Regional Co-operation for Cultural Heritage Development

Project

Public Awareness

Georgia

Heritage awareness seminars in Georgia
Heritage awareness seminars will be held in Mtskheta and cover two topics: Cultural Heritage – keeping the past for the future consisting of thefollowing specific topics:

Defining the term heritage and its various values,
The notion of authenticity,
Basics of heritage conservation and management,
Existing international instruments on heritage conservation,
Statement of significance, Outstanding Universal Value and the WH status

and Historic monuments of Mtskheta. This site specific seminar shall focus on the importance of Mtskheta for the global and local communities, reviewing statement of significance, its values, current state of conservation and future perspectives.

Target audience of the Seminars in Mtskheta is: Group of local school children aged 12-15 years, group of stakeholders of heritage sites, including: Owners of the site (clergy or private owners), local government officials dealing with cultural heritage issues and senior representatives, local school teachers and representatives of local site management bodies – museum- reserves, etc.

This activity also envisages creation of a Teachers’ Manual for a short heritage course for secondary schools in Georgia

Based on the seminar material a teachers’ manual in Georgian language will be prepared to be distributed to the teachers participating in the seminars and made available for free download on the project site as well as distributed among secondary schools in print and CD-ROM versions throughout Georgia’s secondary schools via the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia regional resource centres. The manual will include five lesson plans for a short heritage course that will be incorporated in social sciences’ course. The manual will include course content and visual material accompanied with suggestions for group and individual work, ideas for homework and student project. The manual shall make reference to existing awareness raising training material developed by ICCROM and UNESCO, while focusing on country specific needs and background. A workshop with a group of social sciences’ teachers from Georgia will be held in the middle of the manual development process in order to discuss the manual draft and get feedback from the teachers.
The prepared manual will be translated in English language and shared with the rest of EP region countries’ heritage organisations.
The activity will be managed by ICOMOS Georgia in close collaboration with Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia.

Wider public awareness campaign “Heritage for the Future” aims at communicating to the general public through a variety of media the benefits of heritage conservation and the threats that heritage faces. The campaign team shall be set up by heritage professionals from the project and engage trained community members, student volunteers and all interested public. The campaign shall utilize one or all of the described tools to achieve its goals:

Public Hearings
Press Conferences
Data collection and dissemination

Awareness Raising Seminars held for Mtskheta local community

Between September 30th – October 4th a series of awareness raising seminars was held in Mtskheta. Seminars targeted several groups of the local community, such as the staff of municipality and local museum, owners of heritage sites, school teachers and school children. Seminars included two presentations, one about the importance of heritage and its preservation, the processes of conservation and the need for public awareness. The second topic concerned heritage values of Mtskheta and its current challenges. Discussion of the presented topics and others of concern followed the presentations and engaged the whole audience. School seminars were interactive and included learning activities for children. In partnership with another EU funded project “War Free World Heritage Listed Cities” the children were also introduced to the UNESCO Hague Convention and its provisions concerning enhanced protection status which Mtskheta will be applying for to receive. Students were given projects ideas to choose from and work on. Completed projects will be gathered and the authors of best works will be given prices. All participant school children will be given certificates and small gifts during a special ceremony next week which will be attended by the General Director of the National Agency for Cultural Heritage Protection of Georgia and the Secretary General of National Commission of UNESCO.