The General Assembly decided that in 2021, ‘Individual membership’ will become the only membership category for individual members.
In 2017, the General Assembly introduced professional membership in order to have comparable fees with other international organisations. All individual members involved in heritage interpretation were asked to change to this new category which was designed to become the standard category for individual members. However, by the end of 2019, only 18% of all individual IE members were in the professional membership category. The average fee for individual members had dropped to €25 and this situation puts increasing pressure on the continued provision of IE activities and services.
To cope with this, the General Assembly decided that the category ‘Professional membership’ will be removed again, while membership fees for the new ‘Individual membership’ category will equal the fees now charged for ‘Professional membership’.
Members joining IE for the first time should benefit from an entry level. Entry individual membership will be 50% of the full individual membership (which means it equals the current individual membership). This way, members joining especially to attend an IE training course can take advantage of a ‘test phase’. However, by the end of their year of entry, they will need to decide whether they would like to leave IE or to continue as full individual members.
For current individual or professional members this means:
- Members who are now professional members will become full individual members but pay the same fee they paid before as professional members.
- Members who are now individual members would be converted to full individual membership by the beginning of 2022.
Against the background of the 2020 coronavirus crisis, which has also had significant impact on the growth of IE, the General Assembly decided that there shall be no automatic conversion before January 2022.
Nevertheless, we ask all individuals who are currently in the lower entry category to switch to the higher full category if at all possible and if their situation has not been too adversely affected by the current global crisis. Full individual membership means an annual fee ranging from €20 to €80, according to your country of residence.
If you are an individual but not a professional member and feel you could afford the full fee in 2021, it would help IE greatly. Just drop us a line at office@interpret-europe.net to change your membership category and declare that you are ready to pay the full fee.
Available online: https://www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/IE_newsletter_2020_4_winter.pdf
