this is this is going to be my last slide for the presentation um the interpretation policy research that we had uh we did last uh this year conducted um at the Wii Peak aimed to examine the reality of Heritage interpretation contributing to sustainable development

In practice and to find gaps with the policy and operational and the operational guidelines recognizing what are suggested to change in the world heritage convention in the 2015 policy though we pick will need to focus its research area to how Heritage interpretation and sustainable development is understood in different

Regions also the Weeping will need to focus on the capacity building for the community to voluntarily raise their voices in conserving and managing the Heritage sites and stay out of the institutional framework that does not fit their way of perceiving their Heritage value and furthermore to see measurable outcome of the implementation

Of the 2015 policy inherited interpretation considerable time is needed so therefore to continue such projects with sustainable development approaches there needs to be a periodic monitoring and evaluation system this will be another area where we pick can concentrate on to better achieve sustainable development in the uh in Heritage interpretation

So this is the end of my presentation thank you very much [Applause] thank you very much Miss Kong and um thank you very much for your a very insightful presentations she positioned interpretation and presentations in sustainable development based on the outcome of our this year project which is about the policy project okay

Before we invite our next guest I would like to um ask um the floor to share your ideas and your voices so that we probably can give the microphone to the floor at the discussion sessions after three more presentations so please be with us and Please be aware of that

We probably will start our discussion session after the three presentations to invite the floor to hear your voice and the questions first this is the two-way uh Forum that we intended so please uh join us to hear your voice okay our next speaker will be joining us online I’d like to invite Professor

Anna Lucia aurazo online she probably will talk us and share us about the slavery issues uh based on our experience and the expert knowledge please join us Dr araujo so you are online I can see you thank you thank you so much I will start sharing my screen and here we go

I assume that you can hear me all seems sign uh then this presentation shows how Collective and public memory of a slavery Atlantic slavery shape it how the history and Heritage of the slavery are interpreted in museum spaces and Heritage sites I argue that history and memory are two

Different modes of the scores that are manifested and towards and visual images that engage what happened in the past in different ways then in my recent book slavery in the age of memory I emphasize that history and memory are conceived as forms of discourse either oral or written about people

Things situations and events that actually occurred or allegedly or happen in the past in other words these two modalities then of this course that engage with the historical past have many elements in common and are shaped by those who produce them historical discourse is an imperfect account based on primary sources such as

A written document a visual image an object or an auto account produce it in a specific moment of what is conventionally defined as being the past historians they’re not only aim to establish facts they exam they select they classify the organize and interpret these facts in the light of existing

Evidence ultimately history produced by professional historians in thought in universities and colleagues is an organized account that attempts to explain the past now despite history’s aim of objectivity and historians attempts then to tell the truth history written by historians in the present is also biased it is also

Shaped by memory by the ways individuals and groups remember and reconstructed past in the present now after emancipation in the Americas the material traces of the slavery and the atletic slave trade have been gradually erased from the public space and also from the Heritage sites associated with these atrocities such as

Plantations wharfs markets and other Urban settings then until the end of the 20th century slavery has also been absent from the public space of Europe Africa and the Americas in most cases museums of all kinds have avoided telling the history of the slavery and when this story was presented these institutions they tended

To focus on white abolitionist figures instead of exploring the histories of the enslaved populations victimized by this human atrocities in the early 1990s with the end of the Cold War however historically excluded groups including then men and women who identify themselves as descendants of enslaved people in African colonized

Individuals these persons they started occupying the public sphere and also the public space and also intensify their International connections UNESCO through the launching then of the slave root project in Wida a republic of Benin in 1994 played a crucial role to change this landscape we that was the second

Busiest slave trading port in Africa just behind Luanda in West Central Africa indeed one year before the launch of the slave root project then the city of Wida also held the voodoo Festival that also led to the creation of a series of monuments commemorating the Atlantic slave trade then the monument

On the left it was created by Union School in 1994 the other on the right is part of this initiative of 1993. likewise the Republic of Benin also witnessed the creation of several small private museums in other monuments commemorating the heritage of the Atlantic slave trade this new interest was motivated by a

Variety of reasons some of them belonging to larger contexts such as the Persistence of racism and racial inequalities and others associated with national contexts including the commemoration of the abolition of the slavery and the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade then as marked out this contest this context

Friends for example passed the tobira law in 2001 Allah that recognized the slavery in the Atlantic the slave traded crimes against humanity now despite the tobira law either in Paris or in former slave ports such as nand and Bordeaux black groups also demanded the construction of tangible markers acknowledging the country’s history of

His slavery is slave trade and colonialism in response to these demands then on May 10 2007 that is the day that France national day that Francis commemorates then the uh in slavery the City of Paris unveiled uh at the shaft the monument the crime writing and this is a 12 feet

High bronze sculpture by friend artist fabaris Iber an artwork that represents a broken chain composed of broken brings one side of the uh is culture reveals a network of red and green lines painted on a background uh white background that evokes then three branches like the real ones right surrounding then the the

Artwork although this Monument does not include any names eBay Embraces the use of the written word in his work and the surface of the other unpainted side of the bronze’s culture as you can see uh on this slide reviews engraved words such as lib souvenir remembrance in my published works I address memory

Then as a mode of discourse that is racialized because social actors engaging in this work of bringing the past of Slavery to the present they identify themselves along racial lines usually black meaning descendant of enslaved people or white meaning the sentence of people who trade in the

Slaves or who own the slaves even if we know race is a construction and that these categories are not frozen we know that many people around the world are racialized as black and their ancestors were not Enslaved the ancestors of many individuals racialized as whites were not the slave owners or

Slave Traders as well now based on almost two decades of research about how the history of the and the heritage of the slavery and the Atlantic slave trade are interpreted in museums and Heritage sites I want to emphasize then uh 12 main points first of all as I already mentioned the

History of the slavery the Atlantic slave trade and enslaved peoples have been largely absent from museums and also from Heritage sites in Europe Africa and the Americas this slide shows Lisbon in Portugal a city that in the late 15th century had a black population estimated at 10 percent

But you see uh here is the shafaris Delhi the king’s Fountain as it is today in Lisbon in this same site is represented in an anonymous painting of late 16th century on the right then no black or sign indicates the long-standing history of the slavery in Lisbon across the city

Yet a few years ago the city voted to construct a memorial honoring the victims of the Atlantic slave trade and the plaza Jose saramago that is about 300 meters from the site that you see here on this picture although the memorial designed it by the Angola artist kilwanji Kia Handa was

Approved it was not yet constructed then this was the the approval was happened before the pandemic started yet basically one single Museum in Lisbon addresses then this history of Portugal’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade then the Museum of Lisbon at pimenta Palace where among others one big model

Of the city allows the visitor then to choose one itinerary that is titled lugari’s Invisibles in English invisible sites of the slavery and if the visitor selects that trajectory in one specific television screen the projection then will happen in the big screen showing then the the the movement the the faucet transportation of

Millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas in the history of Lisbon involvement in this trade they said uh this video can pass and noticed if the visitor does not choose the correct screen to have the big projection Brazil also witnessed similar silences only in the 1990s Houston area started

To publicly address its past associated with slavery and the Atlantic slave trade when in 1996 a cemetery of newly arrived enslaved Africans wasn’t covered in later in 2010 as you can see on the right side when an excavation and covered the valongo warf uh Wharf where millions of Enslaved the Africans

Disembarked during the era of the Atlantic slave trade and that is today listed as world heritage list despite this absence I underscore that a community black museums usually local is small and underfunded have been addressing the history of the slavery and black populations in the Americas for decades

For example here you see Museo De negro black Museum in huge general which was created in 1938 and was associated with the church of Our Lady of rosary that hosted the black Brotherhood of Our Lady of rosary Associated and with the Catholic church yet representations of Africa in museum exhibitions around the world

Addressing slavery depicted the history of the African continent and as if it had started to exist only with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade by often ignoring its long history here for example we have the permanent exhibition the slavery and freedom in the newly created national museum of

African-American history and culture in Washington DC and the the history of Africa that is addressed it starts with the slavery now most exhibitions they also showcase white saviors in some case white uh slave owners such as the founding fathers of the United States are also presented as white saviors as well

For example again the permanent exhibition is slavery and freedom in the national museum of African-American history and culture in Washington DC features then Thomas Jefferson one of the founding fathers of the United States won hundreds of enslaved persons than any Heap occupies a central place in one of the main sections of the

Exhibition likewise a recent exhibition titled lives bond together slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon is uh I’m not is it uh it was this exhibition occurred in a museum that is inside a heritage site that is Mount Vernon the former Plantation of Founding Father then President George Washington and like

Jefferson Washington was a great slave owner now when slavery started then being interpreting museums and Heritage sites such as these former plantations there is often a lot of emphasis on the wealth of slave owners here is Mount Vernon the home of George Washington and here the exhibition that I just show

You lives bound together featuring then the wealth of George Washington Stylus is also around the slavery and emphasis on this luxurious lifestyles of the slave owners um are also visible in the Arlington House in Arlington Virginia where the confederate general Robert E Lee lived a similar emphasis is also visible at

The John Brown House the residents of the slave trader John Brown after who Brown University in what in the United States was named after then in all these cases silences regarding how this wealth was generated predominate likewise the exhibition of material culture insights in museums interpreting the slavery often reinforces this perspective through

Displays showing luxurious objects to illustrate the wealth of his life honors and Traders but failed to explain who fabricated and who manipulated these objects which in many cases were enslaved people also many exhibitions such as those some ill as we find in some of the displays of the international slavery

Museum in Liverpool in the United Kingdom tend to over emphasize physical punishment and displays uh and display also instruments of torture this kind of victimization approach may be necessary to show the violence of the slavery but at the same time it is a choice that real objectifies and recommodifies enslaved people and

Reenacts violence in some of these museums for example such as the Museum of Accutane in Bordeaux in France instruments of punishment are displayed with this lighting that showcase these artifacts as if they were artworks now over time museums started addressing some elements that have not been

Addressed in the past such as the slave resistance but even when they do that what is conceived as resistance is really rebellions in interactions whereas the daily forms of resistance are often absent here in the case of Mount Vernon in that exhibition lives bound together that is an exception but

In most cases resistance is rebellion now museums in museum exhibitions failed also to address the gender dimensions of the slavery and how is slavery and the Atlantic slave trade particularly affected women years here is the the museum then the Civil Rights Museum in um in in then in

In Tennessee one of the the few museums that addressed this uh this story uh then that brings gender to light now museums and Heritage sites also fail to address the achievements of formerly enslaved people and when they do there is also tendency to focus on well non-individuals especially men such as

Frederick Douglass Harriet Tubman and equiano two exhibitions addressed for example the problem of the legacies of the slavery and when they do some rather attempt to provide a narrative about the harmonious existence of various racial groups in former slave societies yet in some museums such as the Nanda

History Museum in in France uh we have this new use of contemporary artists uh contemporary artworks as a provocation to interrogate the history and the legacies of the slavery and the Atlantic slave trade then as a historian who studies memory of the slavery my presentation does not aim to offer

Specific solutions to these problems on the one hand my work rather points out when the slavery is not represented in these museums Heritage sites and the public spacing General on the other hand my work underscores the pitfalls of existing initiatives interpreting these Atlantic slave trade slavery and enslaved peoples in these

Spaces not only in the United States but also in several other countries in Europe Africa and the Americas ultimately I emphasize that these historical interpretations usually led by public historians are not immune to the work of memory and because Collective memory and public memory of slavery are racialized I emphasize the

Importance of that museums and Heritage sites interpreting in slavery must engage communities whose ancestors were the victims of this atrocities thank you thank you very much Professor raucho for taking us to the marginalize the history that we oftenly uh not come across with leaving behind those uh said history we

Would like to invite the regional perspective our next presenter will be joining us online as well please welcome Dr Manuel Gandara professor of national school for conservation and investigation in Mexico taking Latin America’s case his presentation will focus on the regional perspective on interpretations Professor manra flow is yours thank you

Let me start sharing my screen okay there we go it’s a big strange type we use checked it there okay I see myself twice now uh but I hope that you’re seeing the right screen now okay well uh first of all I would like to uh thank uh weepik and of course the

Organizing committee for this invitation especially to miss Kung she has been very patient patient with me and very helpful uh so I I really appreciate your invitation also before I start I would like to to make you aware that I may be looking like I’m reading because that’s

Exactly what I’m intending to do because with my broken English the translation would be difficult and also I would have a hard time trying to stay within the limits that were very generously giving me to intent of time so uh without further Ado I will start let me move just this miniature here

Because it instructs my my screen perfect well what’s in it for you in this presentation I think that you might find something useful because what I will be sharing if with you is something that uh despite the Mexican saying I think it may be bringing true the Mexican saying says or dictates that

No one learns from other people’s mistakes but I’m sure that you can benefit from what we have learned in Latin American especially my case study which is Mexico not only for what we have done right but also from what we are in the process of trying to correct does what Senate

What’s in it will the agenda First I will explore the relationship between interpretation and increased visitation and the effects that that increase had on Heritage sites I will focus on how strategic planning center on Heritage sustainability had unfortunately unintended adverse consequences then I will attempt to show how interpretation um can be can benefit from uh Heritage

Sustainability approach based on unesco’s 2015 policy that means really presented well a moment ago for uh sustainable development perspective then I will go and analyze uh one of the examples that I could find in Mexico of unfortunately not for a world heritage site but it’s a success story and it has

To do with the idea that the real problem is not what people can do for Heritage but what heritage can do for people and for the planet so present a success story after giving my bad news earlier uh and then I’ll talk about our work in progress we’re doing in Mexico

At the site of Chicago okay that is the First theme uh Latin America including the Caribbean is rich in world heritage sites both National cultural and I am sure that you’re familiar with places like for example Machu Picchu and Peru Tijuana in Bolivia beautiful Tikal in Guatemala kopan in Honduras a in Mexico

To do again and Monte Alban also in Mexico and I could talk also about other sites like my alolan sites where we have the the key to understanding how climate change adversely affected a civilization that once stood proud of its mathematical and astronomical achievements this world heritage properties range

From a City built with mud in the Chihuahuan Desert that you’re seeing now called pakime to the tropical forest of the keys in Costa Rica home to the Monumental and very enigmatical Stone spheres it goes from prehistoric caves like gilana gates in Mexico with some of the earliest evidence for mace agriculture

To magnificent towns like the colonial city of Cusco Peru some are still in use some of these places for example Lavana Cuba and some were long ago abandoned like the rock shelters in the Sierra de capibar in Brazil and they could go on like this because with nearly more than 150 sites

Listed I would show you you get the idea well that it is perhapsed because of the size and complexity of our heritage combined with a Perpetual lack of resources and a volatile political history that we share many problems in a region conserving and interpreting your sites this may be also why the Heritage

Interpretation in this part of the world started later that in the so-called developer world I had initially planned to include a summary of a history and a survey of recording situation of cultural heritage interpretation in a region but what I found during the research was that except for a couple of Articles which

Are really local reviews there is a paucity of available information that precludes any attempt of building a credible chronology even so what we’re doing is our recently created Mexican Association for Heritage interpretation is going to be launching next year an Initiative for a joint Latin American Latin American project to fill that void

What we need is not just to speculate about that history but we must build a reliable database for archival and bibliographical documentation which certainly exists but it’s only locally available mostly in animal analog media and to supplement it with oral histories and interviews with the founders and Pioneers of interpretation

In the region having said that let’s go on with our agenda cultural heritage interpretation gained importance with the increase in visitation major sites at the end of the century it started world heritage properties typically archaeological sites the first to be listed were already major tourist attractions by the

Time they were listed and I give you their matchup you just saw some of them had a small side Museum that did not necessarily have an interpretive approach it was basically chronological data with some Salient aspects of the culture the sheer size of this ancient cities combined with massive visitation determined the

Main way in which information was presented for example into diwakan and the highlands in Mexico with more than one million visitors already in the 90s the solution was to deploy science as we call them in Mexico but we were kind of the panels in chapter the planets of text labels

But some countries needed earlier uh Guatemala for example labels were in place at the end of the 80s and I’ll show you a couple of examples in Mexico what is called the signal signaling project began in 1996. and this were the kind of science that we put in the beginning they were not

Always interpretive signs well they were impeccable in academic terms really impeccable for the common visitor they were often too long and difficult to read and even irrelevant or boring however there were a huge huge Improvement especially at the smaller sites that had North Side museums where the only information provided were

Western admission fees visitation hours or restrictions as an example of that uh here’s this all signed place before designing project began probably done with the best of intentions I I believe that uh by the local state keepers at least all sorts of restrictions which is the last one deserves a

Translation it says literally it is forbidden to enter the site and to remain on it would be difficult to remain on it if you’re forbidden to enter it right but it was done locally by by manual workers because we had nothing really before the 90s and at least nothing systematically

To to help people understand what they were saying until of course we started design a project and put a new label program in place and or labels have gone to several iterations in Mexico and they are getting better and they are getting ever all the time

But for uh before I concentrate on my case study Mexico for comparison purposes I wanted to look at this other two labels that are from the site of uh tikala Tikal in Guatemala the simple three and that’s the the label you can see they have a more uh interpretive

Stance and that is not a coincidence uh what the malah had started a training program for interpreters and I think that that shows in here uh Tijuana and Machu Picchu for example they opted for having better better interpretation done by local guides they didn’t rely on on interpretive media like we did

It was until the 1990s that cultural heritage interpretation as practiced in other countries made a clear impact in Mexico the literature we read came from a tradition we started by Freeman Tilden at the National Park Service of the United States we especially follow Sam’s thematic interpretation we are using Sam Ham’s

Model by the mid 90s developing interactive multimedia chaos for several museums in Mexico by the late 90s we tried to adapt himatic interpretation to our local conditions and to cultural heritage because it was done only in natural reserves when we we even invent you to introduce what we call anthropological historical

Approach in year 2000 that was called later thematic interpretation I’m sorry automatic interpretation Mexican style I understand that Costa Rica Colombia and Argentina have carried out their own adaptations even with our adaptation in Mexico our colleagues deemed thematic interpretation was only applicable for cultural heritage it was only applicable

To natural reserves and not applicable to cultural heritage sites and museums this is changing fortunately but it was an uphill fight for for some times and the number of projects and Publications is growing fortunately on this field one of the effects of inscribing sites in unesco’s world heritage list was increased visitation

This was combined in many countries with a lack of expertise and cultural resource management among the absence of real strategic planning the overseers of the sites were mainly professional archaeologists with little experience on planning or visitor or resource management but the early 20 hundreds insights like Chichen Itza visitors were literally

Eroding the site as you can see in the pictures corrected measures were quickly put in place but by the late 2000s it was clear that Heritage sustainability was definitely an issue or archaeological sites in Mexico are owned by the nation and are operated by the National Institute of anthropology

And history in my own Institution but our mandate is limited to what is called the legal perimeter of the sites while in 1972 the Heritage law protects all archaeological remains we have no jurisdiction of what happens outside the legal perimeter in fact in larger sites like the tuacan

Which is what you’re seeing is it’s the map of the tuacan it was evident from the start the visitation to the site attracted all sorts of informal businesses around defense perimeter what you see in that little red rectangle is the first perimeter there are other two buffers zones but that is the first

Perimeter and around that uh you we see food stamps bars stall selling local crafts and even Chinese made trinkets that unfortunately visitors boy boy was Mexican souvenirs or memorabilia so we we were very clear early on that this was a problem but we practiced what I called archeology and side defense and

It has had its consequences this is a result of this way of looking at sites as archaeologists we are trained to do research and some of us or some of them I don’t uh know how even how to restore buildings activities which all happen to be inside the perimeter fence this perimeter that

Is protected by law but no one trades on how to deal with what with what happens outside the fence and things are interesting because in my country archeology is controlled by the state and on the premise that Heritage is a common National good for ample social benefit and those can be

Privatized so when contract archeology began in the states and some of its negative effects on Heritage were known there was a white widespread reaction in Mexico against it and against the recipient field of cultural research management that that was very sad because by implication uh it also meant a very very

Unfortunate rejection of all strategic planning in general it prevented us from having an integral long-term view of the sites and environments and this impacted in other ways for example uh in in the 2010s more or less unesco’s had a policy to to have site management plans for world heritage sites and uh

The people that were supposed to do them and then they were generalized to other sites resented them because again there was this uh animosity against against planning they thought they were just bureaucratic documents that was paper board that wouldn’t have any real effect and of course then many of these plans

Would have problems as we’ll point out the political context didn’t help as the offices in Mexico both of UNESCO and icomos or Commerce were criticized for not taking a stronger stand on iconic sites were adversely affected by transnational companies they didn’t make a clear pronouncement a small by influential group of anti-unesco

Academics made their opinions public and they had some weight with very few exceptions these plans were done without consulting the local populations these populations recently decides that they were supposed to benefit from but which we’re really being exploited by your by tour operators and international hotel chains in some cases the

Municipality claimed that the visitors use resources such as water or services like the sewage system with little gain from a tourist expenditures especially International visitors whose tour packages include meals and shopping only at business partners of those major tour operators in the most extreme cases the local Crafts People and sometimes memorabilia

Vendors that operate the national chain at archaeological size forcefully entered defense perimeter and sold their Wares inside the speed despite it being forbidden Unfortunately they can be very insistent even aggressive pushing their sales to the point of having visitors complain in a study we did we carry out in Chichen

Itza in 2009 they were the only clone the visitors had about the site and you can see them as a matter of fact this lady in in the bottom right side is running from this guy that also said horrible things to her in some site the vendors interferably

And flee when spotted by the side guards like the one on the left this is the tour come by the way in others most notably Chichen Itza they bring movable stalls which they take out when the site closes many memorabilia has done Elsewhere for example notice

This uh Maya predators that are sold as Mexican souvenirs Chichen Itza um I’m sorry a very few of those stalls are really used by local craft persons a key here you can see a Craftsman doing uh masks that is a person from a nearby Maya town

Of piste and he really is doing you know Maya things related to the site but that is not the case with most of the installs that you can see it there and uh it is sad to see the path leading to the most sacred Cenote or Open Water

Sinkhole that you’re seeing here Cenote one uh Senate one uh with um this path line on both sides by vendors of all kinds but this is a consequence of the authorities building years ago smoke cafeteria that you see in the right side of a picture almost on top of the rim of

The same sympathy and giving it giving it to a privately operated concession then local people question why is that allowed and they are not allowed to sell their things and they demand equal treatment and this is an unsolved problem several Solutions have been tried and known has become very efficient

Then what happened that by doing archeology within defense and focusing on efforts in the sustainability of Heritage at all costs a concern that I guess could be understood because it was done by your psychologists we got unintended consequences which takes me to the final part of this talk

Mexico’s cultural heritage is a huge it’s under so much pressure you wouldn’t believe it you know from building of the infrastructure for from tourist uh entrepreneurs from politicians that taking care of Heritage sustainability was a priority back then my own enthusiasm about thematic interpretation derived from a successful

Application that helps save parts of an archaeological side that I was committing in which the people helped to to save the site at least part of the site that experience showed me what people can do for Heritage a legitimate concern of course but with a limited Focus

The real issue is what cultural heritage can do for people as I learned from two colleagues of Oaxaca that I will be referring to in a moment but the fight for quick welcome which is the name of the site was very impressive you know groups of of several

Venues uh really got involved into into it and they prevented the site from being further destroyed but now we can see what went wrong you don’t need not fully considered the dimensions of inclusive social and economic development that we just saw presented which are now keystones of

Unesco’s 25 25 15 I’m sorry 2015 it’s a sustainability policy the benefits of Heritage were not reaching the local populations they were not consulted in the planning process and it is my impression that we didn’t do enough to First interpret the site for them so they would understand

Why we were so concerned that it would be damaged or anything no and even less we were concerned to ask them what they felt about it no serious mistakes that uh uh sustainable approach would take into account the second dimension of the 2015 policy environmental sustainability has not

Fared very well in Mexico either so Chicago a war Heritage Property I’m working on and I’m going to be talking about it later um it’s an example how how government levels echelons evolved my institution places higher in Government Can happily ignore the policy even when we’ve signed

It it clearly states the policy that non-major extractive projects should be carried out in the vicinity of world heritage properties however in 2016 the ministry of economy granted a Canadian main company a large plot of land including the whole legal parameter of a site what you see there in in Gray

Appointed with the green arrow is sochikalco that is the official perimeter of Social and it’s completely inside of this mining operation fortunately I don’t think it doesn’t we haven’t we don’t have an indication that Canadians want to mine the site but you will agree with me the concession should simply not exist

So I’ll reach the first conclusion if Heritage for sustainability is not considered during strategic planning not even the best Heritage interpretation is going to be able to fix that later the problem lies elsewhere we need to correct existing plans and create new ones with a Heritage for sustainability approach

Not just for Heritage sustainability but um before I mention my good case my positive case uh that I wanted just to say that that idea and this is what we get by working only inside defense the case I want to share with you and maybe you will find enlightening or at

Least inspiring is from the central valleys of Oaxaca it was started by Nelly Robles and was later led by other two Visionary colleagues do you have on the screen Teresa Morales they are the ones that made me see that the issue is not only what local populations can do to protect Heritage

But what heritage can do for local populations they supported the sapotec indigenous community that demanded that their ecological remains found in the village to stay there to that end the other person Robles convinced my institution that the way to do that was for the community to build an independent

Autonomous Museum to hold the Arctic artifacts in custody that was difficult back then the community working through its traditional assembly donated a communal house to hold the museum they also determined which topics would be shown and along the planning design and production stages to have the support of

Camarena and Morales of course but it was a community that had always the last word in what to show how to show it and what to say about it one of the topics they selected besides the theological one was the complex process of weaving textiles which many of them did for a living

And once they were there they also decided to open a store next to the museum so the visitors could buy the beautiful garments they make so make experts fear that the museum would be looted and the precious archaeological evidence will be lost but here we have people celebrating the

First 20 years of the museum in 2011. well uh in 30 years no one has dropped the museum instead it inspired other indigenous communities in that state to build their own Community museums and he here we see the party we had when it uh Tennessee would reached 25 they are

Dancing their traditional dances so instead of being looted what it happens that inspired many communities in 15 years as a matter of fact it created a network of more than 20 such museums in Oaxaca that was the union next because misuse started growing in other places in Mexico the the National

Association of communities Museum was founded that did you see here and today the banner we see in the bottom is of a network of community museums of the Americas with museums built by indigenous and local communities from the whole continent using the same methodology developing Oaxaca by Camarena and Morales

So I think that the hacken case is a good example of several of the how several goals of the 2015 policy regarding the dimension of inclusive Social Development and even working towards gender equality since women participated something that normally under those conditions those Traditions would be difficult but they did it for

The museum the dimension of inclusive Economic Development was also considered the craft shops and other services that these museums offer their visitors are an alternate source of income for the community and I know I know you may be thinking okay maybe you can do that with a small

Scale and a local indigenous Community but how can you implement that at a large World archaeological site and the answer is through and the answer is that I don’t have any answer but at least not an easy one no but I wish that I knew uh but of course

This is a challenge as I understand this is a challenge this timely conference is inviting us to accept is it not but I thought that showing you what this community museums did uh at least points in the right direction of inclusion of sustainability of many things that I

Think are the way we’re going to to go it’s giving us inspiration to follow okay I’ll go now with the dimension of sustainability of the environment with beginning to see it in mix Heritage sites like Oaxaca Mexico in which natural interpreters and cultural interpreters finally got

Together no but we would like also to see it and decide that I’m working in the site of social that you met earlier this is a site in a beautiful aerial view it’s placed uh on the state of Morelos my home state Portland race in Morelos in Mexico

The I want to get into uh its role in environmental sustainability because the Museum of socialco was the French a good friendly Museum built in Mexico it has uh depends totally in solar energy on water Recycling and other sustainable Technologies and I would like to extend that idea that from 1996

They had on environmental sustainability I want to take that incorporate that into the content of what we’re doing with a new panel program um and we also want to extend to another dimension of the 2015 guideline which is the dimension of fostering peace and security using our anthropological and historical approach

We have developed a new interpretive label program which has not been deployed in on accountable damages that the site suffered in the earthquake of 29 2017 and also for lack of funds my own project budget was called this year more than 50 percent on account of the

Pandemic but in the meantime we’re doing we’re developing a virtual tour based on a new label program the same content that specifically touches on three of the goals of the sustainability policy fostering peace and security environmental sustainability and contributing to inclusion and equality although on a very minor awake probably

Well peace in Mexico first I should uh clarify is not threatened by armed conflict with any other country specifically with your neighbors to the north but the Warriors against the worker Tales so we went to reach with our ritual tour especially young people to whom the cartels lure and finally recruit

We want to show young people that there are always options other than violence and the emblematic Temple of a feathered serpent which is the highlight of a site or one of the highlights of a site is a great testimony to that for its iconographic program has been interpreted as a celebration of a

Collective achievement with the participation of rival cities at a very tense political moment to reach those goals we went beyond the criteria used by UNESCO to include surgical on the list that you see in the screen the surgical is an exceptionally well preserved and complete example of fortified settlement of a classic period

And its architecture and art represent the fusion of cultural elements from different parts of Miss America for a period when the breakdown of very political structures result in intensive cultural grouping but if I present this to the general public they don’t know what the Epic classic is they maybe

Don’t know what Miss America is and they have no idea I’m sure what breakdown was there what was the Intensive cultural regrouping I think that’s the way um why because those are not interpretive statements at all so it would be unfair you know these are the assessment

Of value but this has to be interpreted they have to be interpreted in terms of cultural heritage interpretation we cannot just bring them to the audiences like that this is why interpretation is different from value assessment um well the central themes of a visit will Revolt around the importance of

Cooperation and peace rather than conflict and War Fierce because um sochikalco has evidence that they did something fantastic uh they called on people from rival cities to correct their calendar in an adjustment much like the Gregorian reform which took place six years later in Europe you know by uh the leap years

The calendar had moved and it was a total problem for everyone and do you see here a foreign character with Maya attire represented and also represented the representation of a predicted Eclipse that uh allowed people to determine what the correction would be and here we have the chronographic

Representation of how a hand pulls one icon with a date and substitutes it with another date and if you don’t see it because you’re an archaeologist here is simplified so our new label program which I will show you one uh tell here is talking about that the second theme that

Violence is not natural it can be explained and even perhaps prevented if we understand what causes it these two themes are a direct result of applying your approach we seeks to denaturalize social practices and to show that they all have a history they are a dynamic

And aiming for maybe all they are not necessarily right for that matter no and since they can change they can change also for the better a principle that I call a principle of Hope I’m gonna jump because I’m falling behind these are some of the components or

Approach pad I’d rather show you this other uh of the new labels that shows how how climate change has impacted human Humanity before and so tikalgo attest to that sustained Rod might have been an important factor in these collapse they reduce your info words and social conflicts it’s inhabitants

Finally sacked and burned the city to the ground after years of being abused and even repressed by local Elite like you see them here people were hacked in this reconstruction and the idea is that we ask uh the audience if violence could be avoided if we

Understand what causes it and we will be delighted if they leave the side pondering that question in terms of inclusion we aim to show the digital media can allow a large audience to visit the site which is impossible with a very severe topographic slopes that it has on Macy’s

Inaccessible for many people and at the same time we can include people with hearing disabilities by using now video labels with subtitles in Spanish and English and in the future sign language we had planned to do also an hour a bedroom of indigenous language that is

Still in use nearby but they cut our budget so in closing I am aware that fulfilling the policy in Latin America will possess a big challenge we have scanty budgets a small number of Specialists and insufficient install capacity and yet we still May must take care of a rich and

Diverse Heritage but cultural heritage everywhere is so has so much to offer that is imperative that its benefits serve all the people on our planet as well then adopting and embracing the goals of the sustainability policy is an important first step and by the way everybody is invited well thank you [Applause]

Thank you thank you very much uh probably uh two online presentations uh make us to be more connected throughout the world and finally we would like to invite Dr Valerie Marga here with us today uh for the presentation about the capacity building programs and the people nature and culture Integrations

She is the unit manager of conservation program at ecrom and she probably will join us and share the experience about her expertise Dr Valerie his flow is yours thank you thank you very much and thank you also to the previous presenters uh good morning everyone um and I would like to First

Congratulate week for the organization of this forum and thank them for the possibility of sharing with you some of vikram’s experience on the topic and ekram being one of the advisory bodies to the world heritage committee where we actually work mostly on capacity building so we are celebrating the 50th

Anniversary of the world heritage convention and in these five decades we have seen an expansion of what we consider as Heritage when we look at this event coming from Varanasi in India what is Heritage in this image is it the buildings is it the shrines is it the

Sacred Ganges River or is it the worshipers or probably a better question would be what is not Heritage in this image we have come to realize the importance of context when we Define heritage whose significance may be understood through a wide variety of values which will be important to different groups of people

Or actors within our system context here includes the wider setting of uh in which Heritage dislocated those beyond the boundaries that Manuel Kendra was referring to and this includes social economic political and environmental aspects if we want to fully apprehend Heritage including nature and culture we need to

Understand it through a much wider setting this includes the management environment the social environment the broader human and built environment and the natural environment as well and over time we have shifted from an expert-led approach to Heritage where it was mostly yet led by very few individuals sometimes referred to as

Experts to a values-based approach to Heritage which was more encompassing but it was still led by those experts let’s say and now we focus on people-centered approaches which includes the points of view of many individuals and I believe we no longer consider ourselves necessarily as experts

So this means that there has been a shift from focusing on monuments and sites with a strong focus on the material and tangible aspects of natural and cultural heritage highlighting usually the negative impacts on Heritage and ending in strategies that cared for the well-being of Heritage with little

Or no or no interest in interpretation to focus on people and Heritage where we care about the values for the people we focus on both positive and negative impacts on and for Heritage and the result should be the well-being both of society and Heritage so this shift in the Pro in the

Approaches led to the development of the world heritage leadership program coordinated by the Norwegian Ministry of environment iucn and ikrum and in collaboration with the world heritage center and the e-commerce and with the General’s support from other countries as well including Korea and this program is now proposing a focus on Heritage

Places which are understood not just as the properties that are inscribed within the world heritage list but also their broader setting so if we consider a hypothetical landscape any place in the world and where we zoom in we can see that there may be three three world heritage sites

In it one is a monastery with a sacred Mountain another one is a marine ecosystem and the third one is industrial heritage for each of these sites we will have a the inscribed property which is now here highlighted in red maybe a buffer zone which is highlighted in blue and maybe a

Wider setting or an area of influence which is highlighted in yellow and by analyzing these three sites we will always find that there are necessary interactions to understand them the industrial Heritage for example may have been made possible thanks to the existence of resources in the region

That led to the the their exploitation the city surrounding that industrial Heritage can now probably offer housing and lodging for pilgrims and visitors who go to the monastery or to the sacred mountain and the marinek system provides resources for the people living in both areas um the Marine ecosystem may also be

Negatively affected by the pollution from the city or from the surrounding agricultural practices but what we can see is that communities um living in each of these sites will actually have benefited or have influenced all of the other areas so in short world heritage sites do not

And cannot exist in a vacuum I mean we cannot keep them as just focusing on what’s inscribed and it’s very close perimeter and they cannot be understood in isolation as well so by integrating nature and culture into the wider setting we ensure that all the values are considered and we can

Hopefully also pull resources to ensure that our diversity is secured for the present and for the future so this is why we’re now trying to eliminate barriers between nature and culture and promote common approaches to Heritage places we are in the process of reviewing the well-known manuals that

Were published nearly a decade a bit over a decade ago and we are going to integrate them into a single management manual for world heritage which includes both nature and culture and where risk management is actually a part of the management system as well and we have already published or finished two other

Resources guidance and toolkit on for impact assessment which was published uh during the summer and coming soon we will have also another toolkit called enhancing Our Heritage which is focusing about the effectiveness of Management Systems so all of these toolkits are already trying to bring out these Heritage Place

Approach and understanding Heritage in a much broader way so the conservation and management of sites includes all aspects related to a site from understanding its nature values and significance to understanding all the factors that may be affecting it to proposing conservation actions and all the way to communication interpretation and presentation of a

Site and we have to bring out the fact that this is an iterative process where review and modifications can happen and are usually required based on changing conditions and the understanding of a Heritage Place will include considering all aspects as I mentioned social um cultural political economic and environmental social aspects will

Consider the inclusion also of indigenous and local communities which are extremely important and also seeking this Equity that both previous speakers were mentioning the environmental aspect will also take into account climate change and disasters which are increasingly affecting our heritage sites uh and the particular aspect will review issues of

Governance including indigenous rights and bringing a voice to communities that have long been forgotten and have not had a voice the economic will consider all resources available uh including financial and Staffing for taking care of our sites and hopefully ensuring that they are both continuing and in the longer term

And the cultural aspects we’ll consider the legal and customary management context as well as issues related with language and communication which are particularly relevant for interpretation so in order to integrate all these aspects okay question will be good communication and this requires respect and dialogue and as was mentioned this

Morning also time and the long term and this has to be a dialogue that flows in both directions not just from people who are considered professionals within the Heritage sector but also listening to the voices of other people around it and as was mentioned also this morning this

Will require time to establish Mutual trust to find also the correct terminology so that we are not speaking in a language that is not understandable to everyone so that we can achieve meaningful and accurate communication and therefore interpretation and when we are in front of a Heritage

Place we often do not see or speak about the same things some of you may see a dock in this image others will see a rabbit some will see both and communication is often about this we may be speaking about something that is very clear to us but another person is seeing

Or understanding something completely different so in order to reach good understanding we must make sure that we are clear about what is important why it is important and for whom before we start acting on how we’re going to do something about the site when we are

Going to do it and where we are going to do it um and this will be um both in terms of conservation of the site and its management but also in terms of its interpretation and presentation and we understand that Heritage has been created by people and it has been

Created for people as well whether it is natural or cultural these are all constructs that we Define in areas that we want to protect and we all agree that our world is also a better place for the richness that Heritage brings to our lives so the challenge is that in that

Diversity our approaches need to be context based to be meaningful there will not be a single recipe that will work for all Heritage places so really working at the local level is the most important and understanding the specific context in which we are operating and in order to have meaningful

Interpretations that work for different audiences through different media we need to also find the right stories that connect each one of us to that place respecting the rights and values understanding the emotions and the feelings that Heritage can create and promoting lifelong learning the generation of new knowledge and

Promoting respect and peaceful societies as well so this means that Heritage professionals need to gain new skills behavior and knowledge particularly those linked to communication which includes language and terminology as I already mentioned um skills and tools to be better at interpretation and presentation in a matter that is truthful and respectful

For the context and these as is always the case in Heritage requires cross-disciplinary work so relying also on Knowledge from other professions and making it work as a whole so Heritage professionals also need to understand and communicate that Heritage is an ecosystem it is not something that can be seen in isolation linking

Conservation management and interpretation which only together can promote sustainable practices for the future and with that I would finish thank you very much [Applause] thank you very much Dr Marga um we have all presentations together in the first session one we have dealt with the the role of Heritage interpretation

In sustainable development we also heard about the marginalized history aspects and also we invited the Reasoner context and lastly we have a kind of integration between people nature and culture all those four themes probably at the center of it there is Heritage interpretation and presentations please be back with us

In the discussion sessions by bearing this important issues on the Heritage interpretation and presentations before we start our discussions we will have a 10 minute break so that you can have a kind of uh you know sort of questions in your mind so that we can invite more voices from the floors and

Also the online speakers and the offline speakers we probably will come back by 10 to 12 for the discussions please enjoy your break time and use the beverage and some snacks foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you Thank you very much for coming back this is the discussion session which is the last session before the lunch I know that you all are hungry but let’s take a moment to discuss and explore the further issues on the Heritage interpretation and presentations as I mentioned earlier

And announced you already I will take some opinions and also comment and some questions from the floor first because this is the two-way communication process Enlighten us and hearing your voice as well through this forum okay Dr Lee um we delivered the microphone okay do I have to take off my mask

Thank you very much for present for presenters and it’s all thought provoking and inspiring talk thank you very much as far as I understand you four of you dealt with the different topics regarding Heritage interpretation and presentation however the the communities time seems to be the penetrate for different presentations uh

We are aware of the importance of communities in the Heritage interpretation and presentation and I know all of you made an effort to how the community’s values can be integrated into Heritage interpretation and presentation but before going further we needed to critically thinking about what and who communities are how we Define

Them and how we can understand them scope them otherwise we can have some stereotypes of understanding communities that the professionals should educate so in order to change the paradigms of understanding communities then we need to discuss who they are for at first because nowadays UNESCO not only the world heritage but also intangible

Heritage sector and memory of the world the value of communities is it has become like a master key so we needed to think about it and secondly I’d like to ask the very important to include the marginalized voices in The Heritage interpretation and presentation however uh it is very important to ReDiscover

The their past that we have been long missing but at the moment we needed to think about how we can understand the presentness of the marginalized voice because they used to be the victims but they no longer victims now but we need to think how we can understand them in

The presence context so that is my two comments and questions thank you Valerie would you like to start about the communities yes thank you very much for the questions and and comments I I fully agree that communities are complex to work with because I mean it’s not a

Single Community ever there will always be many voices many multiple perspectives coming from those communities and the broader the site the most the more complex those communities will actually be but even in a small community I mean there will be many many voices and many perspectives so it is about taking

Enough time to really understand who those communities are what are the messages that they want to also transmit and how do they value Heritage as well and so it it is about taking the time and I think you’re mentioning this morning about the slow Heritage I mean

It’s it’s about building that trust so that they communicate what is important to them and we get to also understand and so it’s it’s a just two-way dialogue and the second part I mean the the how to work with communities is also mean about uh getting all these new skills and new

Tools that Heritage professionals do not necessarily have when they are trained we do not necessarily I mean we know about our topics whether it is archeology or architecture or Heritage conservation or or Heritage cultures but we do not necessarily know how to to communicate and how to to Really

Interact with these with these communities and particularly in in the cases of marginalized groups I mean it’s also about understanding those different layers as you mentioned I mean whether it is the past the distal pasta drug was a difficult um Heritage and or represents a difficult moment in history but it can

Also be marginalized groups today who are not necessarily included and who also can be given a voice and where Heritage can also become a bridge to put those communities in contact with the Heritage and with the conservation professionals understanding those needs and the possibility for those groups I mean Manuel was especially

Was mentioning this possibility of using Heritage and using the past also to involve these younger people the younger Generations so that they do not get caught up by the cartels and the violence that exists in within the community so it’s it’s about it can be both ways

So I mean it it is complicated but there are tools there are methodologies that we need to learn as conservation professionals and it’s mostly about communication and understanding how to listen respectfully but also to put out all the different voices in a dialogue and in a respectful way of

Finding channels to communicate what is the meaning of those places and what it’s the role it can play for society nowadays from sure maybe the other thank you very much very Professor kandara would you bear with us about your opinions from Regional context how can we approach the communities and also

The marginalized communities as well in these issues I think that uh one of the issues that we have pending is that many of these sites are in Far Away places they are marginalized already they were in the middle of a jungle or very far away and

In from Development Centers and all of a sudden they have a world heritage you know property near them and they get full of Hope of what that is going to do for them but nothing happens and then what happens is what we’re seeing in in

Mexico I was so sad uh some years ago when we did a visitor study uh in in lieu that in view the museum was going to be opened in in Merida the capital of capital capital of Yucatan and the Assam went from chichenisa an Indian person an indigenous person what he thought about

Uh the the ruins and what was the connection he had with the people that built the ruins and he answered oh those those those those were not lost uh that they that people don’t don’t have anything to do with us we’re we’re not indians we are mestizo and

Those pyramids were built by the Mayas of Ina Inez my Institution they are they put they’re posting Maya people that didn’t exist no that uh are created by our institution because they have no connection no link it has been broken and the the very sad thing is that even if there’s any place

In in the Maya World in which the connection is direct it’s precisely in the Yucatan Peninsula so you you can see that when you’re that marginalized to the extent of not recognizing who you are not wanting to recognize it then we have a lot to do in front of us and for

Me looking for um a way of develop the economy taking to into account their needs and their possibilities is crucial at least in Mexico that’s the the worst part I think that we have to to take into account but something like that happens in other places in in uh in Latin America uh

The one Echo for example this is a very small and poor community that had enormous expectations of what the world heritage would bring to them so we’d have to find a way to communicate to them and and to plan with them plan with them and it can be done

It can be done uh I’ve seen attempts in Mexico but for Unfortunately they haven’t you know relay fruit Professor Gandara Professor araujo would you like to give us some of your opinions about the marginalized communities the the way how we can deal with those kind of issues uh thank you

In in the case of slavery and the the Atlantic slave trade the Indians is the point uh about memory being racialized is that uh the descendants of these communities who were enslaved in the past especially then in the case of the Americas they remain marginalized in this different societies I take here the

Example of Brazil then as you are talking about world heritage the valongo kwarf that is one is in one of the the slides that I showed waloniru in Brazil that was one of the largest slave trading ports during the era of the Atlantic slave trade and the The Wharf is located in the

Area of the the city that wasn’t covered in 2010 because of the the Olympic Games and the World Cup but it’s a region that a part of the city that most that has been abandoned is part of the downtown of the the region that two years ago

Even tax drivers they didn’t want to go to that region to to visit that area and there was a lot of problems in that uh in that region at the moment of transforming that site in uh first in recognizing it of course as a world heritage site but also to decide of what

To do with the site because it’s a site Associated of course to the community that lives around the that area but is also a site that is of all black Brazilians whose ancestors were brought by force to Brazil and this is not a marginalized community in terms of a

Minority because more than 50 percent of Brazilian events are black or brown then are people of African descent then nobody’s doing any favor by highlighting that story it’s their story and Brazil would not exist without Africa then the only way to do that is of course to

Create foreigns to to discuss what to do with besides by knowing that it’s normal that there are then the different opinions and different positions regarding what to do with these places the problem is that in then in countries like Brazil and even in the United States if you are referring to

Um then the sites that are managed by the the then by private foundations and not by by the state very often it’s very difficult to to intervene and to to suggest what should be done and which practice should be led and this is really the communities that

Can put pressure to recognize that these sites are sites where atrocities were committed on the one hand and on the other hand that this atrocities must be recognized then uh for for everyone and in most cases those who are running the sites and and this includes private organizations in some cases in other

Cases it includes then the municipal government federal government the state government they do not want these stories to to be told exactly because they are part of the present because black people in countries like Brazil they are still marginalized and this is part of this long history that

That involves the slavery and the Atlantic slave trade then UNESCO can helps with that okay can help with uh with that and also can suggest what can be best practices but it’s really only the organized communities that can put real pressure to get things right thank you thank you very much Professor

Araujo uh Miss Kong uh probably you are the one who has to integrate all those kind of perspectives in terms of the communities in the policy research uh from now on uh what would you your plan would you share your plan about how you would like to start about the community

Issues in the policy aspect laughs um Community aspects it’s a it’s a really difficult question for me to answer um but as I’ve been doing the interpretation policy research I’ve been recognizing that the the community is really really important and it’s it’s much important than I have ever expected so I think um

The and I’ve also I’ve been recognizing that all these guidelines and policies are addressing the roles for the Heritage experts and professionals but I I think there should be more room for the communities to be involved in this world heritage policy world heritage system and um

In order to do that I think uh these uh guidelines or criteria or principles that are that the world heritage system is suggesting to the state’s parties should be should have more um inclusive um room yeah so that all the states parties can apply the way they perceive their own

Heritage values and conserve their heritages into the into the Heritage world heritage system so what we want to do what I want to do personally in the future and hopefully sujang will allow me to do that in in the next years to come is to um examine the how the idea of world

Heritage system or sustainable development or Heritage interpretation or presentation is understood in all different regions there may be different interpretation or understanding by all the all the different states parties that may not fit exactly with the world Hertz system so we want to go really from the fundamental ground so that we

Can find out in the future how we can think about how to involve the communities in the world heritage activities uh thank you very much it’s not my decision it’s our Center’s decision to decide the next topics that we explore in few years and I’m sure that the uh

The capacity building functions in our Center is very much concerned about the communities as well who Target for and what kind of content for the targeted communities can we do deliver the capacity building programs probably uh Miss shim the head of the capacity building office will tell us about what

Is her approach on the community issues and where the research office and other information office can support her programs in future please yes I’m sorry this is not the discussions for only on the platform but um it will be a kind of challenge for the audiences as well and this is your

Crime to be here uh with us sorry uh sorry again is this mic working yes yes from the capacity building office perspective how would you like to deal with the community issues as Dr hyung Yong Lee mentioned from her questions oh okay thank you um actually in the session two we were

Actually going to also discuss about the community but then uh to answer your question we try to think about Community as a very um diverse and multi-layered voices of people so we have a plan to Compass building to different layers and different part of the stakeholders not only the people related

To The Heritage but also who has a right to the Heritage and who has also a sort of a commercial related to the Heritage so even to the construction related people so we have a compass building programs to the diverse the stakeholders yes thank you

Thank you very much I hope uh Dr Lee that will probably answer to your questions yes we we have to start with the definitions of what is the community and what types of communities that we have to tackle in short and long term and please share us your ideas on the

Communities in the future projects of our Center okay is there more questions from the floor yes Dr Ong bear in mind you are the speaker I know yes in the afternoon thank you please come back after lunch all right I’m Ang minchi I’m the site manager from Georgetown been in Malaysia

Um I would like to follow up from that question to your question to her answer and I have a suggestions for we pick which later on I will be giving a presentation or interpretation by the local community and one of the biggest issue for us as a site manager for variety site is

The ouv and the attributes were not involved in now of proactive communication with the local people so I would highly recommend capacity building opportunities to be given by those who is going to submit the tentative lease I think it’s important to yes involve the local people involve us but

A lot of time we are not involved in the tentative list so please make it as a pre-criteria they need to understand words interpretation for the local people and then through that then you will give the local community and opportunities to tell our story to the Warhead discussions

And of course if you are very powerful also involved the youth because nowadays the Gap is you are not interested on the very boring Heritage so you know certain percentage of the yes the the local people the indigenous people the youth and in particular our beloved State

Parties who is going to submit the tentative list and the dose so I think you you can have a lot of things to do in that perspective thank you very much thank you very much Dr Wong uh we it will be really useful and valuable advice from you from the

Site manager’s perspective uh Is there further questions from the floor okay yes Mario Santana Quintero thank you thank you so much for putting together this um this session you know about sustainable development goals and the relationship with Heritage and we have been talking a lot about the communities but I always feel that

We There is a gap between the community the authorities and Industry you know because industry is probably the biggest polluter and they probably the area that we haven’t really have is it’s a gap we don’t see it in any of the Heritage meetings I hardly ever see anyone within

The development right and they’re actually and it comes from their sustainable development it comes from the people who are doing the developments and I know they are very conscious people about you know Heritage and climate change but I don’t see them here so I don’t know what what is your

Opinion in general to the panel how can we engage with people that actually do the developments okay I have to deliver my question I mean his questions to someone who can answer the best uh worry would you like to start thank you thank you for that tricky question Maria um the um

I would say there are two moments where where developers can be involved I mean one is when something is happening at a world heritage site I mean with through the Heritage impact assessments I mean that’s the moment if it is done early enough in advance where you can actually

Have a dialogue and understand what is the purpose of the development project that is going to take place around the site and hopefully that leads to finding Solutions I mean not just necessarily us as Heritage people saying well you cannot do this or you cannot do that

Because you’re going against the uh the values of the site but it’s about trying to find an alternative usually I mean hopefully so that would be one but the other one is definitely yes I mean we we have to be able to and I think interpretation is also about that I mean

It’s about finding the the multiple meanings that a heritage site has for many people I mean not just the very local communities but to the broader public as well and trying to communicate that and why those heritage which should be kept as they are and or what is the

The role they can play in the future of that community of that larger society uh in in general so it it is the let’s say The Wider spectrum of interpretation and presentation that should actually uh lead to a better awareness and just going back also to

Ang’s comment about the I mean how to to include the the values I mean the ouv oversight I think that’s also something of the approach that we’re trying to promote with the different advisory bodies uh of the Heritage Place it’s that yes Society is recognized and inscribed on the world heritage list

Because of the ouv that has been recognized by the committee but the meaning of the place is actually much bigger I mean and it has to be it has to consider that bigger setting uh where all those values for the local communities but also for different groups might actually be revealed and

Will actually give the full meaning of the place uh and we will and will allow to to protect all the aspects that need to be prepared and also involving different types of public and different age groups I would say not just the young I mean the young are extremely

Important they are our future but also I mean elderly people who may have also traditional knowledge very good information to provide to the younger generation and the young who can also bring their own enthusiasm and the new media and new techniques that also will be extremely valuable

Very much I will not just take around the same questions to all the speakers because we are running off time uh and also we can’t miss the prepared questions if we do probably we will regret and also the answers are awaiting as well uh probably the threading theme

Of this session would be the how what is the role of the interpretation and presentations in all those kind of issues in implementing the world heritage conventions as I mentioned earlier there there were a reasonable context issues and also marginalized history issues and also the capacity building issues and the people nature

Culture integration issues and at the end probably miss Kong will deliver all those kind of research themes in the policy research at the end shall we go one by one starting from a professor araujo about what and how they interpretation and presentation can help and what is the position in the

Marginalized history or selective history problems in this area thank you for your question in many ways I think that this question comes back to what we already I already answered when we had the the previous the previous question I I believe that this uh then this is where perhaps historians

Can can provide some help then the history of a site that is a heritage site that involves human atrocities then is the history of the the victims but also includes the the history of the the perpetrators and of course the historical narratives are always selective we are historians we are all

We also select what our sources we try to to to to be loyal to a certain level of Truth but we are also selective then this is uh I think that uh this is why the The Works of historians they they are important then to be able to to dig

Into the the work that we do in the archives we have a variety of sources archaeological sources uh then sources that are oral sources and put this together in order to give this multi-dimension multi-dimensional vision of what happened in the past and this of course includes uh different social actors in

The past than people who were those who perpetrated the atrocities and those who were victimized and then we needed to recognize those who are the perpetrators but we do not want to make the uh the presentation or uh even the the interpretation of the sites by focusing

On those uh who are the perfect perpetrators and this is when the the it is important to have this this various views uh the the history of those who are victimized and also to have several social actors who in the present uh are related to to the sites because this is

The way also to uh to convey the the several histories the the several uh narratives by at the same time recognizing that this atrocities were committed then I I believe that in deals the the the the role of historians is very important and I am not sure if all

The time historians they are really called to uh to to wait when we are even listing this uh sites in the the world heritage list but when you are trying to to maintain them in the list and continue then interpret and presenting them to to different audiences

Thank you thank you very much lastly I will ask Professor Gandara what would be the aspect from Regional context that miss Kung will probably will proceed her result in policy in next few years what would be the considerations originally perspectives that we have to consider in policy revisions I think inclusive Economic Development

Will be crucial would be crucial because all our efforts will fall flat if we cannot reach you know people and and meet their expected their expectations so I that would be my my suggestion and in terms of a broader problematic I think that we need to to maybe transcend

Oub and and find all the other things that a site provides because it uh normally or assessments are very technical and we’re missing things that would help us to do things that the approach I am suggesting emphasizes one of them is to denaturalize informational people for example to to feel to know

That there there is not natural for them to be naturalized that’s important message no and also too I don’t know if there’s a word in English like this to historize no that doesn’t doesn’t seem correct to put history on things like uh the the horrible stories okay that

That’s the horrible story in the past that the past can change and we can change it so this principle of hope that I was talking about I think is something that we should also try to put into what we do we’re not we’re not just being optimistic or idealistic this is true we

Have improved as as a humankind and we can continue to improve but if we concentrate on the Epic classic and on the role that the miss American communities exchanged blah blah blah blah we’re not going to be doing anything we have to go and look for deeper meaning

Deeper meaning in Heritage and meaning that we’ll be able to connect people with people people with the past people with other people I think that that would be the way to go Professor Gandara uh thank you very much for joining us for the session one this

Probably will be the uh the end of session one but please stay with us after the lunch break uh be back by 2 30. uh bear in mind that we will continue our discussions about the role of Heritage interpretations and also that will lead to the end of our today’s

Session uh for the role of our centers in future as well thank you very much for joining us and thank you very much Dr Maga and thank you very much professor manora and thank you very much for professor araujo and thank you for Miss kongji’s uh participations as well

Thank you very much we will be back by 2 30. thank you foreign foreign Foreign foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign Foreign foreign foreign thank you Foreign foreign thank you foreign foreign foreign Thank you foreign foreign Thank you foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign foreign Foreign thank you foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign foreign thank you foreign thank you Foreign foreign foreign foreign Foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign Foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign Foreign foreign foreign foreign Foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign foreign Thank you foreign Foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign Foreign foreign foreign foreign Foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign foreign foreign foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign foreign Foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign Foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign foreign Foreign thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign foreign foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign We have dealt with this some of the challenges that we have and what we can do for the sustainable development goals and the topic for the session two is world heritage and our future capacity building and resilience I’ll be moderating this session as I’m the current head of the education and

Network working office I would like to introduce Dr Eileen orbashley the professor of Oxford Brooks University in the UK as our first presenter Dr obashli has specialized in conservation and management of historic buildings and places and her research focuses on the sustainable conservation regeneration and management of a historic environment

Please Eileen the floor is yours thank you very much um and it’s great pleasure to be here um and be with you and to be in a live conference too um but also to be joined by many people uh online as well so I think that’s a good way of of combining everything

Um I’m going to talk about Community inclusive approaches and I’m particularly going to focus on Urban Heritage interpretation because a lot of my research happens around historic urban areas and this morning we talk quite a lot about archeology so I hope this afternoon also gives us a bit of a

Balance looking at the different um type of Heritage and I know um and Wing Chi for example is going to follow up on Urban Heritage as well in this session so I thought maybe that folk sort of keeping that Focus um would be useful mindful of the

Speakers that are going to follow me and I will try not to repeat things that are going to come up later in in the session but I think you know what’s in urban Heritage when we look at sort of the Heritage that’s a collection of things rather than archaeological

Society a single sort of world heritage site Urban Heritage sites that are sort of world heritage sites are much more complex in their own way they might not have the sort of height of architectural or artistic um value and most of their Heritage value comes from a sort of collection of

Buildings the sort of each element is not that valuable but put together it gains value more importantly it has a lot of intangible values and it’s living Heritage its Heritage or places that people are still living in and occupying and have a relationship with and I think that’s really important and very

Important aspect of it is of course it’s social values that are embedded Within These communities of both having an attachment to a place this notion of place attachment you feel attached to a neighborhood or District because you’ve lived there you have family there you have familial ties there for example so

You create you you generate this attachment it might just be somewhere you come and do your shopping once a week but those places that have meaning are all part of what becomes the urban heritage so of course I don’t need to tell you that Urban Heritage is also a tourist attraction

That it we all like visiting it and I’m sure every one of us has visited numerous historic towns as a tourism experience the world over every continent there are historic towns and that become attractive to visitors for the sort of character of their architecture for their walkable scale

For the nice little shops that now now fill them and for that very reason they also become very popular Leisure destination So within a city itself historic districts can become areas where there are cafes or bars and little sort of souvenir shops and the like so

Even within a city they create a good background um for leisure activities they’re also used ly to promote identity for example and that historic architecture can be part of a sort of an identity that a state party a local Authority or political decision maker can decide promotes a certain it might

Be a certain ethnic group it might be a certain religious group it promotes a certain message so and also a sort of identity is then attached um to a place and to an architecture and that obviously is important when we start thinking about interpretation so how does Heritage interpretation

Occur and I’m not going to talk about the methods or the systems or what it might look like and how it can become creative because there are there are many people who are better equipped than me to talk about that but I think let’s look at who’s creating the narrative and

I think particularly from Community point of view that’s really important so there will be panels and signage or I don’t know local museums and all aspects of of interpretation within the city now that’s the official narrative that’s the one that the local Authority or tourism department or someone sat down and

Agreed that that is the narrative about a place now we also have this new layer of interpretation which is the one that’s shaped by the visitor so if you go on TripAdvisor you find out about a place from the people who visit it they score which are the top 10 attractions

Um to visit in a certain place what are the best museums to see what you think about them what your experience is going to be where you’re going to eat and all that and you pick that information up from other visitors these aren’t locals it’s not an official narrative but it’s

The visitors telling you and you only actually get to locals if you go out and seek them out and you know maybe attend participate in a guided walk by someone who’s part of the local community um who’s taking you and telling you about their life experiences so the

People who actually live in a place who make up this living Heritage that we’re so interested in in visiting they’re actually right at the bottom of of having a voice in The Interpreter nation of the place that they actually live in so visitors coming for two or three days

Can have more powerful input through writing two or three reviews um than someone who actually lives there and again I think this is worth um worth noting things and of course tourists have impacts on places and again we know this there’s a lot of literature written about the sort of

Commodification of cultural heritage um the ReUse of urban spaces so we see spaces that were Community spaces that were social spaces that gradually taken over by commercial uses that serve mainly the visitor or the Leisure markets like you know squares and streets taken up by restaurants and

Cafes we have gentrification in terms of sort of Tourism gentrification and prices go up prices of housing go up um you know we’ve got a big issue these days with Airbnb and and a lot of housing going over to um those types of you know the visitor

Market because they pay more money and of course we have predominance of Tourism uh based or tourism-centered functions in the shops sell souvenirs they don’t sell you milk or bread um they sell you um things that you know t-shirts um and the rest of it so communities of this

Place they’re both physically displaced in terms that they can no longer afford sometimes to live in the places um that they live in but they’re also displaced from the facilities they enjoyed in their own neighborhood the services and the social networks um with whom they were who they

Collaborated who was part of their sort of support network if you like so that bearing in mind also um these these impacts let’s go back to why place is so important um for communities and I’m I’m using the word Community very very Loosely here there is no one Community it’s actually very

Heterogeneous very things are also very fluid but a place and particularly Place attachment can bring a sense of identity you’re from that place you’ve lived in that place all your life or you’ve come to live in it you’ve come to select it you have an attachment to it your

Partner might be from that place you belong to it you have this feeling of belonging and that belonging is not just a physical belonging to an architecture but it’s also a very um it’s an emotional attachment a psychological attachment of feeling you’re welcome in that place people create social networks

Um and we know how important social networks are um in terms of resilience and resilience planning in in sustainability um and these are sort of informal and formal support system that are formal systems made up of various agencies that operate in a city um from Grassroots up to sort of more

Municipal Arrangements but also just informal neighborly attachments it might be extended family and and the ability to live in close proximity to your family that create strong social networks and also it’s it’s also also about cultural identity and somehow historic buildings cultural heritage creates a receptacle onto which our

Cultural identity is portrayed and here I think again it’s worth understanding that these are not necessarily communities that might live in a place anymore but still feel they have cultural identity and cultural links to a place that maybe their ancestors came from we’re talking about diaspora communities who still feel

Attached to the Homeland um in recent research we’ve seen three or four generations down still feel an attachment to towns historic towns that their grandparents and great-grandparents went came from and they felt a stronger affinity and identity to those towns than to actually where they were living today so I think

You’ve sort of really got to see this big picture of of how people can feel attached um to sort of the lived-in Heritage the the Urban Heritage almost of the everyday and less than immoral and I think you know theoretically in sort of just touching on the theory a bit we talk

About the right to the city um this was first introduced by Henry LeFevre in 1968 and it’s evolved I’m not not saying this is the theory that that’s uh that still holds and and he he evolved it himself as well but what does it mean to have a right to the city it’s

About having access to basic services that every citizen has access to basic services like water education um shelter and so on but they also have a and I think these are the two most important points of this that we’re seeing um particularly in the cultural heritage and in the interpretation

Framework is that having the right to the space in the city those social spaces the informal spaces those shared spaces that everyone has a right not only to physically access them but to feel socially welcome in them that they’re not marginalized um from them and the fact that they should have a

Right to have a voice in the city that their voice is heard and listened to and this isn’t just the Democratic voice it’s about a voice that helps shape the future of the place um and and this doesn’t need with City it doesn’t need to be the entire city

It’s probably looking at it again at that neighborhood level that District um level and and how that right might emerge um as a as a cultural expression having local businesses for example having a space um for local businesses um to food stalls other stores this is Brixton in London where

Um at one point before it all got gentrified local uh the big Caribbean Community immigrant community and and they had were given subsidized spaces in a derelict or uh shopping mall or that was sort of had seen better days and that really revived the place but it

Enabled them to have Caribbean foods and other goods and sort of created that cultural meaning and a sense of belonging to that neighborhood and again creative spaces I know we don’t always like graffiti but it can actually be a very creative activity or warm murals is an expression of some parts and groups

Of a community and I think you know things like these murals they can also be a form of interpretation and that not all the interpretation happens in in neat boards and managed narrative this is also an expression of how people engage with the city how they feel about

It and how they express themselves and how they have a voice in the place in which they live um so what can Heritage interpretation do how can it help you know how can we work with communities uh and enable them to have a voice um in Heritage interpretation

To start with i we have to accept that communities are multiple um that they are complex they might have different ethnic groups different religious groups different there’ll be economic divides there’ll be generational divides and also remember they will be fluid they will be dynamic they’re not static they’re constantly moving constantly changing

Um and so forth so we don’t have one single Community we never do people have multiple associations to the place it might be very present it might be about the past um it might be that they are diaspora communities so they’re not actually there but they still feel a strong attachment

Um to a place and as a result they will have multiple narratives they will have multiple stories and different multiple ways of expressing themselves how a young person expresses themselves how um an older person how different genders they will each Express themselves in very different ways and will want to be

Heard in very different ways there isn’t a one-size-fits-all um that we we reach out but what if we reach out if we engage if we bring people on board what do they get out of it it enhances their sense of belonging to the place it enhances their right to the

City that they feel part of this community um and it improves their understanding and appreciation of the Heritage but it also means that their voice they are represented in that Heritage and this is the notion of co-creation of knowledge co-creation isn’t just an act of you know let’s all work together and build

Some you know artwork or I’m expressing it is much deeper than that that the understanding of the place is developed collectively and of course through these activities through the sort of processes of Engagement um it can support social networking it can improve social networking I’ve seen this on projects where we bring together

People who we think should know each other who we think are associated with one another and yet they haven’t really had that chance um to work together and seeing them building stronger networks um is is all it’s all really um positive and then again I don’t want to go into

The sort of processes of how do you engage um and and engagement shouldn’t just be about we’re doing an interpretation plan we’re going to engage engagement needs to be something bigger that looks at all Urban issues or all issues of the neighborhood and Heritage interpretation might be one of those but it enables

It’s only by meeting people by engaging with people on a long-term basis do you create trust so if again in terms of Engagement when you look at your Gatekeepers when you look at the people you’re working with the p the groups or the ngos or the the local leaders that

People will turn to are ones they’ve already built trust with sometimes over 10 20 years so I think important it’s really important to recognize that engagement doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t deliver results overnight either it depends on long-built trust so why not use those trust networks either

Use existing networks and build on them or if there aren’t existing networks use this is your starting point but use it for something um larger and you know move away from sort of very classic ways of of Engagement and and workshops and looking more at principles of things like social

Learning and which are sort of the basis of co-creation uh more than sort of ones that are just informative and and sort of with a very strong end game um don’t look at the end product look at that sort of learning that will lead us somewhere but we don’t even know what

That is um but you know going back to sustainability going back to sdgs at the bottom of it all lies social Equity is one of those three pillars and for anything to happen to any form of Engagement if you want engagement I think this got mentioned in some of the

Morning sessions as well about Mexico you’ve got to deliver on social equity equality and give it um you know off and on projects when I’ve worked on management plans in various parts of the world you know the big issue for local communities is is some thing that’s not been delivered

They don’t have access to water or they feel there’s unequal division of benefits from tourism for example and that might be real it might be perceived most often it is real so you’ve got to deliver on social Equity so quite often we’ve we’ve tapped into the higher organizations say until we

Solve this this discrepancy we’re not going to get down to Heritage management because that will linger that will will stay on So You Know underpin it all with that there is there are systems and there are people who can make those changes they might not be the Heritage management teams but there are

People out there and recognize this is not an end product but actually a starting point um for things to happen and we talk about disruptors in tourism Airbnb Uber you know they come in they disrupt the market but for every International global um disrupt there are also local enablers

I call them people who make a difference locally who set up local businesses Enterprises um you know the guided tours with the tourists you know there are all these little actions that happen um the small enablers who only use local products or promote local Agriculture

And so on so support them and help them deliver rather than supporting some of the bigger players support the small enablers because they will open doors and they will lead to other people and other things that’s happening so if we look at resilience planning and I know Rohit will probably um

Talk a bit more about this um going forward but you know his neighborhood is the smallest level in resilience planning it’s it’s sort of stacked on the smallest level is the neighborhood and historic neighborhoods are sometimes at a disadvantage because they don’t have all of the infrastructure that the big

Modern city might have but on the other hand they have lots of advantages when it comes to resilience they have good adaptive capacity they’ve survived before they can probably survive again they’ve been through many cycles of disasters and various events so they have familiarized responses to it they offer different Dynamics

Um that that you know variety can be a good thing in in terms in times of a disaster or you know when you’re up against something to have diversity is often on your side if it’s often helpful because there’s an alternative and on offer they’re often established Community organizations that have

Built-in trust and they have strong social networks and again for in terms of disaster disaster management these are really important caveats these are the sort of benchmarks that are being sought so a lot of these places straight neighbors already have this so can we build on them um and and help with

With resilience planning too so it all it all links in it’s not separate things um and sustainability and and interpretation actually go hand in hand and are all part of it but what I want to turn you know turn on its head is that it shouldn’t be that we use

Heritage interpretation and engagement to improve sustainability um and that that informs them we help people understand and make them more resilient why don’t we use Heritage interpretation as that tool for engagement so start with it you know use the fact that you’re talking about the Heritage that you’re understanding the neighborhood

That you’re building trust so Heritage interpretation rather than a product actually becomes the start of a process that builds strength that brings local people on board so it becomes one and all um and you start from the local perspective and you build it up wherever it goes wherever it takes you

Um and that in turn will help improve resilience um support sustainability and all the rest of it will come and I think we talk about in tourism we always talk about if it works for the locals it will work for tourists rather than planning for tourism first you know like bus services

Make it work for the locals tourists can use it as well with an added layer you can make that work and I think you could say the same thing about interpretation if you get it right for the locals if you get that expression right from the local perspective the tourism one will

Follow and will probably be richer for it so that’s I’m going to leave you but thank you very much for your time [Applause] thank you Eileen you have beautifully explained about the Paradox uh that tourism sometimes forgets and overlooks the community around the Heritage and the importance of the Heritage

Interpretation for the social inclusion and equity and urban resilience our second presenter was a Rohit but I think he’s still preparing for the connection to the zoom so I would like to welcome Professor Peter Stone the professor of Newcastle University in unuke and the president of Blue Shield International

He’s also working at the chair of UNESCO cultural properties protection and peace committee Peter thank you thank you very much so um thank you for the invitation to come uh thank you also for letting me speaking English the only language I could actually present in so that’s lucky

Um I’m going to not really talk much about Heritage interpretation in armed conflict because it’s almost an impossible thing to achieve but I’ll talk a little bit about why I think about that and how we go to things um in the in the next few minutes what I do

Want to talk about though is two key messages firstly that Heritage interpretation and protection are heavily intertwined and really must be regarded as peacetime activities if you leave them until there’s a problem it’s almost too late but you have to prepare for the worst and that if implemented in peacetime Heritage interpretation and

Protection can help deliver the sdgs so those are the two key messages and you can all now go back to sleep after such a large lunch but how does it impact on Heritage on conflict that is and we all know and just three quick examples the BAM and Buddhas okay before and after

The Bridget mostar actually after in this scene um in this image um the bridge having been rebuilt and of course neither of these were identified by UNESCO as world heritage sites until they were destroyed and there’s a question mark in my mind and an implication around that that we need to

Think about a little bit more um and then of course the one that we don’t really know much is what is going to happen um Palmyra because it’s still in the middle of a conflict area and there are all sorts of attempts of reconstruction already about Palmyra but

What’s actually going to happen on site when and there will be a when um that conflict um finishes so all sorts of issues that we need to think about in terms of that damage to destruct of cultural heritage during conflict and how we interpret it

But what I’d like to do before I go into the present or the future is take us back in time a little bit to the period immediately following the second world war and um what you had at that point was um failure twice the royal families of Europe had failed

To stop the first world war and as a result as a price for that most of them were taken out of control of their countries okay so the first world war failed to be stopped by those in charge so the International Community got together and created something called

The League of Nations to replace those royal families very simplistically and equally simplistically the League of Nations was based on economics and politics and that was supposed to keep world peace to stop another conflict like the first world war well that didn’t do very well in uh in looking

Back in time because of course the second world war arrived pretty soon after the first and at the end of that the International Community got together again and said okay the League of Nations didn’t work so we’re going to create something bigger and better that will work this time but the thing that

We’re going to add to the United Nations is this concept of Humanity’s moral and intellectual solidarity and through the un’s cultural agency or educational scientific and cultural agency that was going to deliver through education science and culture together with politics and economics world peace that was the aspiration at the end of

The second World War and it was an aspiration caught up in all sorts of things that finished or that um happened at the end of that war so for the first time in the Nuremberg trials senior politicians and Military Officers who had been on the losing side were

Prosecuted for crimes and convicted for crimes against cultural property also for many much more heinous crimes but crimes for cultural property were there in 45 and 46 in the Nuremberg trials article 27 of the universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 emphasizes everybody’s right to accessing that culture and understanding

Of the pastor Eileen has just been talking about what’s the most interesting from this point of view is the 1948 genocide convention genocide was a word that didn’t exist in language until it was created in the 1930s by a polish jew called Raphael lemkin and lemkin’s whole interest in genocide came not from

The second world war but from the Armenian genocide in the first World War he managed to get out of Europe and out of Poland just in time before um the rest of his family were exterminated in the camps um and was in America when he drafted the genocide convention after making the

Word genocide up and in lemkin’s first draft and following drafts of the convention it had two forms of genocide barbarism and vandalism barbarism the genocide against people vandalism which frequently came before barbarism genocide against their cultural property in the language of the time it was only in the final conference

Before the final text of the um convention was agreed that that second chapter that second concept of vandalism was taken out of the convention by a vote of 25 to 16 with I think six abstentions um by the insistence of the so-called settler communities the U.S Canada Australia New Zealand supported by many

Of the ex-colonial powers because they thought that the genocide convention would and could be used against their treatment of indigenous communities at the time so that but that concept that lemkin was talking about permeates all of those things and it permeated the uh convention that I deal most with the

1954 hay convention on the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict and its two protocols but the interesting thing about um The Hague convention is that those who drafted it expected a and I quote Red Cross for cultural property to be created at the

Same time as the convention and they um expected that to be called something called the blue and white Shield as you can for reasons that are fairly obvious um down at the bottom right of the slide but that didn’t happen that organization wasn’t created in

1954 and I’ll come back to that in a moment but let’s just nip back to world heritage sites for a moment and think about the interpretation of them because the two things to me are very heavily interrelated and those two things just to make clear are the protection of

People and the protection of their Heritage and the protection of their Heritage and the interpretation of their Heritage okay so to a world heritage site that I know well because I live this bit of the wall is about three miles from my front door and

Um I also was the chairman of the walls managing plan committee for seven years um some years ago now but the interpretation of Hadrian’s Wall was entirely about the Roman army the Roman Frontier and the Roman Empire the only reason you knew you were at one particular site that interpreted the wall

Um was the balance of those they was more about the Army here and it was less about the Army there it was entirely interpretation about the past about history nothing about its contemporary or future relevance nothing or almost nothing if I’m being overly kind about UNESCO about unesco’s primary objective

The creation of World Peace about world heritage or about how you might be able to combine world heritage and unesco’s primary objective peace and world heritage sites nothing a point we’ll come back to but and I’m going to gallop through this because Eileen said it all why is

Cultural property important it gives us that sense of place identity belonging dignity well-being and it should therefore be moving over back to my um Blue Shield uh mentality a key part of the thinking of three different sectors the Heritage humanitarian and what we call the uniform sector so not

Just the Armed Forces but border control Customs police emergency services and if we do that if we have that package of ideas in one place we begin to enable the creation or the maintenance of healthy peaceful stable sustainable communities and that’s what we should be looking for

But in 2003 when I first got involved in this work neither the military or the uniformed or the humanitarian sector wanted anything to do with the protection of cultural heritage in Iraq that was nothing to do with them there was also limited but extremely hostile opposition for those Heritage

People who did try and do protection in terms of Iraq um because we were working with um the satanic uh forces of Western imperialism and the military so the Blue Shield arrived 42 years late when it was created in 1996 by four Heritage organizations it is an international organization created under Dutch law

Dedicated to the protection of heritage following conflicts and disasters but has only really become effective since about 2014 um when there became a small bit of funding available for a tiny Secretariat through funding through my University it comprises those founding for organizations and now 30 National committees with another 15 under preparation who

Together vote in an elected board and a president and for some deaf reason they elected me president um three years ago or two and a half years ago and we envisage that as a triangle set within a circle okay and so the triangle has all good self-respecting triangles

Has three points and those three points are those three sectors Heritage humanitarian and uniformed and as put to me by an American Colonel um nearly a year ago now he said oh I get it sir the space within the triangle is where there are no stupid questions because we all start in completely

Different places those three sectors but we all have one aspiration uh together as a goal and in Blue Shield language that’s the maintenance or creation of those healthy peaceful stable sustainable communities because once you have those the Armed Forces can go home the humanitarians can go home

And the Heritage sector can get on with whatever the Heritage sector get on with and that goes back to normality and and stability and with those communities you build the same level or the higher level of healthy peaceful stable sustainable societies which is a step towards that um end goal of Global Peace

But impacting on the work of that triangle is the political context which can be benign or absolutely not benign the legal context increasingly important the media context and of course down at the bottom those communities that we do all of this work for so to try and address well I was asked

To address about this Heritage interpretation in armed conflict it’s almost impossible to do it because you’re in the middle of a conflict okay it’s primarily a peacetime activity which should if done well help mitigate the need for any conflict but we mustn’t forget of course that Heritage interpretation not only identifies Who belongs

And who is included but who does not belong and who is excluded and so that goes back to the political context in the broader circle of the Blue Shield should we think of a different interpretation for Heritage sites in peace time and then armed conflict should we can we

Perhaps not but one I would leave on um for discussion but world heritage education sorry interpretation should surely contribute to that goal of UNESCO and that’s something that Arena book of are the last DG and the current DG got um very clearly culture stands on the front line of conflict

Um Irina wrote in 2015 or said um should be at the front line of Peace building and I apologize I should have told you about this slide I forgot but this is not a very nice slide but it’s not a very nice topic that we’re talking about

We’re talking about arm conflict okay so this is the village of brocco in former Yugoslavia which brings all of this together in one trench okay and that trench was dug by a large JCB um you can see in the background and the population of that Village brocco were

Taken to the side of the trench and machine gunned into the trench okay the trench though was not then filled up with the Earth taken out of the trench to create the trench it was filled up with the destroyed Rubble of the mosque of the village of brocco so burying

Out of play out of sight out of mind not only the people but their tangible Heritage okay and in that they not the perpetrators not only knocked the mosque down but they took it to what archaeologists would say natural so there was no chance for an archaeologist

To go there in five days five months five years 500 years and say yes there is a ground plan of a mosque here there must have been a mosque here at some point in the past no chance of doing that you can’t get a clearer understanding of those that relationship between there

You can’t get a clearer understanding of the same relationship between the way that the so-called Islamic State persecuted the yazidi destroying their churches and shrines and killing their people and most recently the international office of sorry international organization and migration did a survey on rohingya refugees coming out into the

Refugee camps outside Myanmar and when the iom asked about what was the most what were the important things that were impacting on the mental health of the people in the camps 73 of them said the most important thing that was undermining their mental health was the loss of their tangible and

Intangible Heritage 73 percent of them and so for the first time ever the iom have started building cultural centers in those refugee camps and it led to the complete change of thinking in the icrc um not the uh work with our anger but this whole package um where in 2003 the icrc international

Committee of the Red Cross wanted nothing to do with protection of Heritage 2020 Eve Decor then the director General um says as you can read the protecting cultural property and cultural heritage against the devastating effects of War unfortunately remains a humanitarian imperative today perhaps more than ever so to interpret during conflict is

Extremely difficult you have to plan in peace time okay um protection in conflict is extremely difficult but there are examples where this has been done very well one of them is in 1917 when the British depending on your point of view occupied liberated or conquered Jerusalem okay and the British government the political

Entity behind this um were very worried about the predominantly Islamic population of Jerusalem causing problems for the military occupation and essentially fighting it either by words or deeds and so the first thing they got the field Marshal in charge to do was not to go into Jerusalem in his armored car on his

Horse but to walk in showing that he came as a friend but then the second thing they did was the next day um he issued a proclamation written weeks before in London for him um so planning um but that Proclamation stating that all of these shrines and religious

Places of all three of the major religions would be protected by Alan Biz men and then that really good bit of um cultural property protection was turned into brilliant cultural property protection by somebody on his staff because they used troops from Muslim battalions of the Indian army under allenby’s control to protect all

Of the Islamic sites and with that one decision there was no opposition from the majority Islamic population while the military occupation took place it when the politicians took over in charge completely different story but when the troops were in in charge nothing and you probably can’t see but the soldiers in

This image are all Muslim troops from the Indian army so how do we put all of this together um UNESCO has Global priorities it has themes one of the things that you will miss from those is the word peace it has six cultural conventions

Um if I had time I would be mean to you and ask you how many of those mentioned the word peace we don’t have time so very simply one of them does only one of the six conventions why does an international organization that was created for World Peace allow

Five of its conventions not to mention the most important word in its lexicon it’s the 2005 cultural diversity one that does mention it as one of nine objectives and only in that and a culture of Peace at the end of that objective okay so it’s not a

Very central part of even the 2005 convention the world heritage convention which of course doesn’t mention it at all is unesco’s most successful convention my argument that I’ve been trying to bash on about for about the last decade or more um is why aren’t those 1154 now world heritage sites

1154 ambassadors for peace for UNESCO but that missing idea through the whole package there is no mention of it in the nomination process before that in the tentative planning in the management plan process in the operational guidance and there’s no real mention of it in the delivery of um unesco’s top level thinking

One exception 1998 World Heritage in young hands was created as a or started in 95 published in 98 this world heritage in young hands kit now it’s still available now translated into I think 32 languages um criminally out of date and desperately in need of revision but

It does have one of its four key chapters completely related to world heritage and a culture of peace so we’ve already had this paraphrased um in an earlier uh presentation but taking the words of President Kennedy and changing them slightly that’s not what UNESCO can do for you as world

Heritage experts but what you can do for UNESCO and in particular management site people so back to Adrian’s wall Roman army Roman Frontier and um Roman Empire it took me most of seven years to convince one site along the wall to add a different flavor of interpretation to

Their work and Tully House museum in Carlisle they agreed to take one wall of a new gallery on Roman on those three topics of the wall and call it the living wall and they look go through um 15 world heritage sites from around the world I think and look at them across

The globe across history and ask the simple question do these things ever deliver what the um people who ask them to be built want and the answer to that is it doesn’t really matter because what it’s doing is it’s addressing Freeman tilden’s to me key issue provocation it is making the visitor

Think and at the end of the first week without paying the person who wrote this um the one of those visitors wrote this I’ve been visiting Hadrian’s Wall for 30 years I had never he underlined it three times um thought about it before okay and that’s what surely we should be getting

All world heritage sites to do it’s not a direct you can have world heritage and peace um if you do this it’s provoking people to think about Heritage sites and about the past and about the present and about the future I’m going to gallop through these they

Can be made available if anybody wants to go through them but we’ve been doing we had a project all lined up before covid um and the based on an initial research project looking at a Desktop review um we’ve just completed one for natural and mixed sites of all of those now 11 1154

Um 100 only 160 of them referenced peace typically within the attributes and statements only 16 acknowledged unesco’s founding objective and six of those um in the UK so we started after covid a small research project interviewing 16 out of the 33 UK sites um asking what they were doing about

That what was stopping them doing work about world heritage and peace and what might help them get over that very little is being done even of the ones that pushed peace in their work um several sites are talking about things in a slightly different way which could

Encompass the same but there is great interest in thinking about how they could implement it further but the barriers there is no push for UNESCO if only UNESCO said this is what you should be doing they’d do it but UNESCO doesn’t they’re not sure what the promotion of

Peace means in the context of their particular site something that they we could help them with there are no examples of good practice but one of the biggest issues that they came up with is why should we what’s in it for us why should we spend time and effort and

Energy doing this when UNESCO don’t tell us we have to when it’s not in any of the policy or other instruments that we have to jump through those hurdles to get world heritage status and why should we do that when we haven’t got enough resources to do the other stuff that

UNESCO insists that we do do so we’re in the middle of a a nut the next phase of this project um we started off at the beginning of the year with a initial Workshop um we’ve provided support material for presentations for websites Etc and we’re now in the phase of

Um those 16 sites trying out how they could use their site to put across ideas about peace and we have got the final Workshop plan for March of next year and then we’ll be doing a publication and a report and then the aspiration is to develop a an

International Project based on all of those results and I couldn’t help but think of a better place than doing that but through that here in Korea links to the sdgs there are loads um I’m not going to go through them because I’m being looked at already for

Nearly being at the end of my time but um they’re there the links are clear and there so do they does interpretation at unesco’s sites the world heritage sites contribute I think the answer is no could it absolutely will it it’s down to the sites it’s down to the center

Would you like to pick it up as a project thank you very much for listening [Applause] thank you thank you Peter you have raised very important question why the piece is not the top priority of the UNESCO world heritage program and how extremely difficult it is to have a

Heritage interpretation in the time of the conflict I think now Rohit is connected to uh the zoom so I would like to welcome Dr Rohit jigasu who is the project manager of the climate change disaster risk management of icram as the next presenter Rohit is a conservation

Architect from India and served as an executive of eCommerce for several years uh Rohit are you there uh yes I’m very much there good please go on thank you right thank you so much for inviting me uh it’s a real pleasure for me to join this forum

And uh present uh on the topic of uh Heritage interpretation in relation to climate resilience so uh we all know what climate change is uh doing uh the projected uh see the temperature and precipitation um fluctuation is really a cause of concern we have enough data to show how

The average surface temperature has risen in the past and where we are projected to go in the future uh even the average precipitation as you can see here is really uh changing uh also what we have to understand is that the climate change is not really something

That is witnessed in the same uh way around the world there is Extreme variability in the impact of climate change from uh from one place to the other and especially cities are much more being impacted by climate change and on the other hand they also have a

Impact on the climate change so I mean uh we have to keep that in mind as we understand climate change phenomena uh greenhouse gas emissions have also been really On The Rise and we know that ozone layer has been depleted uh quite substantially and we are if we don’t do

Anything uh if we don’t meet the target set up by the Paris agreement uh we are doomed as has been pointed out very clearly by the scientists and as this graph shows that if we are even trying to do start to do things uh uh we are

Not going to really stop the pattern or the changes from uh from we cannot stop them but we can just arrest them a little bit but if we don’t do anything you can see where the red line in the left graph goes so we are extremely in a

Very vulnerable position at the moment which also means that we are increasingly increasingly witnessing uh extreme climate related uh disasters uh and this is just uh statistics from 1990 to 2016 which shows how the number of droughts floods uh storms extreme temperature events heavily increased uh

In the past few decades and now climate change is not just a guessing game it is just something that we already know is happening and we have enough evidence to show how it is impacting uh us um and how it is likely to impact us in the future

So in terms of world heritage climate change is actually one of the single greatest threat uh to all kinds of Heritage and especially I would start with natural world heritage properties and we know that uh that the kind of uh threats that we’ve witnessed for World heated properties uh

Compared to alien species and tourism visitation is in fact uh more so we we know that this is one of the major factors now that is impacting uh World natural heritage science uh as I mentioned before climate change impacts are widespread and diverse and here you can see how various Heritage

Sites are being impacted so as you see here most of them 60 of them uh and now again I’m talking about uh natural heritage sites are impacted by current temperature changes while there are also impacts on such as uh shifting of habitat or flooding or droughts or chemical changes in Oceanic Waters or

Desertification climate change impacts are affecting all kinds of ecosystems and here is the classification being done by ICN to really understand how mangroves uh which are actually at the highest level of vulnerability to climate change are are there with the comparison to uh tundra or deserts or temperate grasslands Savannahs and shrublands

Um flooded uh grasslands or tropical tropical dry broadly forests and other kinds of typologies of natural world heritage properties so we need to kind of understand how the impacts are also kind of different in terms of the the negative impact on the ecosystems of these sites now moving to World cultural

Heritage properties we also know what has been impact the impact uh very recently we had devastating floods in Pakistan and uh several world heritage properties and this one which is very important uh property uh because it is one of the symbols of Indus Valley Civilization mohenjo daro has been

Really affected adversely because of the floods uh so the climate change is not just uh leading us to um increased frequency of rainfall but it the intensity of the rainfall is also much higher which means that a lot of amount of water comes in a very limited

Amount of time and doesn’t find a way to um to really dissipate or to spread itself with the result that water is stagnant in these sites for many uh weeks and causing a lot of damage to the material of these properties uh only last year we had floods in

Germany and in Belgium and many historic settlements uh were very much impacted again because many of these historic cities and now I talk about world historic World hated cities where the drainage and infrastructure is a huge problem and with this High rainfall in a very limited time period uh we have a

Huge problem of really uh being able to uh to enable the drainage of water in a very short period of time now many of our heritage sites which are archaeological in nature are now finding themselves at high risk especially if they are in the middle of the Contemporary Urban environment this is

One of the uh archaeological site of Badin in the middle of Hanoi Vietnam and again we find that it’s not only the problem of flooding which is a huge issue but also the higher precipitation and causing humidity conditions so the changes in the precipitation or fluctuations in precipitation and

Temperature are posing extreme threat to the material fabric of these archaeological sites which are already fragile now coming to the other kind of impact we see uh is due to forest fires uh where uh many of the natural properties like Rocky Mountains in Canada and even cultural world heritage properties such

As barcelon in Greece where earlier this year there was a huge risk of these being threatened because of the forest fires that had happened around these this site so sometimes it’s not only the question of the site itself at risk uh by the kind of changes or uh the the

Phenomena happening within the property limits but it’s also what’s happening in the buffer and in the surrounding context which is uh actually creating risk to many of the world haters properties uh so we need to kind of again look at uh natural properties and cultural properties sometimes uh not separately

But as together and see how uh they are being affected because of climate change now the fact other thing that we have to also keep in mind is that the nature of materials um and uh construction systems are sometimes now at high vulnerability because a changing environmental conditions for example in this case

Adobe construction is no longer able to really withstand the higher uh you know uh amount of rainfall and rather cloudbursts because this climate originally was much more dry in nature so Adobe construction had evolved in this area because uh it was a very unique climatic condition where microclimatic condition uh where this

Construction could really perform very well but again now with the changing condition we if we find that these kind of adobe constructions are washed away are damaged also we find that there are new kind of Hazards emerging in many of these sites for example areas where there were no termites or

Insects of certain kind uh were not are now seen because of the very fact that there is higher humidity conditions so again we also find that uh we we are we are vulnerable the sites are vulnerable to new hazards where these were not there before now uh slow and Progressive

Risks were always there and are going to be there but the the what is of concern to us right now is that there are the the rate of deterioration or the rate of the is accelerated which means that if there is erosion the erosion was always

Happening but the the rate of uh erosion in many of these properties is accelerating exponentially uh which is again a huge issue uh because we cannot really see it as as at the same rate as there used to be before um so the other thing that I would like

To mention here is the cumulative impact of various hazards coming together when climate change for example in this case uh World hated Stone town of Zanzibar in Tanzania has this combination of Hazards one line on one hand is a sea level rise but on the other hand we also have a

Challenge of cyclones which are increasing in in their frequency and intensity uh and then higher rates of flooding because of these Cyclones uh accompanied by many times fire uh because of heavy winds so one can understand that the desire the events which are resulting are really more complex now when climate change is

Really combining with many other factors or many other hazards and and creating the devastation and devastating impact on heritage now just to uh come to the impact understanding not from the scientific scientific point of view because here now we are also talking about uh understanding climate change and world heritage from interpretation perspective

Uh we also need to understand how uh site managers who are the key stakeholders of these properties how they witness or how they understand the impact of World Heritage properties so again I am coming to the question of interpretation uh interpretation is important because it’s not only the scientific uh perspective which is

Important obviously based on the evidence but also the uh what we get from the perspective or from the experience of the key stakeholders at the site including site managers so this was a online consultation that was done uh in 2019 and 20 uh as a form of a

Survey to prepare for the drafting of the climate change policy which has been revised now it is still stuck because of many political reasons but anyways uh the the important thing I want to mention here is the fact that climate related impacts uh have to be also understood from the perspective of

Um from the site managers who are not just seeing the direct impacts like uh sea level rise or high temperature or flooding but they are more concerned about the impacts in terms of increased costs of property maintenance or management or the direct damage to the historic Bill Fabric or the landscape

Features or the impact on tourism which is really not a direct impact but it’s a very high indirect impact resulting from climate change again the impacts on biodiversity uh impacts on local communities especially indigenous peoples um the water shortages that are being seen and then the loss and degradation

Of intangible Heritage again uh now we know that there is much broader range of impacts than just what we can understand directly uh in terms of the impacts on the physical Fabric and as has also been mentioned by other site managers in this survey economic losses including poverty hunger of associated communities the

Force migration or displacement of people are the diminished capacity to address development needs of the local communities and very importantly relation to the Past speaker the previous speaker I would also say that the relationship to conflict and violence is also to be recognized so we have many kinds of connections of

Climate change and uh we have to also understand as I mentioned before that the damages to these world heritage properties are significant but there is going to be higher frequency and severity of these kind of disasters related to climate change in the future uh so what does it

Mean it means that we cannot only rely on the data from the past to tell us what’s going to happen in the future uh yes past data of events that have happened can give us an indication that what is likely to happen but we are now witnessing a huge Black Swan effect

Which means that these events are highly unlikely to happen but would have severe consequences if they happen so very a case that we which is very easy to cite now is uh covid-19 pandemic which we had not expected to the to the extent it happened but then suddenly we were

Really caught in it and the impacts we all know what happened so uh in terms of again looking at where we are projected to move in the future it’s it’s really important for us to really say um that there are there can be many different scenarios uh you may think

That you will end up in the future in a certain um pattern or certain trajectory uh but there might be a exponential growth or a surprise Factor so you may actually end up uh in the future in us in a very different kind of uh situation and we

You cannot just rely only on what your data tells you from the from from the past that is there so uh it’s it’s uh it’s really really critical that uh unlike linear growth which results from repeatedly adding a constant exponential growth uh has to be really addressed in

Terms of repeated multiplication of a constant and uh and therefore rather than looking at it as a straight line we need to see these kind of Curves so uh that essentially means that we have to move from deductions to predictions we have to really go in a more uh modeling kind of environment

Where we are projecting different scenarios for the future uh and therefore that that is a uh that has a significant impact in my view in terms of how we look at interpretation because to assess the potential impact of climate risks on Heritage one would need to interpret available data and models

For creating future scenarios that would essentially require shift from deductive to predictive approach for risk communication and for setting the priorities so I think this is something which is really important when we have to draw the connection with Heritage interpretation the other important uh aspect is how do we interpret Heritage

If we have to really understand its relationship to climate change so what does it mean it means that we cannot or we can no longer afford to have a monument or a museum and centered approach where we have this Monument which we are calling as a pristine

Symbol or identity that we need to protect and we just fence it around and then we have no context no relationship to the context because we just want to preserve uh that peace that we have recognized as of higher importance and so we just disconnected from the larger

Context so we have to move away from that kind of uh understanding which is really separating past present and future and looking at it more in terms of the continuity of past present and future so we cannot look at it okay we are only concerned about the past and we

Separate it from the present and from the future rather we need to interpret Heritage now in terms of continuity and evaluative and evolution I think that’s another important factor that we need to recognize and of course we need to also start to recognize the heritage in terms

Of the connection it has with between tangible and intangible movable and immovable and of course natural and cultural so this is of course also has a huge impact on the way we recognize interpret Heritage and understand it with relationship to how Climate Change is Gonna impact and what we are going to

Do to address this climate change impacts and it also means that if we are looking at the build Fabric or the physical built form we have to really look at it in as as something that is intimately connected to people and to environment which are then to be addressed both in

Terms of the interlinkages between culture and nature and the ones that are dynamically in relationship to each other evolving and changing so this is another implication in terms of Heritage interpretation that I would like to hear emphasize which also means that Heritage in in terms of describing it when we start to analyze

It it has to be analyzed as a knowledge system which is geographical historical anthropological and Architectural at the same time so we cannot really separate these different knowledge systems but rather we need to interpret them in terms of the relationship with each other the other thing that I want to now come

To is how world heritage has to be now seen or interpreted as a solution for climate action uh of course it is vulnerable as I have shown you with various examples of what’s happening to our world heritage properties but then look let’s look at the other side of

Side of the coin that it is not only vulnerability but it’s also the capacity or the resilience of world heritage properties that need to be interpreted analyzed uh if we have to really uh understand how they can contribute towards actually addressing climate change impacts so uh this is just one

Example that I have picked up from iucn study where again we see that world heritage can actually contribute in terms of benefits so forests in World heated sites absorb approximately 190 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each each year and this has been kind of uh proven through all the

Kind of studies that have been done so here you can see this is a detailed study in terms of how much of the forest is there in each of the sites and that is what is actually acting as carbon sink and which is really important for addressing the

Carbon emissions that we are the impacts of which is really uh is a direct consequence of climate change it also means and I would again like to emphasize in as world heritage to looking at world heritage as a solution means that we also need to recognize traditional knowledge that is embedded

In these world heritage properties because many of this uh kind of these knowledge systems whether in terms of how these settlements have been oriented to capture maximum sunlight so that the energy demand is reduced or how these many of these settlements like the shirakawago world heritage property in

Japan have been organized to really have a relationship to their ecological system you know the way they use the materials that are locally available and in that sense reduce consumption which is really important for addressing climate change is is a key way in which world-hated properties show us the way

To address climate change to combat climate change so we need to kind of also understand how in many of these world heritage properties the way the tradition settlements have been planned even intangible activities have contributed towards towards reducing uh the expansion of these settlements Beyond certain boundaries so in this

Case uh in Kathmandu Valley the the rituals are the traditional cultural practices have actually prohibited people from expanding Beyond a certain boundary limits and in that sense they have been successful in managing uh Urban agglomeration or a urban expansion in a half Hazard manner so uh rather than seeing cultural

Heritage only as a victim of climate change there is Need for interpreting traditional knowledge for coping with the impacts of climate change and its continuous adaptation through experimentation and Innovation and I would say this as an another aspect of Heritage interpretation in relation to climate change that we have to really

Recognize and work further on in this area so the point that I also now want to come to is that of course we are all worried about climate change but we cannot address it in isolation we cannot go on talking about impacts of climate change without looking at other factors

That are combining together with climate change to have the negative uh consequences on our world heritage properties so one of the important phenomena that is having an impact is urbanization and we all know how Urban expansion is happening as I just mentioned earlier and there is going to be of course a

Consequence on many of these world heritage properties um so uh and we know that the many of the uh now world’s Urban population is actually increasing more than the rural population so this phenomena is going to increase uh in the future so while we look at the exponential changes in the

Climatic patterns we also have to understand how they are going to overlap with these exponential increase in the urban urbanization process and the the the the cumulative impact of that on the world heritage properties especially those which are located in the urban context or Urban surroundings that I

Explained in my earlier examples so unregulated sprawl which is resulting in loss of Landscapes and farmland Beyond world heritage properties is actually having a a lot of issues in terms of sustainability of voltage property so we cannot dis disconnect world heritage properties from these larger phenomena

Of urban sprawl and the changes in the land use planning there are a large amount of forested areas or agricultural lands are being changed from uh from to residential or to built areas which of course means there is a lot loss of local ecology so if there was a

Water system which was pristine had a certain uh connections to the canals and the lakes are being disturbed by the new development which is reducing these uh Lakes to just uh kind of cesspools where water is just accumulated and creates much more problems because it’s no longer connected as a system as the

Whole ecosystem has kind of been disturbed by the kind of development that has happened uh just one example of what it’s not of course a world haters property but I just wanted to illustrate that we are having these problems uh also because the development has really uh the way development is happening is

Again adding a kind of uh adding to the impacts of environmental changes so we have to see these impacts as well Transformations that have happened where traditional knowledge as in this case in Thailand in the world United Site of ayuthaya we find that the the original traditional

Houses which were on stilts in which is of course a very uh has a has evolved as that architectural typology in a very close under through a close understanding that the floods are a regular phenomena so you are living with risk you are evolved you are a traditional design uh to to accept

Floods you have adapted to that but what’s happening today is that these are being transformed as you see here into guest houses where you are turning all these uh because you want to have maximum occupancy you you of course close the ground floor and you turn them

Into like a more uh more floor area to be inhabited and of course then these are of course facing more flooding with this higher intensity rainfalls that we see the other connection between climate change is with uh of course urbanization but also epidemics and there has been

Enough evidence now there have been a lot of research being done which has actually shown that even this covid-19 pandemic has a lot to do with climate change uh so it cannot be seen only as a pandemic issue it also has to be seen in relation to environmental changes and

The climatic impacts which is actually changing how animals you know they are altering uh changing animals habitat how they live where they live who is whom is the whole kind of again a system an ecosystem of uh animal habitat has been changed and that is also uh uh has is

Creating uh along with again resulting from urbanization uh the fact that humans are more susceptible to pathogens carried by wild animals as we have now been experiencing uh over the last two three years so what does it mean in terms of conservation in relation to development

It means that we can no longer see conservation against development or development as something against conservation as has been the predominant perspective where uh where the development planners or development practitioners or agencies always see conservation as anti-development and it is the other negative perspective from the conservation side point of view it’s

Important now that we try to bring conservation and development much closer to each other to understand the relationship with them because as they have shown you through various examples uh the way development happens impacts the way we protect or preserve Heritage and therefore we definitely need to see

Conservation as a way of managing development and development has to be seen more in relation to how we deal with Heritage how we understand heritage so uh conservation goals are have to be mainstreamed into development process it cannot be seen either or or something you put against the other so we need to

Go beyond mirror protection and we need to see how Heritage can actually contribute towards sustainable development sustainable future so what does it mean in terms of Heritage interpretation it means that Heritage interpretation has a crucial role to play for contributing towards the society community and thus in achieving sustainable development goals

So one needs to really make an effort to interpret Heritage and how it achieves this larger objective it’s it’s enough to say that it is important but it is also needed to be able to interpret it for the larger audience to understand this connection which also means that the sustainable

Development agenda has to be combined together with the agenda of climate change adaptation disaster risk reduction and Heritage conservation and management and Beyond showing these four circles we need to have enough evidence and enough kind of analysis and interpretation to show how these come together uh so that we’ll raise larger

Awareness it also means that we have to not just look at disaster mitigation again there is a question in terms of interpretation that I would like to mention is how we express the vocabulary from different disciplines because Heritage conservation has a has a vocabulary which is different sometimes then the disaster risk management

Vocabulary and climate change has another one and sometimes there is so much confusion for example mitigation is understood in a in a very different way in disaster Management Field which means that we want to reduce the impact of any uh Hazard while mitigation for the climate change means that we want to

Reduce carbon emissions which are two different things but all cause called as mitigation so again the question is how interpretation can help us to bridge this Gap in vocabulary that is a huge issue if we have to bring all these different disciplines uh together and to achieve the critical challenge of

Mainstreaming Heritage for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction so if we have to really make sure that nature and culture come together at different scales and along different sectors we really need to make an effort to through inheritage interpretation to see the connections so because there is a huge problem Heritage

Sector is seen as a standalone sector where we don’t understand at the at least in the larger level how they are connected to energy Mobility Health sector education and governance uh in terms of land or water and environment infrastructure so we need to see all these connections which are critical for

Us to reduce risks and also to achieve team inter ministerial or interdepartmental collaborations because again if we don’t bridge this Gap through which is existing because of changed different perceptions understanding of vocabulary and and the way of doing governance along the ministry of environment which is normally in many countries in charge of

Climate change but has nothing to do with Ministry of Home Affairs which is responsible for disaster risk management or Ministry of culture or Urban Development so again this is something that has to be addressed as I mentioned to you before uh in terms of planning and design interventions at various

Levels from side to the region and also for bringing together top down and bottom-up approaches and I just want to very quickly mention this problem again which where I see the Heritage interpretation has a huge role to play on one hand we stock very big we are talking about the Paris agreement the

1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark back we talk about reducing carbon emissions which are huge higher level goals but we are not able to connect them to what we need to do at the site level because at the site level maybe we need to do uh things which are as simple as improving

Our maintenance or monitoring practices or developing small unique tools for assessing the climate risk assessment so how do we bridge the gap between the bottom-up approaches and the top-down approaches I think in terms of climate change and World hittish Properties there is a huge gap between this kind of

Uh discourse that happens at the top level and what we do at the at the lower level not to say that things are not happening very interesting things are happening uh though not at the appropriate amount at both the levels but there is very little connection between the two so we need to

Kind of again use Heritage interpretation as a way of connecting uh the bottom up and the top-down approaches and integrate uh adaptation and mitigation strategies in the regular Heritage management procedures I think this is the key for us because if we keep on talking big but we are not able

To influence our heritage management practices uh at the local level and at that same time connected to the policies that are existing for the city or the region where world heritage properties are located and to the to the systems for protection and management of Heritage I think the the we are not

Going to make very successful so we need to make this connection and here I would like to just come down to uh an approach that ekram in collaboration with iucn in its world heritage leadership program has been taught talking about which is a place-based approach for Heritage management which is essentially saying

That you can’t look at World Heritage Property only through its core area or the buffer area but you have to look at it Beyond its context Beyond its boundaries and look at the larger social economic geographical and environmental context because by just focusing on management within the property limits as

You designate you will not be able to really understand how we can address these huge issues of climate change that are affecting us which means that risk reduction approach needs to interpret world heritage properties beyond their designated boundaries of core and buffer zones as I mentioned considering a wider

Territory to which ouv and other Associated values of the property are rested and where risks are created if you have a dam at 50 kilometers away from the site the the what you do in terms of developing that dam is going to have an impact on your side so you can’t

Manage floods in your site without looking at the development of that huge infrastructure 50 kilometers away so there is has to be a link between where risks are created and how risks are transferred to your property having direct and indirect impacts so that’s another important thing that we need to

Really look at from the point of uh you know really using Heritage interpretation to improve management practice with the risk lens in these times of uncertainty and and focus on these issues of mitigation preparedness adaptation multi-hazard approach and building back better to reduce vulnerabilities so that’s where I feel

That the lens of resilience is very important for us to really see not only to bounce as how we were before uh but rather to reduce vulnerability and balance forwards because we cannot just go back to where we were before so this has to be a thin balance between protect

Writing ouv but at the same time reducing vulnerability and this is going to require us to really use Heritage interpretation to see how we can balance the two because that’s uh going to be important and that’s why I say reducing risks and building resilience means that

We have to interpret two sides of the same coin in a very effective manner to be able to address so I guess coming down to the volatility leadership program and just explaining uh what we are doing there in terms of various activities uh including a manual uh on managing disaster risk where climate

Change is now included as an element and also the pandemics as how they connect to disaster risks so we are trying to have a holistic perspective and also this updated manual is really advocating a place-based approach that I just uh explained it over to you and the impact assessment toolkit has already been

Published as as you know about and there are have been other other activities that are happening as part of the program including several training programs where we are now trying to connect people nature and culture in terms of using Heritage management for building resilience this was one of the

Courses we did with the Samuel spaffa in Bangkok Regional organization last year so we also need a lot of work to do to to build capacities to bring this uh this approach forward to decision makers and site managers so this was done using Brunei as a case study last year we also

Have been doing people nature culture forums again to again use this kind of uh understanding uh to really raise awareness and build capacities so uh so this is also an important way for us to develop new tools for example climate vulnerability indexes uh is a tool that has been developed and we need

To of course really update this tool make new tools which are able to really address these issues as I mentioned uh at the site level uh where site managers have to be able to also kind of participate in this issue of addressing climate change and as I mentioned earlier we also need

To make many new Publications where we need to show how traditional knowledge can contribute towards reducing climate change impacts and disaster risk reduction uh this is just one of the publication that we have just published with in collaboration with un office of disaster risk reduction where the the

What we are trying to show is not what is traditional knowledge but how traditional knowledge can be contributing to address the Contemporary challenges of disasters and climate change so I’m going to conclude uh with this another important aspect where we need to recognize the potential of Heritage for building climate resilience uh where

This potential has to be uh interpreted creatively for raising awareness among decision makers as well as communities and for developing learning resources for building the capacities of site managers of world haters properties so this is another element of interpretation for capacity building and awareness raising that I wanted to

Emphasize thank you so much foreign thank you for your rediscovery and redefinition of Heritage that it’s not a passive victim of a disaster but it can be a source of resilience against the uh crisis thank you uh now as the last presenter of the session two I would

Like to welcome Dr Aang Ming Chi the general manager of Georgetown world heritage Incorporated in Malaysia minxi will be talking about the Georgia town and Georgetown Heritage celebration which is one of the best practices for Community engagement and well-being Ming Chi are you ready you go

Okay I have a timer here so I will be on time all right um thank you to stay in the session it’s always challenging in the afternoon so my name is my surname Ming Chi it’s my first name I’m from Georgetown Penang Malaysia I’m a site managers before I start may I

Just know how many here are site managers can you raise your hand okay I’m alone good um May I know how many of you uh community communities local people okay too then the rest of you are okay no answer fine um I asked that because I want to make

It in relations uh to you so I hope my presentations will make some points um I’ve been asked to talk on Heritage interpretation and Community well-being in Georgetown Heritage City Malaysia and I’ve been thinking of like how to do it mainly we will try to stay at this four uh factors

Um we will try to I will try to explain you know when we interpret Heritage like by who for who and how I asked that question every day and I still don’t have answer because it’s they it’s very fluid you know every situations and new things keep on coming

In and it helps you to love Heritage because the job as a site managers never the same every day and that’s the beauty about Heritage and of course like we are going to bring you down south where it’s a bit warmer than here where Georgetown as a multicultural living and for Peter

Is a peaceful city as a site managers are as a web design and of course like Georgetown will Heritage Incorporated yes I know the name is long and it happened to receive a body mass my office name is there and you can Google it we are the sign managers and I will

Try to share through one of the projects we’ve been doing that’s called Georgetown holiday celebrations and maybe there are some takeaways and if I can finish on time we’re gonna see a video all right so there would be a lot of visuals um for sdg I will copy their

Visuals and you see these visuals in my PowerPoint that means they are related and for policy there’s no visual so I try to come up with my own visuals I copy from the internet so if you see this green thing is about environment you see a lot of people happy together

They are about Social Development and you’ve seen the money is for economic development and of course like you know peace is always like that so I try to relate it into my presentation so now let me bring you to Georgetown Malaysia another round of survey may I know how

Many of you been to Georgetown Malaysia raise your hand I’m also alone here don’t worry you are my potential visitors so then I can tell you whatever you know um Malacca Heritage City and Georgetown Heritage city was inscribed as a word design in 2008 7th July 2008

Um so this is a Serial site and I’m in charge of Georgetown Heritage City and together with my partner in Malacca Heritage City we we shared this name called historic cities of the streets of Malacca okay this is a pictures into our properties um when you talk about what I decide you

Have to talk about the ouv outstanding Universe values we have three first one is about Multicultural trading towns which is about 500 years that it has an imprint on architectures and urban form and technology and Monumental art don’t ask me why is it so long I’m not

Involved in the ouv writing I come in into the business after we become a world design so this is actually one of the issues that I’ve been talking about yes it’s good to be recognized as a word inside but looking into the trace a lot of people

In the my city now is talking about okay we have to save the trades but if we read the ouv very carefully it’s not about the trade itself but it’s about its imprints into our architecture in our Urban in our Technologies and in our life so I think the understanding of

Our oov and attributes is also another potential area that we have to work on the second of UV is like you know we are the living testimony on the Multicultural heritation tradition of Asia and European Colonial influences you see one here a mix of a lot of culture Siamese Chinese and Malay and

Malaysian so we are very diverse on our self itself and of course you see both tangible and intangible heritage and it’s a challenge of managing a voltage site when you have to refer into the intangible song Break like full with sometimes I look into the convention of

The ich which helped me to find some answers and the next one is I wear a mixture of influence that create a unique architecture culture and downscapes so you see a lot of ranges of Shop houses and townhouses along one street so you see that developments in the size

Across different time and different style the site is about 259 hectares the one in the red color I’m not sure how to work on this but anyway otherwise the red color is the property or we call it the core zone is about 109 hectares and then the rest of them is the buffer

Jones the management of our site we have four kinds of Heritage they are Heritage building category one has this building Category 2 modern or Heritage building replacement and their infield developments our control and management of the building itself is not about where you are it’s about what you are so

If you are important Heritage building and you are at the buffer zone we still treat you with a very uh a lot of rules and regulations and then the site this big about 5 300 buildings and we’ve we have about 9 000 residents and about 100

000 local visitors that come to the side and at the peak we have 300 000 visitors that just come for fun it’s a lot of work so the state government of Penang established Georgetown wool Heritage Incorporated gtwhi on 21st of April 2010 as the site managers we have

36 full-time positions we are still hiring go to our Facebook for more informations we can hire Koreans um we have before Kobe we have 60 projects annually and we receive about 1 million uh US dollar estimated about that but annually for our operations and projects also

This is my team we took this photo on the 7th of July this year okay now coming to the case study Georgetown Heritage salvation as you can see here is a annual project that we do we we work on this project and other projects based on these few main principles

Number one Community Based projects it’s not just any committee come in and then you are complete based but you have to really listen to them understand their View and it’s also like place-based knowledge no we want to understand what is the place all about and uh talk a lot on meaningful Community participation

And interpretations um I believe that Heritage should be made available accessible and affordable for everyone and in particular to the local people and of course I um every time you do projects money time is always Limited so I prefer to work based on people public private and professional

Partnership because even you have a lot of money you do a very successful event but if the people is not getting involved it’s the public is not getting involved it’s it’s just a beautiful show it’s not meaningful it’s not going far and nowadays um really try my best to engage the youth

And when we Define youth I would not do survey here uh it’s age 30 and below so it’s I constantly remind myself if we don’t have youth today to buy in what we do very soon no one will be taking care of the heritage so it’s a huge project

You know it’s for three days of Celebration mark your calendar uh next year it will be on 7 8 of July 2023 is a Friday and Saturday uh we start to plan the programs already um it takes out about seven months of preparations uh sometime we go up to 60 project staff

We normally will involve about 20 Partners like local Community Partners about 50 programs and normally it’s about 20 at 20 000 visitors and 80 of these visitors are local visitors now I want to read interpretations through our previous year posters so first year second year and third year

We can see it’s a bit more formal is the language of the design will tell you is a very formal celebrations um but then you start to come in on our third anniversary that is in 2011 to 12 and 13 which I understand at that time

The local Youth and the artists start to come in and give their influence into the Heritage celebrations of course I won’t go into the program because I want you to go into our website and read what did we do but you can see that you know gradually in 2014 and 15 there’s more

Cartoonists you know it’s more lively and we also work on teams during these two years I come in as a into the office as a general major in 2016 and I was trying to like Breakthrough because we do the same event every year and then

Say yeah how am I going to break through it then I start to borrow the domains from ich conventions so we start to do like the traditional Sports and games and the next year I do oral tradition and expressions and then when we are celebrating on our 10 year anniversary I

Start to want to find what is Heritage and then we our team on that year is called potentials of the past in the present and for the Futures because that is the year that we will start thinking about like you know what is the next 10 years I think that

Is also the exercise that everyone is doing this year because it’s a 50 years of the conventions do I have the answers I’m not very sure but then in 2019 we work on rituals and festive events and you know this guy or he or she and

It’s very famous is kovit so no one expect Kobe will come and that is me thinking of with my dishes and all my Macaulay and social hello what should we do with Heritage celebration so we have to call it off and start to do something it’s actually

Quite stressful for everybody but so I’m glad that you know we’re back to normal again and 2021 is even worse because you don’t know when life will be back to normal again outside waiting like okay what’s next so we did a lot of things online in 2021 and this year we were only

Receiving the information that the international borders of Malaysia will open up in May so we quickly organized a three days event um and now you start to see the logo so um most of our Georgetown Heritage salvation you’ll see some similarities number one we really promote gender

Equality and what I see now in particular from this photo up there um is a I was a lion dance uh drummers it’s all girls drummers so I was like very impressive with that I was asking their master I was like wow you have the old line dance and I said

When I was young I want to do it my mom don’t let me to do it so you see generation is moving forward so Heritage you know you can do achieve gender equality and down then there’s a photo of a lot of people with the mass these are the kids from the children

Protection Center so we created a special program for them so that we want to involve every every sectors in the in the Heritage celebrations um and all our poster we try our best to do is available in all four languages maybe in Korea when you do events it’s

Only Korean and English in my site and you cannot do like that you have to be English you have to have Malay you have to have Chinese and have to have Tamil it’s challenging but yep we can do it and the next one is I you know on the environmental sustainability which also

Involved in the climate action and the clean water and sanitation I think they are related to one another and in Malaysia where our average climate is about 32 Celsius sometimes you go up to 38 is super hot so when we do events we encourage people to bring their own

Water bottles and then what I do is like you know from down there we we only prepared this one the water as a refueler no cup no butter my first year has coated Like Hell by everyone you prepare water but there’s no cover I said bring your own cup I asked you to

Bring your own cover I’ll post it is I bring your own car and this year they bring their own cup so I think like yeah it’s successful you know then they know that you come to Heritage celebrations you should bring your own cup and the next thing is like we recycle

Most of the equipment that we use so we really try to reduce down the rubbish first of all it saves you money second of all is save the Earth it’s very difficult in particular when I insist that I don’t want to use plastic plus it’s the cheapest it’s most available

But still we are able even we use plastic my condition is like we are we must be able to recycle the plastic so I think it works so far next one is on the sdg 11 16 and 17 and also about the fostering of peace and Security in the policies these are the

Some of the logo of this year partners and I think when you work together with the community you let them understand that you respect them that sense of unity is there and we also targeted our audience you know our visitors as 80 local every year is like that so visitors from

Outside you’re welcome to come in but this year in particular we write letters to all the schools in Penang and say bring your kids out you know let them participate because I always say if you want an event to be successful attack the eight years old because eight years

Old want to come that and Mom will come if that and Mom will come Grandpa and Grandma will come and then you get five people at least to your event and yeah it was a lot of people we expected uh about 1005 and 3005 came out

So it was good I know so we have to manage the crowd um and and make sure everyone have a happy evening on that day and of course like when we talk about inclusive Economic and Development this one is something that I always think about Heritage and tourism

Do we Define it as a Heritage product or tourism product or it can be both but for me it’s like you know we have to always focus on the locals on the domestic Market first because sometimes the international visitor is a is the first to go and the last will come back

And I really hope and now working with the local communities of like you know we hope that income from the tourism industry can contribute to the Heritage conservation and management because even you talk about uh interpretation when I ask my colleagues in the tourism sectors they don’t necessarily understand you

Know the importance on Heritage interpretations because um they come in the roles of the site managers you know whom we are exposed as a frontliners to all the stakeholders whom we can deliver the message to the stakeholders and get their impacts and document it and share with more people some takeaways

Um is that you know I think build Heritage living Heritage natural heritage they are they are one they are not separated yeah it’s almost like your fingers it’s like yeah the thumbs are fingers but they are together you need them to function together as one and Heritage shall benefit the local Community First

It’s always them coming in first um I appeal to the youth because I believe that they are the Futures and when we talk about what it is conventions sdg or the sustainable development integration policies I think we have to really step out from just looking at heritage heritage

Because we are so small the market is huge the stakeholders outside have a very big impact and then we have to make ourselves relevant to them in order for the Heritage sectors to move forward and of course like resources for the site managers is needed and then I’m trying

My best to work with my other colleagues from all over the world of trying to find sustainable resources and in particular support for the works that we do one of the biggest challenges is that you know we are on the side and we always get requests and people assume that we have answers

Yesterday I was here and then I received a call from my office to say yeah someone called looking for topoe to be the fat guy uh topwin said he’s fainting in his house and need us to go and help him that’s is that the work of the assigned managers

Not necessary but you are so close to the community and we have to address on almost all the issues so I think the resources provided the site managers all in in particular from the center is really necessary for our day-to-day support yeah I always say this to make

Sure that you know we the side miragers always think that we are crazy because all the workload that we have to do but until you meet any other side Majors two crazy people together then you know that you’re not crazy anymore you’re so normal because the challenges that you face is really real

This will be my last slide um my information is here um this is me during the covet time I’m well protected and I would like to end my presentations by sharing with you the video that we have and if you need more information you can always visit our

YouTube channels and for we pick I have two books that is most related to the interpretations there’s a book on Georgetown where I decide written by my communities he have his own interpretation and stories on Georgetown you know from his point of view we are helping him to print the second Prince

Now and also we have a oral history documentation project and this book is available online on our websites so you can hear the stories of people of Georgetown and I look forward that all of you come to Georgetown one day soon and thank you very much so okay please help me to play

[Applause] [Applause] [Applause] Like the Heritage means a lot here to Mila because I’m also born in Georgetown so yeah it’s kind of like home it all brings a sense of unity brings everyone together like you can see here there are people of different race culture everywhere but everyone sits together and everybody enjoyed whatever they’re

Seeing and they’re having a good time It’s just nice to hear the whole cultural thing I think it’s a very good time to enjoy the time with my family at night very beautiful Thank you There is so many different influences you know like from India from China and from Malaysia and so so just seeing like how it’s all mixed together and how it’s also everything its own thing uh yeah I’m really Amazed by that I like I really like the music and it’s very enjoyable

Uh I’d say the variety I really love seeing all the cultures be able to self-express and I love also seeing cross-cultural sharing yeah I see a lot of participation from the crowd which was really fun I think the MC did a very good job foreign [Applause] Thank you [Applause] Foreign Foreign for your as always very fun and informative presentation uh thanks for bringing us the uh your precious expression uh experience as a site manager with a very specific examples and case studies we’re behind our schedule in the session two so we’re going to start our discussion right away so please uh

Panels on the stage please thank you very good oh okay thank you very much for your bearing with us um so we have uh listened to our very interesting for a presentations very powerful and straightforward um before we go into our discussion I would like to uh share

The very interesting results of uh the recent survey that we did recently um we asked the what’s your idea or like keyword for the 50th anniversary of the convention and more than 140 people in the Heritage area have um answer to the question so it will be

Shown on the screen so the question was in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the world heritage convention what is your keyword or idea for the next 50 and probably as you can see the bigger word is that many more people answered so um you see the words like development diversity sustainability

Inclusion and peace Community these are all words that we discussed in our session so it shows that how important your subjects are for the next 50 years for the Convention as well so my first question would be so as marking the 50th anniversary of the convention and going

Back to 10 years back to 10 years back when it was 40th anniversary of the convention we had a Kyoto Vision that says the community is important so that completed the five C’s and 10 years back one 30th Anniversary we had a Budapest declaration that that Community communication conservation capacity

Building so we it’s important so we always had the big agenda or idea to Way Forward but this year unfortunately we didn’t have our world heritage committee so we didn’t really have the talk to discuss about this issue so I would like to ask what your or keyword or idea about the world’s

Convention for the next 50 and I would like to invite the floor after uh your answer so who would like to start is that working now yes um okay we’ve in fact almost gone through this process at the University recently where we have structured a new a couple of new modules

For the Masters courses that we teach around the five C’s but we’ve added a sixth C and the six is criticality so we want the students to be critical of the five C’s and critical of UNESCO in a both positive and negative way in criticality um as to

How are they doing and my simple argument as you may have noticed is that they’re not doing very well in terms of world heritage and peace and for me the the best thing for the next 10 years is actually to put world heritage and those 1150 potential ambassadors for peace as

Really ambassadors for peace for UNESCO okay thank you very much for your answer Peter um Eileen do you want to answer next yes go follow on yes yeah okay I can probably follow on that I think you know the words have come with this capacity building whether it’s Community

Um whatever and I think I I was around at the 30th Anniversary I was around the 40th anniversary um and we can see these things are being put in practice particularly at um let me say lower levels whether it’s capacity or capacity building programs whether it’s through specific

Initiatives but it’s not really changing at the top and I think the next 10 years has to look at how the top changes um how UNESCO rethinks it’s its approaches you know when you get to the whole nomination or review processes or um missions they still always look at it

From the same lens they you know the people coming on Mission are still instructed by UNESCO to look at it through the same lens they’re not really adapting so I think you know in in resilience we talk about adaptive capacity and I think UNESCO at this point needs to actually catch up with

All these strategic games before we can start defining defining new strategic aims so implementing that the important values that we already discussed so far yes yes thank you um yes uh yeah I mean please yeah like can I add one more C to all the C’s like

I think continue with T I don’t think we need new teams like you know the the teams that we already developed for so many years is sufficient the thing is like things that we should continue we have to do it things that is not working

We have to crack it and I totally agree that you know one thousand one five one one five three four five four one one five four um and we didn’t count in the serial size that you know maybe one nomination have two sides and you have a lot of

Site managers who who are working every day to day Saturday Sunday morning and nights do take care of the size and I think one of our colleagues mentioned about I think interpretation in the operational guidelines how often is read and you go go and find out how often

Site managers is mentioned I think it’s really time to put in the the importance of people who are the Freightliners into the decisions making into the day-to-day supports and I noted on the politics of the conventions and the center must be struggling a lot but I’m also telling

You the signages also struggles a lot we we are maintaining and conserving the heritage site for the future Generations but we also need support and and the day-to-day to tell us that yes this direction yep yep you can go ahead and even just I always say like even just a

Hotline that we can cause like I’m facing some issues like can you listen to me I think that will really help you know we are not asking for more we just want to be hurt and be taken seriously although we are not the focal point but you know I think that kind of

Mentality will really need to change in order for the whole convention to move further yeah that was very uh down to earth a very practical and site manager’s perspective thank you sure of course and following on from um Arlene’s thing about the structure and and UNESCO the top has to to change

What we mustn’t forget is that UNESCO is a political organization it is driven and its agenda is a politically driven agenda by the state parties within UNESCO the Secretariat in Paris is just that it’s a Secretariat and it can’t change the way UNESCO Works UNESCO is driven by

Those State parties and that’s something that we we tend to forget um and we blame Paris or the world heritage team for not delivering properly and frequently they can’t because their hands are tied by the politics of the organization and it’s just something we we mustn’t forget

Uh yes it can be a political uh uh seed parties but we can also hope for the collective uh intellectuals role as well yes um Rohit do you want to also add a another C or any other idea I don’t want to add sleeves but I want to say that

All the Seas have to be connected with each other this is the problem right now we don’t connect communities with capacity building capacity building with communication communication with conservation and conservation credibility these cannot be seen as three five isolated seas that have to be addressed in isolation or separated from

Each other I think what we need to do is how can each of them complement the other and that’s where I would see the focus has to be because there’s a lot to be done in that domain thank you you say you didn’t want to add

Another C but it’s a connection so we have another c as well yes thank you thank you yes thank you collection is another C yes exactly yes um do you have an uh any questions or comments or uh if you have any keywords uh to want to add please yes please

Yes we have a question from the floor Yes give up one moment to get a translator thank you in some cases I don’t see a clear UNESCO guideline or standards the city of Busan is actually working very hard to list its Heritage in onto the world heritage list but we haven’t been successful the hanyang

Castle or the the walls the Tanya meaning the old capital of the Tucson Dynasty also had some difficult times the recent tragedy at itaewon also to me seems like I have been somewhat really somewhere related to the fact that we have lost a lot of our heritage

I would like to refer to the world heritage as a boat as a ship and every boat has an anchor and I believe that each City has to reorganize itself to work Under the Umbrella of world heritage so I’d like to make a suggestion I don’t

Know if you or the activities Oh but then I think he was saying that recently in Korea we had a lot of uh issues with the heritage in regard to the development and conservation and also uh for uh the um also the dissonant Heritage so he hoped that we should have

More policy regard to it so I’m sorry rohitpo that you didn’t get the translation but then yes okay yeah okay thank you any other uh idea yes uh please Professor Han yes oh my God thank you thank you and my name is Han piran I’m from econ’s career and I think I

Appreciate all the wonderful instructive presentations and I was in Melaka I’m especially interested in the Professor Eileen always his presentation Community inclusive approaches in urban Heritage interpretation you classified the players in urban Heritage markets into International disruptive Industries and local players and you mentioned that the local prayers needed to be supported and

Have more room space and considering the former the international disruptor Industries and local players are interconnected and they have different business field areas so and given the local prayers are beneficiaries of Heritage tourism why do you think the local prayers need to be supported only and have more room space

Would please have some comment the remarks to my kitchen yes local players benefit from tourism but if you look at it particularly in New Markets they don’t have the same capacity that outside players have even in somewhere like Korea a small town bigger players from bigger cities will

Come in and push out local players because they have better Market understanding more Capital more skills and so on the international players they come in they you know whether it’s hotel chains whether it’s sort of Airbnb or whatever so but the money goes out the money doesn’t stay in

Your economy the money they make go straight out whereas the locals have probably the most unique products to offer your local businesses created businesses food stalls all types of things but often don’t have the capital or the business entrepreneurship skills and you have to support them you know

Otherwise you just end up with places that are all the same they all have the same chain bakeries and coffee shops and so on so it is really important you know the out the bigger ones who come in from outside they have the support they already have the capital whereas

Um knowledge capital and financial Capital whereas your local businesses don’t necessarily and if you support them you create something that’s unique but also support social Equity social support local economy I think all these things are important otherwise they disappear um thank you if I may add to this if you

Allow uh I think a part of the reason is also because the predominant perception among decision makers is what visitors or tourists want are five star hotels uh malls or boutiques I think there’s a need to raise awareness that what visitors really appreciate is more understanding of the local context and

Experience which is more local so on one hand while we deal with this whole problem of the outside business or the economic interest to really capitalize at the expense of the local communities it’s also important to raise awareness among decision makers about the other ways in which tourism

Can be developed which is more friendly or more sensitive to local people and also that there are different ways in which it can be done and also what visitors really want because there is a big mess understanding that visitors only look for some kind of exotic experience while visitors actually

Appreciate local context and local experience much more thank you thank you yes Ming chip please I was going to ask you I I would like to continue with the momentum and I think what we do in Georgetown is we brand it we brand local Brands as an important brand we

Encourage people to go and support the local businesses and of course I when we say well it’s local you know a lot of people coming from the other states but what we mean here is like even you are not from Penang you’re not born in Britain but you love Penang you come

Here and you stay for more than five years ten years and gradually you become someone who appreciate and your money stays there that means whatever that income that you earn from the business will generate into the workers and then you support the whole ecology and I think that is more important the local

Branding during covet time we my office have a project called support local business so we actually took that opportunities to collect their information and put it on our websites so because creating a website is not expensive but maintaining your website is very expensive and since I have to do

It already so there’s no harm to add one more page of the local business so these are some of the platforms that we actually can do is not too difficult but as long as you have the passions and the mission to do it I think everyone can help the local business

Thank you very much for the capacity building and the resilience we should know what is Heritage interpretation and you all in your presentation uh talked about the Heritage interpretation and its case studies but I want a Neil tomorrow have a whole session about to discuss about the what is Heritage

Interpretation and presentation but before that I would like to share our thoughts about what is your heritage interpretation in your realm or area so how do you define it what act or process is the interpretation so probably uh Peter do you want to start because you said uh it’s almost impossible to have

It in the times of conflict right so to me the the distinction between in interpretation and presentation is fairly simple I know Neil will disagree with this and we’ll go through it for some amount of time tomorrow but um interpretation is the message that you want to put across and that message

To me should always include as a a key element the provocation of the message um and the presentation is the medium in which you package that message that’s how I would deal with it yes um Pro yes uh sujang please uh uh uh sorry did you have a question yes please

Sorry I was about to ask you uh during the dinner but uh probably because we do have the publics who are very much uh interested in the issues that probably I would like to bring out uh you probably do know the DMZ area and uh there has

Been an attempt by the Korean government 2008 I mean to to submit the dossier about the site we do have a very very different perspective about the same area between south and north and where probably we can start the interpretations on the site from the perspective of two different side of it

And you know that there must be no right answers but where could be the the balanced interpretation that we can start with um but a really good question and yes I was aware of of that sort of um potential development um let me take it away from um this the

Korean example and put it into an Irish example and in um Northern Ireland there were two communities and there still are two communities um that don’t particularly Get on um for all sorts of reasons but in the uh there was a museum created now in the

I think the 1980s it may be in the 1990s um but which had um interpretation done in two lines so you would follow either a green line or an orange line and they would be interpretations of the same event which were completely different um and the so there are mechanisms for

Doing that but the um by doing that you open the space where there may be a little bit of overlap and where it’s where that overlap is that you grab and say let’s work on that bid and the the similar things are being done in Robben Island for example

Thank you very much uh does anyone have any other questions for pizzas uh argument or no then yeah uh Eileen or aminchi or Rohit can you explain about your your definition of Heritage interpretation Rohit do you want to go first yes yeah sorry uh yes so I feel

Like uh Heritage interpretation is very important because it gives us an opportunity to have diverse ways of communication there is no one way of communication there are many different ways in which you can communicate the same thing to different audiences to communicate different messages to different audiences so I feel that

Interpretation has a huge role to play to not look at communication as a one-way one form of a message conveying a message but really uh gives the diversity to interpreting different messages and addressing the needs in a much more holistic way that would have been just possible by one single communication

Flowing in One Direction so I think that’s something I would like to add as a very important contribution that Heritage interpretation can make thank you I think that meant a communication and participation in interpreting Heritage thank you Ming Chi do you want to go next yeah for me interpretation

Is about people and when people when you talk about people people change every day so I think the importance of interpretation is more of a record of the moment and it’s good to understand at this moment how do we interpret a or b um it’s more important to have an open mind

And to understand that it’s a process and it evolved all the time because if you want to be resilient and the cases of resiliencies that I saw in Georgetown is they will evolve they will change to keep on the element of Heritage will give you the energy to evolve to change

And to keep that spirits to move forward so I think interpretation is about that thank you yes Eileen not I’m totally good but I think also to remember that things changing very very fast at the moment we’ve got this sort of um the theory of sort of overheating

That that things have happened you know and overheating not just as the Earth but also events and um various other things so interpretation in that sense is also changing the modes we use the way it’s happening it’s fluid it’s Dynamic it’s changing and I think you know something

Like Tick Tock keeps up with that not if I know much about Tick Tock but it sort of there are these other modes now constant layers of you know blogs and Vlogs and uh Instagram and sort of wall murals and you know all and they are all

Interpretation they are all parts of the community people identifying with an area whether it’s the fleeting visitor or as a long-term resident somehow making a mark somehow thinking about that Heritage and what it means to them and finding different ways in which to express that interpret it and give it meaning and I

Think it’s trying to understand and work in that environment that particularly in an urban environment but even in a more formal environment of sites and monuments you know we could no longer control the narrative but then how do we Encompass this multiple narrative and it’s constantly changing nature

Thank you so we all have different uh perspective and sense about Heritage interpretation in various uh Realms so I look forward to hearing uh about their interesting debate tomorrow about what is Heritage interpretation and presentation um we are actually behind our schedule for like 15 minutes so uh session three

Is waiting for us so I think we should wrap it up here but before ending our discussion any questions or comments okay okay sorry oh sure of course yes I feel a bit bad too I’m dragging it out um I am so don’t Kang from UNESCO we pick I just want to

Um you know bring the discussion back to the resilience because I uh throughout your presentation I think all of you talked about the the community and their beneficiary uh must be important for the the resilience of the heritage site and places that we would like to protect to and I was

Um I was wondering what would be the driving force to make their recognition through the uh make the recognition into the action by the community Through The Heritage interpretation so how can we make the community and people to actually do something for Heritage interpretation to achieve the resilience of the site

Is that clear it’s like costume clear because I think you’ve got to make it it’s the opposite it’s not you know Heritage makes a place more resilient and that’s the way to look at it rather than expecting Community to looking after Heritage to make that more

Resilient I think you need to look at it as a way of saying if we collectively protect this Heritage it also makes a more resilient community and I think look at it from that perspective and approach it in a similar fashion to what you’ve outlined but take it from the opposite direction

So you need to twist please totally echo on that because when you talk about cultural heritage it it shapes your identity it shapes of something that you believe your inner strength and I think you know once you can find that momentum actually you see individuals and groups that come together they work on

Something together not because of money not because of Fame but they do it because they believe that you know that’s their identity I think that is the the energy that I see in the Georgetown community yeah I mean I live in a very small village but there is

Um a there’s one bloke who looks into the um the history of various places in the village and he’s done a series on all of the pubs in the village um and he’s done well on people’s houses and who lived in those houses and he has the photographs of people who lived in

Those houses and at the same time the parish council is um putting uh protection um railings around the war memorial for example um and they are putting the bayonet back on the soldier on the war memorial which got broken off in the 1950s um but it’s it’s that grassroot it’s the

Immediate it’s the local population looking after in many different ways and those are just two examples their Heritage because it’s important to them it gives them going back to what um Eileen was saying earlier that sense of place identity belonging dignity Etc thank you Rohit do

You do I just wanted to play with regards to resilience one of the major issues is that resilience has become a jargon and only way we can deconstruct or break this jargon is to use Heritage interpretation to bring the real voices or the real understanding of what resilience means from people’s

Perspective because what’s happening is that we use resilience word left right and Center in every possible way is one word from one particular language which has very different meanings and understandings and I think it’s high time that we start stop misusing the word resilience because often I would say here very categorically politicians

Also misuse the word resilience I mean you can say like people of a certain city are very resilient because poor people have no other way but to suffer floods every year so they are resilient because they have no other choice so we have to also use interpretation as a way of really

Um really you know bringing out the true understanding of what resilience or not being resilient means and not leave it in the hands of you know all of the US who are kind of walking and talking and really making their use of this word in

Our own way you know what I mean so I think it’s it’s a Heritage interpretation can play a very important role to to do this in ensure this thank you so we uh talked about the future agenda of the Heritage convention and the resilience and capacity building

Thank you so much thank you Eileen Peter Ming Chi and Rohit and thank thank you everyone for your participation thank you [Applause] thank you Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Thank you Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign So now we’re going to start our session three So based on the session one and two discussing that uh some of the major uh important important major uh issues and the roles of Heritage interpretation in the session three we’re going to discuss about the roles and future

Directions of the weep picks so for our last session for today Dr Neil Silberman Dr sujang Li Professor Mario Santana Quintero Dr Valerie magar as well as Dr gamini will join the session so please kneel over to you yes yes please um we’re going to begin with

Um the this this session is really about the goals of the of uh we pick in the wepic in the uh years to come and so uh we’re going to have the definitive view from uh Dr uh Dr Sue Jung um uh Dr Sue Jung Lee who is really the

The director of of research so um right um it is the last session I mean about the presentations and probably it will be followed by the discussions which might be uh the most important for our Center to have this forum at the end uh I will try to explain to you what the

Rules that we have at the moment and what is the challenges that we have to get on for sustainable development we take only 10 minutes I will talk about interpretation and presentations in sustainable development just basic theoretical aspects and also I’m going to summarize you uh what is the opix main

Focus and functions at the moment and also the future tasks we have at the moment as you all know well and also we have Professor Silverman here from the 2008 anime Charter we have the clear definitions on interpretation and presentations and I can’t deny that we always start the definitions and the

Principles as well from this Charter but at the same time we are trying this year probably the next year and the following years we are trying to develop more ideas on the Define on the definitions and the principles of those two activities probably it can be the interpretation is

All types of intellectual and emotional activity of human beings who understand evaluate and deliver the inherent and extended values and meanings of heritage and also probably we can say that the presentation can be all types of activities of sharing the interpretive activities and content through various technical means and personal or

Impersonal forms of communications then what is the sustainable development and Heritage and their relationships and how the interpretation and presentation can be positioned in those uh Dynamics between those two first of all it should be really important for us that Heritage should be positioned as an essential resource for

Human life and probably we have to understand all together about this uh the heritage is is a kind of essential resource for maintaining our life and also to have the sustainable development at the end and secondly Heritage should be positioned as an asset shared by all communities you probably do know that we

Talked about constantly throughout today’s Forum about the communications and communities which is really important and essential element for us to connect sustainable development and the Heritage together and we truly believe I mean our Center truly believe that the probably interpretation and presentation can help and support those two things can be

Happened and at the end probably the sustainable development can be also the Heritage can can support the sustainable development at the end then what kind of activities in practice actually we can call interpretation and presentation that might be really really diverse ideas on this for example preparing dossier SOC report

Periodic report determining ouv monitoring value change all sorts of things can be the part of interpretation and also explaining ouv via photos Maps texts and drawings and sharing and Communications about those values can be also presentations as well so what we found through the walking group this year by Miss Kang that

Heritage process can be reintegrated with interpretation and presentations all the time so it’s a kind of cyclic process of doing those two things whether that is divided into two or not bearing in mind those kind of uh prerequisite conditions we focused on three main functions so that’s how we our structure has been

Divided into three at the moment of course we do have this strategic development office which can support all those kind of projects and the administrative aspects and networking as well but mainly we do have research function capacity building function And archiving functions of course research function we have divided into four at

The moment the one what we are doing tomorrow is part of the theoretical research and today we have dealt with the policy aspects so one pillar in the research office is policy aspects we are going to deal with the a thematic research and also we will deal with the

Original research as you can see in those kind of four pillars probably are they are all interconnected each other and we can’t do one without the others as well capacity building functions we will focus on on-site training and also we try to develop the curriculum for

Students and publics so we do have a kind of short-term quite clear targets at the moment thirdly we have archiving functions so we have to collect information for resource as well as this should be the participatory archiving not a kind of one way providing the resource to the

Public but it’s a kind of both way Communications to set the platform or for the archivings at the end mainly those three functions should communicate very much so that the our Center should be working as a kind of one Institute so that we have to communicate from the beginning of

Setting out the project every year or maybe short-term and long-term project we have to communicate between those three functions so that research outcome can be actually directly used for the curriculum for the capacity buildings and that also connects to the archiving at the end to do that we need to Bridging the gaps

Between Regional and international and also we have to consider about the different communities right holders and stakeholders we talked about the communities uh this uh Forum a lot but we haven’t classified what kind of communities should be involved and how they are working together in the process of interpretation and presentations

And also we should not focus on the theoretical issues actually we have to Target and we have to tackle the Practical issues as well so that actually the proposal and the inclusive interpretation and presentation can be delivered and can be practiced inside uh by the site managers and the communities

And all those kind of activities we are aiming uh at the benefiting uh to the publics and also different communities through the inclusive presentation and interpretation so that we can contribute our activities in dealing with the sustainable development at the end and those things also we do need a lot of

Communication between the regional and International probably some of you do know that we do have the fund from the Korean government and of course we can’t deny away uh from the Korean government’s request which has a quite uh difficult issues that they face with but that is the Reasoner

Issues and the Reasoner issues will be the part of the international issues so that’s why we probably should tackle the regional issues one by one but at the end it should be accumulated and working as a kind of international aspects as well we should not confine The Limited

Communities we have to extend our perspective into the broader communities and that is one way that we have to design uh in our project not only the capacity building project but also the research project so those are a lot of issues that we have today and we have to

Probably deal with in setting out our project and also the future Prospect as well we have a lot of burdens in our shoulder at the moment we do are lucky we are really lucky to have 19 staff at the moment and we will have more staff in in

Coming years but that is not a kind of a happy thing that we have we are not satisfying about what we have at the moment but more important things that uh probably what kind of aims and what kind of project that we have to design in future so that we can actually tackle

The issues through the interpretation and presentations for the sustainable development at the end so we need your voice we need your ideas so that we can have our right directions towards it thank you very much thank you thank you very much uh Dr sujang Lee I’m going to speak for just

Uh very briefly uh about a research component in the future and uh much of of what I’m going to say has has been discussed and we will con we will continue to discuss it in in the days uh the day ahead uh but I I want to ask

Some some basic questions uh about what directions the research uh should go in uh obviously it it it goes without saying that research is an important part of the connected activities uh that that Dr sujang Lee has mentioned um and uh their research is is absolutely imperative for us ever

Getting to a place where um interpretation and presentation can serve the sustainable development goals of of UNESCO whether that means the specific goals that have been outlined uh uh relating to Heritage or or raising the awareness for all the sustainable um Heritage the sustainable development

Goals now I I want to say that that whippic is really a pioneering organization in the in the fact that with a few notable exceptions most of the the studies and and discussion academic and uh practical discussion about interpretation and and presentation have been largely focused on case studies and uh

We we obviously know that in Heritage and even in more so in interpretation and presentation context is is everything so that the techniques that are described as as enormously successful in a certain case study may be completely inappropriate in another um site a world heritage site in another region um

I I want to uh Echo the the the importance of the definition uh and distinction between uh interpretation and presentation uh there have been many different uh counting of the use of the word in the world heritage convention which which actually only mentions presentation and the operational guidelines which mention

Uh both of them I am by my count there there’s some uh 25 times that uh that basically um uh presentation is mentioned and in the operational guidelines and a couple of times when interpretation is mentioned and they they both appear as as synonyms which is not entirely

Satisfactory why if they’re synonyms why why use both names as has been mentioned the uh the 2008 ecomocinomic Charter attempted to uh capture what the difference is and uh Dr Lee mentioned that interpretation seems to be a wider activity that that in fact can be accomplished by anyone at a site from an

Expert to a a child trying to interpret for herself or himself what the significance of the site is while presentation and I have to agree with uh Professor Stone here that presentation seems to be the medium uh with which the message is is brought across and and can

Be conveyed by a wide variety of of techniques from the the traditional text panels to very elaborate multimedia and digital digital means but the important thing about presentation that that marks it is that it is essentially a one-way means of communication while everybody privately in their own mind can perform interpretation

Only those with a certain amount of Power with relation to a world heritage site can authorize putting in text panels or or making other presentational um programs and so forth however that’s changing too because with social media and the uh uh the the widespread skill with uh online uh applications and

Digital media generally from Tick Tock to to uh social media um even presentation is is becoming a more open uh but what what I want to be a bit clearer about is what is the distinction between the two and and what I mean to say is can interpretation be really good

And presentation be really poor at the same time can that is that is to say Can a really perceptive enlightening provoking idea about a site be uh conveyed in a an amateurish or a sloppy or disorganized way and likewise can the opposite Be Imagined can the presentation be good and the

Interpretation be very poor with the use of like visually uh attractive technologically advanced entertaining and entertainment is is is unfortunately a part of what um Public Communication of Heritage has become and that is to say could we imagine among the world heritage sites or among Heritage sites in general really slick entertaining

Engaging presentations of very distasteful uh ideologies uh interpretation that that violates human rights or gender Equity or Intercultural tolerance I mean one one could imagine with the Technologies of presentation today almost any message can can be conveyed so it’s really a question in the future for the the task

Force and the continuing work of of wipik what uh how do we judge uh interpretation and presentation by the the values of the world heritage convention the values of UNESCO so to conclude in this age of of advanced and very widely dispersed digital Technologies um we’ve got to focus on defining

What are the acceptable parameters or even the realistic parameters of cultural communication as a whole and which stakeholders rights to interpret and present the significance of world heritage sites should be protected um what is the limit of the freedom of presentation of really difficult sites we’re in a world of of great controversy

And which media both formal and informal and importantly in the post-covet period both on-site and online and online as we all know is becoming more important should be used to present certain interpretations so I think in in looking toward the future whippix research is going to help us better analyze the character of

Public Communication about Heritage places in order to understand the basic power of interpretation and presentation to advance or impede the goals of sustainable development so I’d now like to pass the torch or introduce gamini uh why Surya a a senior advisor to ecrom to offer his ideas about the future direction of wipik

Dr Weiser thank you thank you all I I miss you all all friends and anyway thank you for the invitation to join this discussion uh and of course some of the other discussions we had we picked and I think we pick has come up at an important

Moment where we are thinking of the next 50 years I will tell you why I have uh or reasons to uh suggest why research is important and I’m glad that VP has placed emphasis on that in fact some of my the very brief comments will be strengthening some of

The things you heard from people like my colleague Valerie manga and so on and uh the number these three four points why research is leader is of course uh you had the presentation of Joseph King last week you heard there’s hardly anything that world heritage has done on this

Area so we have to do more work and to do more work we need to understand what we are doing in fact I am uh I am I don’t know whether I am celebrating when thinking of my 40 years with the world heritage convention started in 1918. two with the preparation of nominations

And over the last 15 years we he chromed the advisor burning we did contribute a lot including those three manuals and Link in nature culture contributed to sustainable development policies and people-centered approaches and so on but I must say that we have failed in our mission to contribute to uh

Interpretation so that’s number one then number two is there is a standalone strand by a group uh on interpretation I in my previous presentations I strongly argued that interpretation should be an integral part of the Heritage management process uh this is the recent in fact uh some of you Peter Stone Maga

And them they were there when we developed the training course two months course on conservation of Heritage where we placed very important emphasis on interpretation we allocated one whole week because we thought before they started talking about an interpretation they need to understand the entire Heritage management process and

Then my view you may not agree the current knowledge on interpretation is based on practitioners like you and me top down expert driven process aimed that I must say mostly tourists or visitors I’m aware that literature survey has been done so you will understand and then number four is new paradigms have

Been introduced with many people-centric themes that we heard throughout these sessions which can bring a credible we can contribute to Credible interpretation and with that I will go into Five Points about gaps where research is necessary we need to first conduct research to understand the characteristics of the current knowledge

And where it is located in the Heritage management process including those that were heard definitions and so on do we have a sufficient understanding what is interpretation and for whom it is addressed the audience this could lead to understand where we should place interpretation in Heritage management

Process you need to look at what is going on number two we have introduced many novel paradigms into Heritage discourse such as culture Landscapes sustainable development Link in nature culture and so on and all these have brought numerous people focused teams which were a code throughout the

Discussion of VP over the last two years research is needed how to integrate these concerns in interpretation number three research is needed to understand if there are conventional or local based wisdom on interpretation of Heritage in my view what we consider as Heritage cannot be considered as alien

Group of cultural expressions they are within the people they had an embedded interpretation at the time of their Creations indeed there were principles and processes of creation and conservation including traditional wisdom without sufficient knowledge of which interpretation will be meaningless I have sites where we have one million uh pilgrims plus

Point zero zero zero one percent of visitors and these people have an understanding of interpretation of what they are visiting but they are going to be and this is something uh we need to explore further and do we do we need interpretation are there any non-interpretation as interpretation

This is something we need to really do some more research uh and number four is uh we are in an era of uh respecting two umbrella overarching teams diversity and context which my colleagues already highlighted we cannot imposing one size fits all solutions and methods and research is needed to explore

Culture-based Solutions uh particularly insights of conflicts and my last point is research is needed to understand inherent interpretation which I heard from my colleague sujang there are no interpretation is necessary similarly research is needed to understand the notion that conservation I have argued on this conservation interventions themselves are interpretations how do we

Bring this and how do we integrate them and uh so this is uh my last point so uh thank you for the invitation and I think uh if the VP can work towards achieving goals of UNESCO and also uh if we can formulate a good research uh based

Agenda I think we can be the Pioneer to contribute to this process of understanding and helping with the helping the practitioners uh with the interpretation thank you thank you very much we’re go we’re going to move on now to uh Professor Mario Santana Quintero who is a professor at Carleton University in

Canada and is the Secretary General of ecomos to give his his view of the future of the activities of whipping thank you thank you Neil for for this opportunity to to give my opinion and also I would like to thank we pick you know for this uh 20 hours of travel and

Be here in in Korea to to celebrate you know the establishment of the center which I um came to see uh some years ago and and I’m really proud of all the activities and and actually the engagement of you know Koreans and the cultural heritage Administration to invest in this very

Particular topic of interpretation and presentation because I from the country I’m coming from or I live I don’t think there will be a dime expanded in setting up a center that will do this kind of research so it’s it’s really unneeded and very timely uh initiative so I

Really thank you for that so I I mean I probably Neil organ or Valerie could talk much better about research and the topics in relation you know to the development of the science in interpretation presentation I would only consider one aspect which is very close to me digital Technologies I have been

Around for actually I am two years older than the war Heritage convention and I already told you my age so that that basically means that you know I have been surrounded by War Heritage all my life and I I don’t know I don’t think that I will be 50 years more to to

Celebrate the 100 Years of the convention but if that happens well I will be really lucky and anyway uh what I wanted to say is that you know digital Technologies and we have been talking about that a lot today uh there are solution they’re an instrument they are tools to develop and

To stream and to let’s say um increase the capacity of reach you know of Heritage because we have seen with Kobe that many sites were very creative in moving their their sites to the digital world and you know keep people interested and engage with Heritage and then you know we have soon

We have other conference technologies that allow us to exchange and to have an open dialogue and conversations actually I I had the opportunity to participate in the our world heritage transformational information Technologies in each panels that we organized for a month and if it wasn’t for technology we wouldn’t have not been

Able to to talk uh that much and to produce actually the report that we produce and I’m very proud and also for we pick to to have supported that initiative and in particular the development of the catalog that you can see so I think that digital Technologies

Offer a lot of opportunities but they also offer so challenges and the challenges can be seen as economical most because people say well it is much easier to have a digital app than to have a panel but of course the panel will deteriorate but technology will also deteriorate so

I think in that aspect of we maybe invest in some time on how the strategies of a site to actually develop a digital strategy to you know transform their assets and and to to reach more people is very important also I I have to say that many sites are

Impacted by the use of Technology because it’s not it doesn’t come with a with a bill which is really um cheap and in some cases I believe that also there is research needed in the aspects of how an institution can adopt and what that institution can afford to do because

We can have the best Technologies but if they are not affordable for the for the repository organization and it’s also impacting their activities then why do we adopt them and I I and I Echo what Neil was saying that you know presentation can be very good interpretation can be very bad and this

Is the same with technology so we can make it very gloomy with technology but maybe the interpretation is not there and finally my my final point is also that a I think we need to develop an ethical framework I have been doing some research on this on how digital

Technologies because as soon as we digitize and we bring something to to a digital Storyteller platform we have a shared responsibility as experts but it is also a share ownership of the data by the person that makes the interpretation and makes the platform and also the the community

Where this Heritage is located so I think that we’ve shared ownership there is also a lot of share responsibilities and I don’t think that we have developed a framework and we would say you know we have a European for instance we have a European or a Canadian organization that

Goes to a a country a low income country and develops a very incredible uh platform to to forecast the values of that site without actually benefiting the site itself and we have seen that too often in my field and I I think that we should prevent that so I would say

That those are kind of my my contributions to to the dialogue thank you Neil and thank you everyone thank you thank you Mario and and now um I’m going to introduce I would I’m happy to introduce Dr Valerie magar who is the unit manager for programs at uh ecrom Valerie

Yes you can hear me yes thank you thank you very much uh Neil and well my question was to focus more on capacity building so I think there are a number of things that we saw during the presentations this morning one is the the increase in that what we

Considered as Heritage and the means to research document and interpret it that have changed over the last decades in a very significant Manner and the inclusion of very many new techniques as well now with particularly with the digital transformation so I think we we need to ensure that through capacity building different

Audiences are actually considered and to also make sure that different skills different methods and different types of knowledge can be used to transmit what that Heritage is all about and understanding different perspectives from for that Heritage and also understanding that we whatever we transmit through an interpretation and through presentation is actually

Meaningful respectful and inclusive and we we also spoken this morning about equity and the importance of trying to breach uh divides that exist so considering the different needs of uh difference audiences I think will be extremely important and we also heard about the importance of offering tools to involve particularly

The younger people the younger generations and this is something that several of our speakers spoke this morning and Manuel Gandara was also speaking about not forgetting people with special needs to access the site so I think learning tools about that will be important I think another important thing will be

How we provide tools to those who are working with Heritage sites and world heritage in particular how do we communicate to different types of people different types of audiences whether they are policy makers whether they are politicians um Rohit was speaking about Ministries as well but how do we communicate to all

These people what is the role Heritage can play uh for a healthy society and we heard many adjectives for how this healthy society would be but this is essentially I mean how do we perceive Heritage places and how they have evolved over time Dr Ang was also

Mentioning of Heritage and as a process I mean that we we have to understand it over time and how it has evolved so having these tools to also adapt and to be open and to to have this possibility to receive different perceptions I think is incredibly important

I think another important element is to secure and disseminate different ways to understand and approach Heritage places depending on their nature on their extension on their location and on the different media that are available I mean Mario was speaking about digital media but of course I come from a

Country where many of our world heritage sites aren’t I mean there’s no Wi-Fi or there’s no signal anywhere near so this may be very isolated areas and so also understanding those needs or potential digital divides that it may exist for certain parts of the population and particularly the local populations I

Think is also important and also we were mentioning the importance of linking these world heritage sites with the wider setting so that it’s not just I mean of course we have to care about the outstanding Universal value but also taking care and making sure that in the interpretation

We also include all the other potential values and and all the aspects that may be important and these can can include issues related with governance including rights and traditional Community rights but as well as other social cultural economic and environmental issues of the context and we were also speaking about the

Importance of capacity building to make sure we have the tools for multi-directional dialogues to understand those different perspectives and also the expectations related with the quality of life the links to Heritage sites including nature and culture we heard about the sense of place also this morning and also intergenerational dialogue education

Regenerational Development and Tourism and um I think capacity building will also need to include understanding the ways in which Heritage and traditional practices can contribute to reducing uh or mitigating the impact of climate change and Rocket was uh very explicit about this and how these can promote

Means for adaptation so that us as Heritage professionals but also the communities living around the the Heritage sites can also adapt better to not suffer from climate change um and also I think capacity building will have to provide how to communicate uh the lessons that we can derive from

Heritage sites both from the past and from the present from more recent um impacts of both climate change but also other types of disasters and peterstone was also speaking about the issues related with the conflict and um problems related with the armed conflict in particular um another key fundamental element will

Be to the the need to transmit that interpretation is a fundamental part of the management system and government was mentioning it is just a few minutes ago so I think understanding Heritage and understanding why a place is important is at the basis of any decision making that we take

Whether it is conservation decisions whether it is management or if it is all reaching all the way to the presentation and I think it’s also interpretation may also be a key in the transmitting messages about the need for the conservation explaining the vulnerabilities about the site and how

We can explore means to involve the public in actions that will actually help preserve the place so using perhaps traditional practices or creating new opportunities and Dr rang was also speaking about them and how do we involve the local community also in in activities that can also be economically

Interesting for the community but this can also be include special types of visits that we organize around site so also providing our conservation professionals with the tools to um use our own mechanisms and involving the wider audience for example with through drawing for understanding Through Repair

Works that can be done by the public or through maintenance works I mean there’s there’s many other ways that we can involve the public also in a meaningful way in the conservation of a site and finally capacity building should also consider tools to improve communication with different doctors in order to

Identify key values and attributes of a place and the role they can play in defining its character to encourage interdisciplinary and inter-sectorial work to enable work with different actors and communities um and this can include again new and traditional Technologies um and also we should probably be doing

Capacity building for conflict solving I mean understanding how to communicate and how to solve potentially conflicting views of Heritage I think it’s something that we all desperately need of special interest well yeah I think it’s also another really important issue with language and I do not necessarily refer to

Whether we’re speaking in English or in Korean or in Spanish but it’s just a terminology that we are using to also speak about Heritage so that we actually communicate effectively depending on the audiences for different types of interpretation different moments of decision making um and also Manuel gandra was mentioning

This morning the use of uh nowatul for example at one of the sites I mean using local languages is also particularly important to communicate what we want to to say to to those local communities um and finally I think something that maybe we haven’t touched upon but it’s also um

Trying to develop tools and mechanisms to understand the impact of interpretation and presentation I think that’s also working with different actors and methods to monitor the impact of interpretation and presentation I think over time will also be important to show just how important this element of management is and how we can better

Communicate it so that would be it thank you thank you very much uh we just have a couple of minutes left and I I I’m going to call on um Dr Lee to just sort of sum up as as head of the research Department uh the irony really is that interpretation and presentation

Is its own form of intangible cultural heritage storytelling about the past and we know from the intangible Heritage convention that intangible Heritage is constantly evolving how how do you what is the strategy that that you imagine for wipik in the 10 years to come to reconcile the inevitable change and

Development in in recognition of significance with the the rather formalized um Criterion for inscription with ouv how do you anticipate change in the future um first of all I’d like to say that the during the last several years that we have been preparing our setup and also

This year legally uh setting out the research project always problem goes back to the scope of the interpretation and presentations and also who is doing it and how to doing it and what are the parameters of doing it it hasn’t been formally done about all those kind of issues yet that’s why we

Do have a slight tensions at the moment that what kind of subject we have to deal with and who we have to Target for and what kind of contents that we have to include in the capacity building programs and so on so that’s why we started the definition project because at least definition

Project will guide us the scope of the interpretation and presentation and the character of it I mean changing keep changing it is one of the character of it and what kind of parameters and who would do it and sort of things so that then we can probably decide what kind of

Research topics that we do need to tackle in one year or two year and 30 years and then it can connect to the capacity building programs at the end probably tomorrow we can develop more ideas to decide or maybe to talk more about the or to to expand the scope of

The interpretation and presentations because tomorrow we will focus on the definition of it then probably we will have more ideas to come in future years and again that scope will be changing again in 10 years or in 20 years and we probably will do repeating the same

Things to designing the our missions and redesigning our project in 10 years or maybe in five years as well so that based on the definition change and the scope a change of it so that that’s my initial thought thank you very much for that

Um and I can only say on behalf of all of uh the guests here that we have full confidence that that wepic will will attack that that problem of the continual evolution of of the meaning of interpretation and presentation so I I believe that we we need to conclude this

Session now thank you everyone and we’ll continue tomorrow can yes okay okay if I I’ve been told it’s perfectly okay oh thank you thank you so much I actually have questions for each of you but I’m not sure if the time will allow me to ask all the questions but regarding the research part I want to ask Dr Vijay Surya and sudong that

I’ve been working on the interpretation policy uh in within the world heritage system and as I’ve been um studying that system I have been realizing that the um there are it’s not always a good thing yeah so I was wondering whether when I initiate a certain research or think

About a research idea should I start with um skeptical attitude toward world heritage system or should I focus on like good functions of the world heritage system I want your advice and for uh Valerie I would like to ask whether personally you think that um is it ideal to

Um to is do you think it’s ideal to have the capacity building for the community to the degree that they don’t need any more Heritage interpretation experts or professionals do you think still even though we are raising the communities to build their ability to interpret their Heritage

Themselves do you still think it will be still the the experts should be needed in that Heritage interpretation in the future that’s my question and for Mario um sorry for Mario I just wanted to ask you whether the digital technology should be included in the world Hertz system because

The digital using utilizing the digital technology is a very um sometimes it’s very beneficial for interpreting or presenting the Heritage slides and the values but at the same time on the other side it’s pretty much depend on the funding and like sub uh Financial ability of certain Heritage sites or

Government and like utilizing the digital technology too much may bring some imbalance I think so I was wondering whether it would be good to address this using digital technology for Heritage interpretation and presentation like within the policies or guidelines in the world heritage thank you

You asked me can I go first okay uh based on your allowance I would you could ask me in the office I could answer to your questions already um yes thank you very much for your question and that that’s really important question as well if you ask me uh my personal perspective

Uh because I served for the government for the last 12 years already I think policy is a means and tools and techniques that our way of thinking and our philosophical aspects and principles can be actually applied into practice so sometimes policy can be you know uh not productive policy can be really uh

Giving us the negative aspects yes of course I truly believe that you can start from the skeptical approach but in a productive way I think as long as you are then probably everybody will agree with you from this skeptical point a skeptical perspective because you are heading toward the the better and and

The positive aspect okay yeah can I continue can I continue sure yeah okay you asked me also the same sort of question uh don’t worry I will tell you very briefly when we in 1982 prepare the tentative list it took only three minutes okay there was no guidance nothing

And when we wrote uh three nominations in 1982 about uh 30 pages document uh it we did it overnight and remember world heritage has evolved and it is still evolving we did not have a definition of outstanding Universal value until 2005 operational guidelines and we did not

Uh there was a reference to Management Systems uh in the operational guidelines of 2005 and we conducted a research and expanded what is management system which led to the resource manual and in 2005 operational guidelines there was a reference to statement of outstanding Universal value there was no format for

That and thanks to a research program posted by our late colleague herbstoval but when we started we had to go and he had left us myself and my colleague Joseph King we started the research project with little money and then looked at how do we define statement of outstanding Universal value there were

References there were various little bit pieces and so on we did finally came up of course discussing all that raise your body and finally put into a committee and then the s-o-u-b you are using is that was generated at that piece of research so don’t worry go ahead uh I

Told you I we couldn’t contribute to this subject or the 450 years you may be the best to look at that and please don’t worry uh go ahead I still remember when we were developing the statement of outstanding Universal value there was a big question about adding

Management how can management be part of the value and there was a long discussions but then it was included finally and then of course uh two or three years ago we made some references sorry revisions at the in the operation guidelines to that also that can change so please

Go ahead you will be succeeded thank you and I would I would like to to Echo uh what Dr Lee uh has said that a a skeptical Outlook is completely legitimate and warranted but the important point is that it must not end with just simple critique it has to be a

Way to find new ways even in the formalized structure of world heritage we can find plenty to criticize about the way it has has operated and how far it has to go but but your goal must be to find a new solution to allow more people access to to express creatively their

Relationship to the past and I will turn it over to Mario to speak about the digital uh question you thank you Neil and thank you for your question I I think that as I said you know um you you can apply what you can afford okay but afford the technology also

Means several things right it means do we have the capacity uh do we have the infrastructure uh do we have the digital assets do we need to acquire them do we need to have a digital storytelling expert that will help us to make the platform so it is a very expensive

Approach nevertheless I mean many sites very small museums in particularly in Canada they adopted digital Technologies during cobit with very little investment right and they were able to reach people so I think that that one thing shouldn’t exclude the other I I visited the house of Luis baragani Mexico recently and

It’s a wonderful place to see and for Architects like myself but I was a stroke that is very difficult to access and you know for someone that doesn’t have you know has some physical limitation it will be very difficult to see the house to understand

Their values Etc so what do we need to do do we need to retrofit the house so we are giving access to people that should have access or can we use something alternative so maybe digital Technologies can be an alternative way of giving access to this group of people

That we have excluded in the past and also so I see that is not because benefit idea of you know this is as much as I’m going to invest I’m going to get my digital platform and Excel and everybody’s going to come and see it and they’re going to be very interested I

Think it’s much more complex than that right but we also have to see the long-term benefits and also the engagement because I see in many sites that they adopt you know very sophisticated technology but this technology becomes obsolete in in few years and it’s not updated so we also

Have to have what we call in digital Technologies data management plan so what is it that you’re going to do to to keep this this thing going now I I forgot to mention something that I I think is also a really important aspect is that we’re living now in an

Artificial intelligence deep learning world where when we open our phones and we use our computers there is tracking algorithms looking at what we do how we do it and they are making offers right of what we should do so I was thinking as we were talking about interpretation and presentation that also

Um you know Warhead decides could kind of make use of this artificial intelligence in other ways right can we tailor-made something according to someone what are the interests of the site Etc no and I was looking at for instance anchor but where you know people go and see the sunshine this the

Sunshine yes it is not the sunrise but when it goes down Sun said Thank you thank you Neil and so so you know they have this carrying capacity using some monetary tools and they can say well today you should go to this Temple and tomorrow you should go to this other one

So they are using actually artificial intelligence and deep learning to understand how people move around the site to make it a little better so I think technology by itself is not bad it’s just the way we use it but I think investment is always not a very easy straightforward formula thank you so

Let’s get Valerie’s view on a couple of these subjects you mentioned accessibility uh often we think of accessibility as part of the interpretive or visitor experience as rails and ramps and things like that alternatively we think of uh you know outside the some sort of remote interpretation but there is a deeper

Meaning to accessibility that the accessibility scholar Ian Ford has talked about deep accessibility that deals not only with physical access but intellectual access for all kinds of people of orientation of being able to recognize a narrative and so forth in in your work have do you have any thoughts about

Going Beyond rail rails and ramps for accessibility yes I mean depending on the what you’re trying to achieve with the different sites but I mean there are a number of techniques that can be used to provide that deeper level of access whether it is through sensory experiencing of a site whether it is

Tactile or through smells or through different ways of understanding a site I think also I mean I I fully agree that digital means is another way to provide access to those areas that are either difficult to access or that cannot be accessed for conservation purposes and also I mean some other sites might

Might also be closed because of beliefs I mean they they it’s just not appropriate for for those sites to be visited even if you may know that they are there and that they exist but it’s not necessarily a good thing that you you open them to to just anyone who who

Is not initiated or who is not part of the the Traditions so that in terms of accessibility and the the other question was also about communities and capacity building I would say that I would use the term capacity building mostly for conservation professionals I mean I think that’s where we are

Comfortable with the term and I mean we are it’s about the learning uh dialogue and we we learn from each other when it is when we speak about communities I’m not sure we are always doing necessarily capacity building I think there may be some activities of capacity building

Where we share conservation issues about the site but when it is about understanding the site I think it’s more about involvement and or dialogue I mean I would use other sorts of terms rather than capacity building that seems like you’re going to teach them I mean it

Looks more like a one-way dialogue even if it’s not necessarily that and the fact that communities might you might help through that dialogue also understand different aspects of uh of a site and get a deeper understanding of what the site is all about I don’t think it will

Never be a limit to what conservation professionals can do around the site because there will be new data coming out there will be new information there will be new means of reaching or accessing the site and we will keep involved also because we need to preserve the site to manage it and and

Have other types of activities and in the same way that I would also not necessarily use capacity building for policy makers or politicians I mean you might want to use another term so that it doesn’t sound I mean that it’s more inclusive and it’s more effective in in

The end to communicate and to be able to reach the goals that you want which is about having a common view and possibility of a better understanding and protection of a site uh I think that this I want to thank the the panelists uh this is a really interesting important discussion we have

To uh wrap it up now uh and I would just with the the final word about that question about is there ever going to get to be a time where you don’t need experts or professionals and so forth to deal with communities well there you know uh it’s more a

Question of the role of Heritage professionals is going to change from in a sense dictating what the message is to mediating between various sometimes conflicting um uh ideas of of the significance of the site so it’s going to be much much less the expert and much more the mediator in

In my opinion but I think we have to wrap it up now and uh let’s look forward to to more discussions tomorrow on all these these tricky and uh very important questions so thank you [Applause] have one just last sentence um we have two days uh forums but

Today’s Forum has been fully prepared and and orchestrated by hanji Kong and would you give her a big plot [Applause] thank you this session three was uh extremely helpful for the development of Wikipedia and we will share your ideas and suggestions and opinions with all of

Our staffs that we pick and reflect to our project okay thank you so much for all today I think this is the end of the first day of the Forum uh tomorrow we will proceed our Forum on Heritage interpretation Concepts and definitions and challenges which will share the

Outcomes of research of we pick and relevant stakeholders and uh experts as well so uh thanks for staying with us all day so thank you very much again and we hope to see you tomorrow again thank you bye foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign Foreign

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