This webinar will recall Tilden’s sixth principle about tackling younger minds. Do we follow a fundamentally different approach as Tilden suggested? Which tools and methods are good to use? How do children experience heritage?

The world is changing rapidly, sometimes too fast to follow its progress. Heritage interpretation can help us to slow down the pace, to listen, to imagine and to be children. We’ll try to find answers and encourage discussion through different examples and initiatives from a mum and interpreter’s perspective.

Iva Caleta Plesa is a tourist guide for Zagreb, a French and Russian language teacher, museologist, heritage interpreter and IE Certified Interpretive Trainer. Together with her husband Boris, she runs Doremiza, a small creative space for workshops, photo sessions, lectures and meetings. Iva has a special interest in heritage interpretation for children. She is a member of a development team for the IE module for interpretation for children. She is curious, loves to travel and meet other people and beside heritage interpretation, she is passionate about all forms of learning and dancing.

Running along the ground, the wind catches under the wing and her feet leave the ground. She’s airborne. She climbs quickly and now she’s soaring over the huge expanse of the Arctic tundra with only the rush of the wind and the sound of swans and geese honking. From up here, she can see more of this remote area; such a perfect breeding ground for birds, safe from predators. The only human presence, the local tribes herding reindeer in traditional ways.

Following watercourses and coastlines, she begins her 7,000km journey south, through more densely populated areas and 11 European countries to reach the UK, experiencing and recording everything that all migratory birds have to contend with on their route: habitat loss and dwindling or changing water supplies; pollution; power lines; being shot at by hunters.

Just outside a town, a huge congregation of school children shouts up and waves. She comes down on a strip of grass and is immediately enveloped in cheering and TV cameras trying to capture the moment. The Human Swan has landed, making one of many pre-arranged visits in her three-month journey along the migratory flyway where she will engage with local communities and government officials to inform and discuss the plight that migratory birds are facing and encourage cross-border cooperation for conservation.

The Flight of the Swans project took place in 2016 with the human swan, Sacha Dench, flying by paramotor in often perilous conditions along the migration route of Bewick’s swans. Polar bears, personal injury and huge logistical challenges, as well as everything that the real swans have to deal with, including the weather, did not stop the human swan. By using powerful storytelling, along with the ambitious adventure to capture media attention, the project gained huge support.

It was awarded the 2017 Campaign of the Year in the ENDS Environmental Impact Awards for engaging more than 10,000 people on the ground, including school children, local indigenous communities, hunting groups, fish farmers, artists and government officials. More than 1,700 stories featured in the media, most of those on TV and radio, including prime-time chat shows with celebrities, and almost every story talked about the threats to swans because it was impossible to cover a woman attempting this flying feat without also asking the question, ‘Why?’.

More than 30 partner organisations got involved and were invited to interpret the story their own way to tackle their priority issues. The adaptation of the overall story to local culture and the activities inspired by it ranged hugely. In Poland, Sacha landed live on national breakfast TV to talk about lead poisoning (the only country en route with no restriction on lead in hunting) which led to a mass public response in letters and phone calls to the media and shooting associations, and hunters joining a Swan Symposium. In Latvia, an art competition encouraging people to interpret the swan stories received such a response from all ages that entries could only be cut down to a shortlist of 100. Each piece interpreted the Bewick’s swan story differently and entries ranged from swans of sculptured lace to recycled plastics and the entire migration of the swans knitted into mittens.

And now, looking to 2021 when the UN COP26 meeting on climate change will take place in Glasgow, UK, the human swan is planning to take to the skies again. This time, two record-breaking activities will come together to raise awareness of the need to act against climate change. Flying around Britain’s coastline by green-powered electric paramotor, Sacha will visit as many climate activists and local grassroots projects as possible to highlight the best of the positive action already happening. While doing this, she will attempt to inspire the largest number of people ever to sign up to a climate pledge in support of positive action in their own lives – not just around the UK but around the world through media and online coverage. Finally, the climax of this exciting project will be to deliver the results directly to the world leaders at the COP next year and demand more action. She has already been offered a seat at the table with direct access to amplify all our voices and concerns on the climate crisis.

This story comes with a price tag! The project is possible only with public support: the Crowdfunder (link below with more information on the project) is live until 23 December. It’s been a difficult year for everyone, but climate change is already affecting us all. If you are able to support the initiative in any way, please consider adding to the funds to enable Sacha to take our voice on climate action to the UN. And please share the link far and wide and consider how you could become a part of the journey. Thank you.

I’m sure the human swan will have even more tales to tell us from her latest adventure.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/round-britain-climate-challenge

Marie Banks is IE’s News Coordinator. When not volunteering for IE, she runs her own interpretation and proofreading business, www.zebraproof.uk. She can be contacted at: marie.banks@interpret-europe.net.

Sacha Dench is the UN Ambassador for Migratory Species and set up the NGO Conservation Without Borders www.conservationwithoutborders.org.

You can see some of the highlights of the Flight of the Swans project here: https://flightoftheswans.org/expedition/highlights/.

To cite this article:
Banks, Marie (2020) ‘Stories in the sky’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2020, 33-34. 

Available online: http://www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/IE_newsletter_2020_4_winter.pdf

It was the end of September, and I had moved back to my hometown only a week prior. Covid-19 and office closures brought me back home from abroad and I was dying to be a part of the community again. My new neighbourhood, named after cherry orchards that used to grow there, has an interesting community which has been collecting stories, photographs, and gathering historic data on how the neighbourhood grew and formed its identity. My first weekend was definitely marked by an event organised by this community – a Jane’s walk through Tratinska Street, with workshops, exhibitions, stories being shared, concerts, and much more.

One of the workshops was The Heritage Interpretation Workshop, led by Ivana Zrilić. We gathered at Cibona Tower, next to the statue of the late basketball player, Dražen Petrović. Participants had to bring three objects with them – the one they hold most dear, one that was the eldest, and one which travelled the farthest. All of the participants were emotionally tied to the object which objectively would not be of high value, but each item reminded them of a period or a person in their lives. We gave meanings and a new purpose to the objects, interpreted them differently than someone else could have. We have shared stories tied to the objects and the neighbourhood, while our guide slowly shifted focus on how we as people each interpret places, objects, buildings, areas, and situations differently. This was a new way of seeing things that surround us, and their meanings and value.

The second part of the workshop entailed associations connected to the object we were shown, in our case, one of them was the statue of Dražen Petrović. The associations varied from person to person, while some of us saw Dražen as a symbol of sports and success, others associated him with his early passing. Lastly, we were to draw anything we could see in our surroundings, explain to a person we were paired with why we chose that particular object, and say a few words about it. It was interesting to see how people saw, or interpreted, the staircase of the Technical Museum across the street, the phone booth, rubbish bin, etc. Interesting descriptions arose, from the modern rubbish bin representing our attitude towards nature, to a staircase drawing back to the once glorious days of Zagreb’s Fair and its importance in the region.

The workshop ended and we left with a new way of seeing the place we live in, and people we live among. The different media used to interactively interpret have shown us another way to look at heritage and brought us new knowledge.

Petra Mikolić is an M.Phil in Nordic Viking and Medieval Scandinavia. In her work she has tackled the notions and the difference between the history and the past through language and its historical sources, by the use of modern, cognitive linguistics approach.

To cite this article:
Mikolić, Petra (2020) ‘The value and interpretation of personal objects’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2020, 26.

Available online: http://www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/IE_newsletter_2020_4_winter.pdf

I met Bursu Cunneen, a Turkish artist and teacher, when she was photographing the stairs I went down after visiting the Lycia rock tombs in Feithiye, Turkey. She accidentally caught me in her shot and explained that she was working on a mosaics project for that staircase.

I was in such euphoria from visiting Troy with its magnificent museum, as well as the Lycia rock tombs of Feithiye, that when I saw a heritage site with ancient tombs below the popular tombs, dirty and surrounded by garbage containers, I expressed to Bursu my readiness to clean that place by myself. There were no information signs and in general the place seemed so undeservedly abandoned.

Bursu frowned and agreed that the heritage site really should be cleaned up to encourage others to appreciate it. So, we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to call each other. In the middle of the night I received a message from Bursu to meet the next morning.

I took my rubber gloves, left over from a business trip during quarantine, and went straight to the meeting place. And I was so surprised when I saw a smiling Bursa with a dozen workers equipped with shovels and equipment ready for cleaning the heritage site.

Bursu and I were later sitting in a local coffee shop drinking delicious Turkish tea with Suzan Tasor, a first female Headman of District, and two managers from the local museum. I listened to the story of how restless Bursa had called Suzan in the evening to inform her that we were planning to clean up the heritage site and maybe even to invite the press. That information reached the Municipal Manager and the District Governor. As a result, the Municipality agreed at 7am to organise the works that day. Bursu and I received a lot of thanks for our personal involvement. On parting, Suzan Tasor showed us an official letter of appeal on behalf of their community with a request to clean this heritage site, which was sent to the Municipality long before our appearance.

We celebrated our victory at Bursu’s 100-year-old house with magnificent views in Faralya village. It is another art project of Bursu. She has many successful projects to her name. She used her skills and art to fight poverty in a shanty Chinatown settlement in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. She made a dream come true for a child with cancer and organized a balloon flight in Cappadocia. I believe that the key to her success is not only her talent, but also her readiness to change the world for the better every day. Now many more people will be able to safely access this heritage site to engage with the past and find their own meanings there.

Nataliia Gudkova is an Associate Professor of the State Ecological Academy of Postgraduate Education and Management in Kyiv, Ukraine. You can get in touch with her at: ngudkova@gmail.com.

To cite this article: Gudkova, Nataliia (2020) ‘Cultural heritage warriors’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2020, 23.

Available online: http://www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/IE_newsletter_2020_4_winter.pdf