We will meet 16-19 April in Faro, Portugal with the theme: Re-interpreting heritage in the light of Faro.
Interpret Europe’s Conference Coordinator Bettina Lehnes and Country Coordinator Portugal, Pedro Morais, are just back from Faro where they spent some packed and exciting days. It’s now time to bring all their impressions together to provide a memorable conference programme for you.
The old town of Faro enchants and captivates with a labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets lined with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses and a Gothic cathedral at its centre where you find many traces of its history and feel the spirit of the city’s eventful past.
Off Faro’s shore lies the Parque Natural da Rio Formosa, a labyrinth of canals, islands, salt marshes, mudflats and sandbanks which attracts a great range of marine life and migratory birds and is the most important natural resource in the south of Portugal.
While we are still discussing the possibilities, developing new ideas and discarding others to create the next exciting conference for you, it is certain that we cannot possibly gather in Faro without talking about the Faro Convention. The Council of Europe’s Faro Convention of 2005 was a groundbreaking milestone towards a value-based and more inclusive understanding of heritage. Although written for the field of cultural heritage, its values and principles can inspire nature interpretation in the same way. Today, the Faro Convention is even more relevant than ever, while its potential to enhance theory and practice of all heritage interpretation is still not fully embraced.
Let’s come together and reflect on the ethics and methods of heritage interpretation related to the Faro spirit, aiming to engage diverse heritage communities in interpretive co‐creation.
You can learn what the Faro convention is about here: https://rm.coe.int/1680083746
If you want to find out a little more about Faro and our hosting partners, please keep an eye on the conference website and information will be added as we have it: www.interpreteuropeconference.net. We will use the summer to provide more information soon and issue the call for papers by October.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or suggestions, or would like to offer your support, please contact Bettina Lehnes at: bettina.lehnes@interpret-europe.net.
We are looking forward to seeing many of you in Faro in April 2026!
To cite this article: IE Conference Team (2025) ‘Interpret Europe conference 2026 – Save the date!‘ in Interpret Europe Newsletter 2-2025, pg.25.
Available online: Newsletter summer 2025
