International Workshop “Heritage for Society” Tbilisi 18-20th September

Summary of Day 1:

Per Morten Ekerhovd presented the administrative system of Norway and the decentralized responsibility for heritage protection on the example of the region of Hordaland. In the Norwegian system the state delegates the responsibilities to counties. Department of culture and Sports includes heritage management and museums. He explained new strategies for heritage management dealing with new challenges. Not only the object is important, but also the society living in and around it.

The main notion is: Heritage is non-renewable.

There were some cases of destruction of heritage in the 20th century which led to the creation of strong legislation and management system. The period of 1905-2012 was the transition from protection of monuments to protection of the vernacular architecture and from protection of aesthetic heritage to the protection of representation of the entire history. The goal of the administration is to protect cultural heritage values as a non-renewable resource, use heritage for the development of the society.

Cultural value – knowledge, use and experience.

Nowadays all three values are regarded as equal, while before it was just knowledge.

The only way to protect heritage is through local appreciation and use.

Most important level is the municipality. If the local level does not work, there won’t be nothing to protect on the national level. There is a mechanism of control from the state agency.

Private interest can not interfere with the interest of the national heritage.

Petroleum activity happens in the region generating growth and change. How to respond? How does the cultural heritage change? Growth generates change and the need to protect past, present and future heritage. Heritage is integrated in sectoral plans. Creation public awareness leads to better policy making. Heritage management in Norway has long scientific tradition and weak political tradition on the local level. People interested in heritage are not interested in politics and vice-versa while environmental issues are very political. There is more local interest in environmental protection. Examples of civil society involvement in heritage protection: In 1850ies an NGO with private money wanted to save the king’s hall and did so. Now the state is also proud of it. It is important to involve the community.

There is always a risk of losing part of heritage, but local awareness is one key to success.

Veriko Shanidze introduced educational programs carried out by the Agency for Cultural Heritage Preservation of Georgia.

Programme 1: Archaeology programme in Mtskheta – for secondary school students, programme developed in line with the national curriculum plan. Theory course, field trip and practical lessons.

Programme 2: Cultural Heritage for children dealing with various themes, like what is a mosaic? Georgian folk dwelling, etc. Information is spread on the website, through association of teachers, promoted through schools. Programmes are funded by the state. There is little fee. The duration of archeology classes is 2 hours.

Richard Ney:

Told about the organisation AMAP – Armenian Monuments Awareness Project. The goal of the organisation is to promote and to raise awareness of the monuments and also to raise access to them. We opened the monuments to the blind. Community Development is also our goal. Community+Awareness=Preservation. AMAP creates multilingual panels and signs, directional signs, audio tours, print material. Offer trails, multimedia tools, online access, etc. In doing so, AMAP cooperates with Ministries of Culture and Transport. With each installation we stage a festival with food, creative arts and include local population actively. AMAP placed 35 Braille Panels in 5 languages. New project funded by the EU concerns Black Sea Silk Road Corridor marking sites along the way. We will be creating Apps. GPS Guidance, Multimedia presentations, Social networking integration. Cooperative networking – where all actors come together, cooperate, meet during public events. Work with NGOs, communities, private donors. We recruit locals for maintenance.  

Lilya Gnatyuk

Presented the case from Ukraine and the conflict between the owners, users and responsible parties.

The difficulty to maintain the buildings with religious function while they are in use. Told about public protests against illegal constructions in Kyiv and Illegal constructions that also take place in the World Heritage Site of Lviv.  

Tsira Elisashvili

Presented her experience in teaching in the Cultural Policy master’s program at GIPA. Examples of cooperation between the students, university and the NGO for heritage preservation in the city of Tbilisi.

At the end of the day it was summarized that local community, information, awareness raising and education were some of the main topics discussed across all of the presentations. During the summing up session Per Morten Ekerhovd discussed in detail the heritage management system in Norway by illustrating with specific examples.