‘Join us in looking at some examples of interpretation for children’ was an invitation for followers of IE social media to read contributions from IE members about examples of interpretation for children which they had designed or experienced. Through our member-supported campaigns we try to spread the word of projects that are out there and strengthen the ideas of networking and sharing, whilst spreading quality standards of heritage interpretation.

Through this campaign, a small team within IE that is developing a training module on interpretation for children managed to gain a deeper understanding of what our members consider quality interpretation for children. Their findings will be incorporated into some guidelines for children’s interpretation.

Did you spot any of the stories in your social media feed? Scroll back through or search for the hashtag #interpretsation4children and take some time to look if you didn’t see them. We journeyed into forests, geological parks, local parks, old houses, and encouraged children to become researchers with enquiring minds whilst having fun

Janja Sivec is a trainer, interpreter and storyteller from Slovenia. She is also IE’s Social Media Coordinator. You can reach her at: janja.sivec@dlegende.com.

To cite this article: Jacić, Silvija (2022) ‘#Interpretation4Children’ in Interpret Europe Newsletter 1-2022, pg.7

Available online:https://interpret-europe.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PDF-Newsletter-2022_1-spring_draft-5.pdf

Our natural and cultural area is the nocturnal landscape on the Gurnigelpass near Bern. The excursion starts at Gurnigelpass at 1600m elevation above sea level. The landscape is protected as a mire landscape of special beauty and national importance and lies in the tourist hotspot in the Gantrisch Nature Park. On beautiful weekends hundreds of cars park here, thousands of hikers explore the beautiful peaks. In the evening it gets quiet again. Then the nature park becomes a star park. You can see here thousands of stars with your naked eye. We stand in our dark heart, which beats continuously. Here, the day and night rhythm and the moon cycle may still play almost without artificial light effects.

We are just about to gain our first experiences with the guided tour, which starts at dusk and leads into the night. My colleague is a nature pedagogue and biology teacher and already has some very good elements in her guided tour that encourage the participants to be quiet and attentive. I have already successfully completed the guided tour, too, but I noticed that a night excursion completely differs from excursions during the daytime: I do not see the participants. A night tour also makes the participants much quieter. This means that I cannot read any reaction in their faces to the things I say, and requests to speak are much sparser. I am also not a monologue person and have a bad fact memory, so I was looking for a more interactive concept for guided tours. With this hope, I joined an IE CIG course – and expectations were exceeded. 

I developed the concept for a short interpretive walk as my homework. For the first time I stood in line to look for phenomena. It is dark at night, so I cannot see anything! In November, you could not hear a single bird singing and in the cold and in the first snow you hardly smell anything. I told a colleague that I saw nothing but the lights of the city, a parking lot, the mountain range with the Milky Way above us, the dark forest entrance. She said: but that is quite a lot! Which was true. Therefore, these were my phenomena. Since the tour was booked in the middle of the two weeks between parts of the CIG course, I had the opportunity to test elements of the tour. As a theme, I chose: ‘In the heart of the Star Park, on the Gurnigel, there is a nightlife of its own’. As feedback, I received an idea from Thorsten Ludwig, IE Managing Director who was leading the course: ‘Where we can feel the night, we can feel the heartbeat of the earth’, which, of course, fits very well to the dark heart idea and I like it even better. 

Many people signed up for the guided tour and so with 25 people I went into the darkness. I encouraged them to walk quietly and to sharpen their hearing. After a short walk we arrived at a large flat square, with a view over the lights of Thun and up into the clear sky above us. With a thought journey to Alpha Centauri, the participants experienced the enormous distances between us and the stars. During the sea of lights, we discussed where the light comes from and its meaningfulness. Standing on the parking lot, people could tell about their experiences on the Gurnigel – and how the place turns its face when night falls. The theme was: ‘This place has its own laws at night’. We slowly went up a hill and let the dark forest entrance have an effect on us, according to the theme, ‘In the dark forest there is no more reliance on human eyes’, or ‘We always see only a part of the whole – especially in the nocturnal forest’, where we among other things went into what is going on around us and how animals orient themselves. In order to sharpen the senses, we then walked through the forest in a queue of people on a rope, which the people perceived as the strongest experience, because they had to completely rely on all other senses and on the people in front of and behind them. 

The feedback was very good, although the conversations could have been more lively. I am sure I will be working on it more and look forward to the next tour (with my CIG course colleagues).
Maybe some of you already have experience with night excursions – I’d be happy to have an exchange! 

Nicole Dahinden is a geographer and currently works at the Gantrisch Nature Park in the Forderverein Region Gantrisch, Bern, Switzerland (www.gantrisch.ch  www.sternenpark.ch). She has been working in this field since 2013. Nicole can be contacted at: Nicole.dahinden@gantrisch.ch.

To cite this article:
Dahinden, Nicole (2019) ‘The dark heart of Gantrisch’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2019, 22.
Available online: www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/ie-newsletter_2019-4_winter.pdf

The Idrija Tourism Board, UNESCO Global Geopark Idrija, is the leading partner of the Danube GeoTour Project. The main objective of the project is to work on sustainable tourism development in eight geoparks in the Danube region. One of the results of the project is a brand new visitor centre that opened in October 2019. Interpretation in the visitor centre is also how our Slovenian IE members came in touch with the tourism organisation in Idrija, which runs geopark activities. 

They supported our team in the organisation of a promotional event, ‘Experiencing heritage’, where Slovene IE trainers ran two workshops. In the first workshop they presented the Certified Interpretive Writer (CIW) course and in the second workshop they presented the IE training programme and did some exercises that reflect IE training philosophy and methodology. 

Some of the 40 participants attended both workshops, others took the opportunity to look around (the then not officially opened) visitor centre of the Geopark Idrija. There are not many opportunities for those who work in heritage and tourism to see the background of such a big project and talk about the execution of the activities with the project manager and coordinator. 

The afternoon session was reserved for six presentations that emphasised planning and the tools of interpretation. 

Our hosts from the tourism organisation presented how complex a collaboration it was to plan and execute a new visitor centre. Combining experts from geology, geography, botany, ethnology and interpretation. 

A presentation from the second Slovenian geopark focused on pedagogical programmes within Geopark Karavanke. They emphasised that they do not have the resources to present geology to children from the wider region, so they have focused on teachers. 

A family theatre group, Kolenc, from the geographical centre of Slovenia, presented part of their performance, which is based on interpretation of Slovene national symbols. 

One of the partners in project Kras’n Krš from the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art presented on how they decided to reinforce the experience of karst heritage with developing a quiz that challenges visitors about their experience. 

A ranger from Škocijan caves, another Slovenian UNESCO site, presented how have they tackled the issue of accessible heritage. They planned an exhibition about cave explorers in a way that is accessible to all visitors. 

The last presenters came from the University of Primorska. The Department of Archaeology and Heritage manages an archaeological site by the sea, which is a great way for students to plan and do the interpretation on site and get practical experience during their studies. 

This IE event was open to the general public but it was nice to see that the audience – composed of approximately half of IE members and half of people who are interested in interpretation – was joined in the same event talking about how to implement and improve heritage interpretation in Slovenia.  

Janja Sivec is IE’s Country Coordinator Slovenia. You can reach her and other Slovene IE members through her at: janja.sivec@interpret-europe.net . 

To cite this article:
Sivec, Janja(2019) ‘IE Slovenian members organise an EHD event’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2019, 20.
Available online: www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/ie-newsletter_2019-4_winter.pdf

In the latest project Run by NGO Legends we collected local legends, myths, stories and gossip, connected them to natural and cultural heritage and went for a special walk. A walk on the edge of reality.

NGO Legends is a small organisation that focuses on educational activities and development of new products. In our annual ‘School of heritage interpretation’ we focus on methodology of different tools of heritage interpretation. This year we decided to focus on storytelling, not just as a form, but also how we can use storytelling in thematic guided tours. 

First, we looked at what could be possible to achieve in two days in our local community. We were very ambitious. But we exceeded even our own expectations with the final result. 

We collected local folk tales and asked around some local connoisseurs. We also asked our local library whether there was any more material from what we had already gathered. We found enough material, but were a bit disappointed that stories do not live outside the books anymore.

We also needed some more practical knowledge about storytelling. So, on the first day, one of our members and a member of a storytelling group, Teja Peperko, led a short workshop, where we gained some practical tips on how to construct a story and how to tell it in a way that leaves a mark on visitors. 

On the second day, eight participants chose a story and went around the town to search for the best place to connect their story to. As a group we decided how the individual stories would follow on from each other and what heritage connects the stories to the landscape. Afterwards, each participant worked individually on their story and also decided through which character in the story to represent it. Participants had quite free hands and also a lot of imagination. We then together chose requisites, costumes and makeup for each storyteller.

The aim in the end was to connect the stories into a guided tour. In the evening, when it started to get a bit dark and mysterious, we invited a focus group to be our first guests and evaluators. 

It is quite a challenge going into a one and a half day workshop with the aim to present a final product to the public. But we did it. A bit more than an hour-long walk with eight stories and eight storytellers, which were happy with work well done. Our visitors gave us very positive feedback on the tour being something different, not static and full of stories that even the locals didn’t know before. 

Janja Sivec is IE’s Country Coordinator Slovenia and works for NGO Legends – a small Slovene organisation that focuses on education and trying new things in the field of heritage and interpretation. You can reach them at: info@dlegende.com. 

To cite this article:
Sivec, Janja(2019) ‘Looking for the partners: To walk with Legends’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2019, 18.
Available online: www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/ie-newsletter_2019-4_winter.pdf

It was the closing conference of the CHRISTA Project (Culture and Heritage for Responsible, Innovative and Sustainable Tourism Actions) and the main outputs were channelled in the form of action plans within nine regions across Europe. The implementation and monitoring of improved policy, dissemitation tools for policy learning and capacity building is a contribution to the EU policies and EU2020 targets. The expected changes in destination regions, as well as advances in relevant policy implementation and the upgrading of cultural and natural assests, were set out during the first day of the dissemination event. 

During the opening session, Anne Grady, Principal Officer European Commission Directorate General Education and Culture, delivered a keynote address and pointed out the need for an inclusive Europe through cultural heritage, participation and access for all, and the concept of Sustainable Cultural Tourism. Thus in the words of CHRISTA Project Coordinator, Manos Vougioukas: ‘Although being about cultural heritage, half of the key findings have a direct or indirect  reference to cultural tourism. That means that cultural heritage counts for tourism and thus we should bear this in mind in practice’.

After that, four stakeholders from different countries presented the main results of the CHRISTA Project under the ‘4 I’ themes: Intangible heritage; Industrial heritage; heritage Interpretation; and Innovation and digitisation. This was followed by a policy makers’ panel discussion and then the first day ended with a conference dinner and the award ceremony for ‘Destination of Sustaianble Cultural Tourism 2019 ECTN’ in partnership with Europa Nostra, European Travel Commission and NECSTouR, supported by Iter Vitis Cultural Route of the Council of Europe. 

The following day, I moderated the parallel session focused on heritage interpretation. 
Granada County shared the policy implementation and all milestones reached – an example of how the CHRISTA Project can be a useful network with practical tools to change local policy and develop rural communities through adding value to heritage. Eriberto Eulisse from Italy talked about the Water Museum of Venice and how to educate and engage larger audiences creating emotional bonds using heritage interpretation. ‘Read a Poem not a Post’ was the motto of the innovative approach to young community engagement from Burgas, Bulgaria – another way of making heritage interpretation in a city, growing awareness amongst young people. Last, but not least, Andreas Bonde from the University College Absalon in Denmark approached ‘The seven pillars in a good heritage experience’ and how they can inspire more sustainable heritage interpretation development.

Interpret Europe took a turn again during the closing session with a short presentation about our organisation and a demonstration within the venue as a way to further explain and help the audience connect with IE and aid their understanding of heritage interpretation. Attendees found the hidden meaning under a specific object: an earthenware water pitcher very typical from southern Spain. They agreed on the fact that appropiate techniques facilitate connections and visitor interest, and therefore reach excellence in visitor experiences and heritage engagement. I ended up making a call on the need of truly connecting culture, heritage and sustainable tourism, and suggested that we have the know-how on how to include heritage interpretation in our tourism destination strategic plans and training programmes for the tourism and hospitality sector as an indicator of the so called ‘quality in tourism’. 

Nuria Mohedano is IE’s Tourism Coordinator and is based in Puertolllano, Castilla-La Universitet in Denmark. She currently combines teaching in non-formal education tourism related courses and freelance work as a sustainable tourism marketing consultant. She can be contacted at: nuria.mohedano@interpret-europe.net. 

To cite this article:
Mohedano, Nuria (2019) ‘Culture and heritage for responsible, innovative and sustainable tourism actions’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2019, 7.
Available online: www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/ie-newsletter_2019-4_winter.pdf

Experiential interpretation has measurable goals: affective, behavioural, learning, satisfactions, revenue, and so on. It’s the learning part that sets it apart from purely recreational tourism. And it’s the learning part – getting that part right, without being didactic – that is hard. That’s the nut we need to crack!
 
Other qualities of experiential interpretation
Experiential interpretation often involves the acquisition of skill along with the acquisition of knowledge. It expands personal horizons for the participant, creates a sense of accomplishment and can facilitate personal transformation.

It has high memorability, which results from:
•    challenge (as audience appropriate)
•    agenda fulfilment (meeting the visitor’s expectations completely)
•    elements of surprise and delight
•    social exchange among the participants and with the interpreter

It honours essence of place; it brings that essence to life through activity. It connects people to place. It is polished and professional throughout the visit cycle, from wishing to planning to execution to remembering.

It is high-yield and low-ratio, with relatively small groups, usually paying a relatively high price. This quality makes it an attractive tourism product by that industry’s standards.

It is personal: the interpreter establishes a relationship with individuals, not with the group as a generic body. It often also includes meaningful encounters with the local community.

It is multi-sensory and often incorporates food or beverage as a way of facilitating group bonding and fostering an element of surprise and delight.

It may use post-activity interpretive dialogue as a means of debriefing, making meaning, and fostering interpersonal bonding.

It facilitates remembering though mementos, shared photography, and/or through a continued relationship among the participants after the event.

It is environmentally and economically sustainable; it adheres to principles of sustainable tourism.

When good interpreters make bad experiences
In looking at the above and pondering my long career, I’ve started looking back at when I’ve succeeded and when I’ve failed. I can’t lie: the failures are many! Where have I gone wrong and how can we learn from that?

It doesn’t work when we use the activity as a tagged-on reward for sitting still and listening. School programmers are notorious for this (and I say this as a former full-time school programmer). You get the group in the great outdoors, all dressed for the weather and ready to go, and then… sit them down on a rock and talk at them for 25 minutes as if they were in a classroom. Fail. Not experiential interpretation; not good interpretation of any kind.

‘But I need to get the theory across first!’ Sure. But you could establish the theory in your pre-visit package. Or you could construct the activity in such a way that it illustrates your theory, without passive listening. Easy? No. Interpretive? Oh, yes! If you’re imposing passive listening on your audience, you’re not doing experiential work. And you’re not making the most of your visitors’ precious time with you in the outdoors.

It also doesn’t work when your theme and your landscape work against each other. When we fail to match our landscape with our theme, we often feel the need to fill in the blanks with verbal presentation augmented by interpretive media. Another fail. And I have been so guilty of this in the past.

Does this sound familiar? Your manager assigns you a bird walk at 2pm on an August afternoon. Desperate for something, anything, to offer the visitor at this time of day when you don’t expect birdlife to be present, you bring recordings, pictures, an iPad loaded with video… and you stop every few minutes on that utterly-bird-devoid trail to talk about what isn’t there. The experience is essentially no different than what you could offer in an amphitheatre or in a blog post, except for the insect bites and the uncomfortable standing position that your visitors experience. 

This is not experiential interpretation. It’s not good interpretation in any form, but it happens all the time. We hold wildflower walks when the flowers are well past bloom; we lead history walks on nature trails that have zero evidence of history because we have history in our interpretive plan and that trail is really close to the visitor centre and it’s really convenient and we’ve got lots of great pictures… But, nope, this isn’t experiential, and it is just poor, lazy interpretation. When your landscape doesn’t bring your theme to life, you either need a new theme, or you need a different landscape. You will never facilitate experiences until you reconcile the two.

Can a history walk qualify as experiential interpretation? Sure, if the landscape itself is bursting with evidence of your history, and if you come up with creative, active ways to allow your visitors to discover it. Archaeological digs, for example, can be highly memorable and satisfying (and profitable).

Can birding be experiential? Of course. Picture a morning bird walk with the birds fairly dripping off the trees, or an evening experience with thousands of geese thundering in against the sunset. Picture yourself challenging and encouraging your visitors through their observations. Picture yourself and your guests, with a cup of coffee or wine afterwards, rehashing it with them. Picture yourself sharing photos and memories with them weeks after the experience.

Experiential interpretation begins by finding the authentic touchstones in your landscape that bring your theme to life. It unites those touchstones with a compelling theme and a relevant activity. Steve van Matre (the American environmental activist and author, founder of the Earth Education movement and chair of the Institute for Earth Education) describes the interpreter as the choreographer or stage manager of a carefully-designed experience. The work of the interpreter is largely done behind the scenes, before the guests arrive. The art of the interpreter lies in the concealment of the art. For those of us with big egos it can be a hard pill to swallow – until you see your audience fully engaged with their activity and their landscape. Then you feel like a hero!

Don Enright is a freelance interpretive planner and visitor experience advisor based in British Columbia. He works collaboratively with parks, historic sites, museums, aquariums and other organisations to help bring their stories to life. He can be contacted at: donenright@donenright.com

[This article first appeared on Don’s blog in December 2019: https://www.donenright.com/blog/]

To cite this article:
Enright, Don (2019) ‘What makes experiential interpretation?’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2019, 4.
Available online: www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/ie-newsletter_2019-4_winter.pdf

That’s the approach that we took in curating the renewed visitor experience for Hillsborough Castle and Gardens (re-opened April 2019), under the direction of the public engagement and interpretation teams at Historic Royal Palaces, UK, and I’d like to share some of our lessons learned.

This grand old family home in Northern Ireland is brimming with untold stories and behind-the-scenes moments. Our challenge was to tease out these unsung elements and showcase them in new and innovative ways.

To achieve this, we identified five key areas to address:
•    A warm welcome with the promise of time well-spent
•    Surprise audiences with amazing secrets and fascinating facts
•    A series of ‘wow’ moments where every detail counts
•    Showcase regional talent in the formation of inspiring spaces
•    Allow people to find their way, while getting lost in the experience

Here are my top tips for how you can use this approach to breathe new life into similar heritage sites.

1. Are you creating a warm welcome?

First impressions really count when it comes to establishing a strong sense of place. We commissioned a series of five handmade montages from Irish-bred artist Martin O’Neill; part of a vivid ‘welcome wall’ that sets the tone for the adventure ahead.

Infused with bright colours and an element of fantasy, these playful montages detail people and events from Hillsborough’s lively past – and invite guests along for the ride. There’s also a statement lightbox that cuts between the castle’s elegant Drawing Room as you see it today, and a glimpse of the same room in a Thatcherite era, showing the signing of the Good Friday agreement.

The admissions desk is based around a digital version of the welcome wall, with curtains drawn back to form a stage effect. Animated displays flick between moments in Hillsborough’s history, along with ticketing information.

Meanwhile, the entrance to the Clore Learning Centre in the Stable Yard is announced by a 3D metallic sign by illustrator Rob Ryan. A stalwart of East London’s booming creative scene, Ryan’s fresh approach creates an intriguing contrast to the estate’s regal history and resonates with children and parents alike.

Together, these features conjure up an air of anticipation and excitement. Visitors are tempted into a bygone world, full of unknown characters, unexpected discoveries and undiscovered facts.

2. How can you surprise your visitors and increase dwell time across their journey?

Rather than simply reciting facts, it’s far more effective to allow visitors to uncover stories and ideas for themselves. Our visitors are invited on a journey – of which they are the lead architect. To achieve this, we created a ream of intriguing, multi-sensory installations layered with hidden depths of meaning.

For example, a 9-metre-long wall outside the 18th century Pineapple House charts the history of the fruit from exotic climes to its centrepiece of a luxurious castle banquet – and includes life-size illustrations of Viscount Wills Hill. Visitors can interact with the structure, sliding back panels, unlocking doors or viewing through pictures to reveal further snapshots of colour and information.

The 100-acre gardens are similarly dotted with subtle, intriguing interventions designed to spark curiosity. And at the Edwardian summer house, budding David Attenboroughs can rifle through cupboards and drawers to reveal local wildlife and threads of natural history. Visitors can also get hands-on with the estate’s gardening heritage thanks to a portable cart loaded with costumes and equipment to explore the grounds.

Via unexpected moments, you too can create a thrilling journey of discovery where every step counts. 

3. How can you unlock a sense of place and curate ‘wow’ moments?

This is about digging deep into the history of a place, in order to tell its story via a cast of bygone characters and events. Hillsborough offered a rich tapestry for storytelling: one of America’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, once paced its maze of velvet-draped state rooms. Under the watchful eye of ancestral portraits, key political players hashed out the Northern Ireland peace process. The chandeliered hallways have hosted a succession of royalty and VIPs, including Princess Diana, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and the Queen of England.

Our challenge was to get visitors to step inside this elite world, so they could connect with its people and experience the drama of key political moments. In Downshire Gallery, an ornate hall of mirrors, guests can literally walk in the footsteps of history. A series of 12 elaborate mirrors showcase central figures and events from Hillsborough’s captivating past. Visitors can see themselves reflected in a reportage image of Tony Blair and President George Bush, pictured in deep conversation on the castle’s ornamental lawns, and can stroll in the shadow of Mo Mowlam, who negotiated the terms of the groundbreaking Good Friday agreement in 1998 from the grounds of Hillsborough Castle. Ornate arches, etchings and typographic treatment add to the sense of drama, along with a timeline that traces the history of the castle from its roots as the family home of Viscount Wills Hill to the present day (including digital film content).

In any destination with such a visceral sense of history, it’s important to curate ‘wow’ moments like these that spotlight personal stories and roll out the red carpet for all. This, in turn, creates memories that last a lifetime and sets the stage for moments that can be easily shared on social media and by word of mouth – a crucial part of generating brand awareness. 

4. How can you showcase regional talent to create inspiring spaces?

Engaging local craft specialists is another really important part of a good visitor experience; and one that will encourage guests to return, time and again. We approached artisans in the County Down area to elevate the tucked-away outbuildings and woodland glens and other key points throughout the visitor journey. We researched regional stonemasons, iron workers and more.

We employed traditional blacksmithing techniques to create the castle’s new welcome sign and gates. These intricate carvings can be seen throughout the grounds, framing certain views in a fresh and suitably majestic perspective. Paving stones in the Friends Burial Garden were engraved with stories and quotes from its Quaker community and a bespoke engraved bench nestles within the estate’s secluded stone grotto. The Walled Garden, with its ancient fruit trees and apple orchard, is marked by a graceful stone carved placard.

This was a great opportunity to put regional talent on the map and showcase their work on a stage drawing international visitors. By doing this, you tie the visitor experience seamlessly to your heritage site and its community of caretakers. Your venue becomes an ongoing conservation project curated by those who love it the most. You can enhance this symmetry with calls to action urging visiting members of the public to join these makers and play their own part in safeguarding the future of a place. 

5. How can you help people to find their way, while getting lost in the experience?

We used detailed signposts and maps to create a coherent visitor path throughout the site. We then overlaid this with creative storytelling, propped up by various visual and interactive design features. The idea is that the visitor can clearly find their way around, but at the same time discover the grounds in new and captivating ways. There are loose themes and styles that bring together touchpoints of our interpretation, but each guest is free to experience these in slightly different ways. 

This isn’t simply a nice place to visit. It’s a wonderland filled with intriguing stories around every corner; whether that’s a wheelbarrow carrying an ice sculpture, a meandering woodland trail or a face in the mirror from a long-forgotten past.

To achieve this effect, you need to curate a visitor experience that appears as an organic, moving process. The test is to mould a journey that fires up the imagination and offers a range of different perspectives (depending on where you go and what you uncover). That way, guests are left with questions as well as answers; you give them a reason to return. There is always more for the visitor to see, different layers to uncover, new memories to be made.

A powerful sense of place lingers, too. Our interpretation at Hillsborough highlights the estate as a living, breathing project that guests can be part of, and help to evolve. The experience then harnesses a passion and participation in the project that will ensure its legacy for years to come.

Beverley Law is the founder and managing director of All Creative, a brand design agency with experience in the heritage sector. She can be contacted at: beverley@allcreatvebranding.com. 

Having a sustainable tourism label has become a hot topic in recent years for policy making, education, businesses and government agencies. Those certifications represent a management toolkit towards sustainable development and a worldwide effort to develop a common language about sustainability in tourism. Nevertheless, heritage interpretation is rarely a source from which a range of indicators emerge in order to measure, evaluate and establish best practices in sustainable tourism. Are we able to escape from just a bunch of volumetric indicators in tourism?

In the search for customer satisfaction, the newest tourism certification programmes, also known as ‘green certification’, have begun to take into account the three pillars of sustainable tourism: environment, society and economy. Above all, sustainable tourism is aimed at reducing the negative impacts of tourism, seeking always to extend positive impacts with a special focus on conservation, the host population and education for visitors.  Additionally, heritage interpretation emerged linked to the management and planning of natural protected areas as a tool for conservation whereas it is now a way of enhancing a destination’s assets in terms of tourism. 

The complex tourism system has the capacity to convert natural and cultural heritage into a tourism product. In some cases, such as ‘experiential tourism’, the service given to a specific traveller is aimed at adding value to a specific asset. As well as fostering a more rigourous approach to society and local culture. Moreover, heritage interpretation is often used as a tool to ‘promote’. There are very few examples of heritage interpretation as a tool for management in tourism destinations. 

Sustainable tourim has the same basic standards as heritage interpretation in theory. Both are aimed at connecting living spaces with both locals and visitors. The use of heritage interpretation also ensures greater involvement of the local population in tourism products, if done in a participatory and responsible manner. This means the local population may have an important role in the search for meanings and the facilitation of heritage interpretation services. Participation of locals offers a greater knowledge of intangible heritage, such as oral traditions. Achieving greater sustainability of the the tourism activity from the social point of view, means involving the community in a direct way. 

On the other hand, both terms – heritage interpretation and sustainable tourism – involve the creation of inclusive businesses with top quality services. Sustainability planning implies thus, creating the conditions for it when planning the responsible development of a tourist destination. Heritage interpretation techniques help to involve the local population from the first steps of planning, helping them to identify, recover and value their heritage. From the environmental point of view, sustainable tourism destinations, far from being sustainable at all, tend to focus on simply reducing negative impacts. Whereas heritage interpretation is understood as a tool for engaging and educating people. Again, we find the connection of both concepts in terms of sustainable tourism planning. 

Is this happening because we do not include proper indicators that help tourism stakeholders to connect heritage interpretation within their tourism marketing plans? That could be one of the reasons why we may insist on including it in any process that implies value enhacement or any other form of sustainable tourism. 

When facing the challenges of creating worldwide tourism quality standards, there is a need to have a transversal, dynamic and inclusive vision that takes into account social, cultural, economic and environmental dimensions that both sustaianble tourism and heritage interpretation implies. Overcoming the lack of heritage interpretation prominence means to include active protection of heritage while following high quality criteria for the creation and promotion of a destination or service. Only in this way will it be possible to move towards tourism understood as an enriching and sustainable social practice.

Nuria Mohedano is IE’s Tourism Coordinator. She is based in Puertolllano, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain and specialises in Sustainble Tourism Management at Syddansk University in Denmark. She currently combines teaching in non-formal education tourism related courses and freelance work as sustainable tourism marketing consultant. She can be contacted at: nuria.mohedano@interpret-europe.net. 

The Park offers a brilliant palette for creating exciting visitor experiences. The visitor centre, which needed expansion, is perched high on the steep east slope of the River Severn, in a dynamic, historic landscape. Set within a Geopark, on an old mining and quarrying landscape, it boasts a heritage railway and cycle route through the Park. The landscape was transformed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, from a former mining site into a Country Park, by Shropshire Council which owns and manages the site for people and wildlife.

We created messaging focussed on the themes of A Centre of Industry, A Changing Landscape, River Wildlife and Our River. 

To bring joy, we created a series of interactive games and engaging exhibits to provoke dialogue and immerse participants in rich and valuable stories. Gameplay included a scaled-up board game, which tied into the work of the Heritage Lottery Fund Unlocking the Severn project. Players must work their way across a magnetic board playing as endangered fish species. They discover the perils of weirs and the joys of fish-ladders in their quest to reach the finish line. 

Other activities include; a Connect Flowers game; a reading Foxy Tales Book Bench, a Bee an Animal dressing-up table and a crawl-through Kingfisher’s Nest Burrow. We also installed a wildlife tracing table and a children’s Activity Table depicting the 18th Century landscape with interactive features of the period.

The exhibition was gently inspired by the learning philosophies of Montessori, Steiner and Reggio Emilia. The exhibits draw on the principles devised by Loris Malaguzzi, founder of the Reggio practice including the Hundred Languages of Children, inviting children (and adults) to learn in their own interactive way. Pale birch ply and a bright painterly colour range provide a wholesome educational feel.
 
The Park is populated with intriguing historical characters. We chose to interpret a few, including Alfred Head, a miner who spent his whole working life at the mines from age 12 until his last working days aged 72. His weekly handwritten payslips are displayed alongside carefully selected mining artefacts, providing an emotive insight into his life. This is one of many features embedded within a vast pictorial timeline; A Changing Landscape. This exhibit was designed to work for a range of audiences, with younger people able to visually ‘read’ the positioning of objects and engaged adults finding interest in dates and facts about the site.  

Severn Valley Country Park visitor centre officially reopened on 6 October 2019, thanks to generous part-funding from The European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development: Europe investing in rural areas and part-funding by Shropshire Council.
 

Beth Morafon is a visitor experience specialist with 20 years’ practice as Senior Consultant at WWT Consulting and Senior Project Officer for WWT visitor centres in the UK. She is now Director of VisitMôr, a public realm and visitor experience consultancy. She can be contacted at: beth@visitmor.co.uk.  

Keen to explore new ways of engaging visitors, staff from the Abbey and local partners, including the Belle Rive community centre, contacted IE back in 2016 and took part in a Certified Interpretive Guide (CIG) course in Athens, funded by the European Erasmus+ programme. 

Taking the inspiration back with them to France, they have since developed an unusual sensory guided walk using hand-held mirrors allowing visitors to make their own personal connection by channelling their gaze to subtle features above their heads. It’s similar to using an empty picture frame to focus your attention on a specific point. Pens and paper also enable participants to draw what inspires them and say why to their fellow visitors. No need to be an accomplished artist here, just the chance to show your emotions on paper! 

The Abbaye’s aim was to break with the classic scenario of the guide dispensing their knowledge to a passive audience that receives it. As a result, the walk is thoroughly interactive and positively encourages intra-group dynamics between participants, young and old.

As the Abbey’s European Projects Officer, Vincent Soccodato, says, ‘You don’t have to have a PhD to talk about heritage; emotion, interaction and shared interpretation are quite enough!’

The word has clearly spread as plans are in place for IE to train a second team of heritage staff from the area in spring 2019. Decidedly, interpretation helps see heritage from a different angle, so let’s hope that local efforts in Charente-Maritime, aided by Interpret Europe, go from strength to strength.    

A full article in French by Eugenie Baccot is available at: https://ec.europa.eu/epale/fr/node/87046  

Sandy Colvine is Interpret Europe’s Outreach Coordinator and a member of IE’s Training Team. He lives near Avignon in France and can be contacted at: alexander.colvine@interpret-europe.net. 

To cite this article:
Colvine, Sandy (2018) ‘Done with mirrors – accessing built heritage in France from a new perspective’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2018, 30.
Available online:
www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/ie-newsletter_2018-4_winter.pdf