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.

An IE Certified Interpretive Guide (CIG) course was held in San Sebastian – Donostia (Basque Country) in October. It was organised by Aktibatu-Bizibiziki consultancy agency (www.aktibatu.eus) and led by Evarist March Sarlat. A group of twelve people shared diverse knowledge and experiences, enhancing creativity through their collective brains and cooperation.

They were five intensive days held in Ekogunea, a space specially designed to extend ecological culture from environmental awareness to action (www.ekogunea.es). Our training took place among happy animals, community gardens and a space specifically designed to support environmental education, which we used to test our individual and group skills.

Combining theory and practice, indoors and outdoors, in different individual and group activities, we assimilated the bases of interpretation and the six principles of Tilden, training in the use of resources and the structure that allows us to design talks and interpretive tours in a professional way, and so contributing to improving the understanding, connection and involvement of people in the care of our planet.

Three examples of messages we explored through new eyes:

How to talk about biomimicry… without mentioning it
Here, for instance, a group of colleagues brought us closer to nature as a source of inspiration in modern design: what does the shape of the egg, the plumage of geese or the membranes of ducks have to do with the design of tools, instruments and even vehicles?

Traditional games and the commons
We saw how hopscotch, a popular children’s game, can serve as a bridge to talk about aspects of culture in relation to cooperation and the commons.

Bio and cultural diversity
We looked at different oak tree leaf shapes, the result of hybridization between native and non-native species, to conclude that the richness of a territory is deeply linked to biodiversity and that cultural diversity is one more expression of it.

We ended the course even more convinced that guiding, more than a trivial pastime, can become an educational and empowering act. Today, more than ever, interpreting is key to transmit a holistic vision of the territory, which will facilitate a deeper connection between people and nature, not as tourists but as responsible citizens in a resilient world.

We are excited about generating new interpretive routes with content and messages that contribute to regenerating our relationship with our territory, the Basque Country, and our planet.

Karlos Solana Arruti is an educator and mountaineer, a passionate guide of Gipuzkoa, his herrialde – or territory – in the Basque Country. Karlos can be contacted through social networks: @Karlos Solana.Solana.

Flor Savanti is an anthro-archaeologist designing and guiding cultural and natural experiences in the Basque Country and the Pyrenees. Connect with her at: info@bakeana.com or www.bakeana.com. 

To cite this article:
Solana Arruti, Karlos and Savanti, Flor  (2020) ‘Cooperation and love for the land’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2020, 11.

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

Traditionally, we separate nature and culture. They are seen as the ‘natural world’ and the ‘human culture world’, and we often think that somehow they should be regarded as two separate fields of study and two separate topics for interpretation. This tradition is strong – our language, education and professional cultures maintain and enhance this divide and we tend to regard ourselves as either ‘natural heritage people’ or ‘cultural heritage people’. We are biologists, or we are historians.

In 2017, Jon Kohl wrote an article for this newsletter (Jon Kohl (2017) ‘Nature and cultural heritage are one and the same’) encouraging us to think that nature and culture are not divided. They are one whole – we are part of nature and nature is part of us. He stressed that there was only one process of evolution, and evidence of this process is all around us and folds us into it. We find nature in all culture and in all nature, there is culture. There is not a square centimetre on Earth’s surface that has escaped alteration by human action.

During Interpret Europe’s web conference 2020, one of the round table discussions addressed nature interpretation. And almost immediately the discussion questioned the idea of handling nature interpretation as a separate activity and not a fundamental part of what Interpret Europe is all about. Part of the problem is that cultural heritage is the default idea of what heritage is, and we, therefore, feel we need to talk about nature as a separate theme.

The group found that roughly two of the presentations came from a natural heritage context and fourteen were examples from the cultural heritage field. Also, the connections to EU programmes at a strategic European level were all focused on cultural heritage and education. Is this a trend for our work, conferences and members? If it is, there is a risk that people working in the context of natural heritage think of IE as an irrelevant organisation for them, when actually one of the fundamentals of IE is that it is a bridging organisation where people working both in the natural and cultural fields can meet and develop heritage interpretation together.

Interpret Europe should be the one organisation that really connects these two artificially separated worlds, by connecting the people working to interpret them. IE’s mission is to ‘serve all who use first-hand experiences to give natural and cultural heritage a deeper meaning’. But if we are to serve all we should be considering heritage as one whole, with IE acting as the bridging organisation that sees no separation in the interpretive approach.

There are many global initiatives that support this comprehensive approach. The signatories of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015) were committed to achieving sustainable development in its three dimensions – economic, social and environmental – in a balanced and integrated manner. The European Landscape Convention, the Faro Convention and the Convention on Biological Diversity walk hand in hand in recognising that culture is dependent on nature and on the proper functioning of ecosystems and biodiversity. They also recognise that communication is the key to achieving their goals, involving heritage communities and local and traditional knowledge.

Sometimes interpreters have a focus on culture and sometimes on nature. That is fine. But for an interpretive approach to communication there is no divide. Interpret Europe cooperation is an opportunity for our community of interpreters to “meet” over professional boundaries in our common interest for interpretation, to share experiences and to engage. The professional encounters in IE are also a great chance for all interpreters to build and develop knowledge, both in the art of interpretation and in the holistic view of nature and culture, and the concept of heritage.

A group of participants from the web conference in May would like to encourage more discussion. We would like to know what you, as IE members, feel about ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ interpretation. Do you agree, or not, that by separating these into two distinct disciplines merely maintains an unnatural division between human and natural evolution? Should we be aiming more to consider ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ as one integrated ‘heritage’? How can we work actively to use interpretation as a bridge and to maintain the relevance of membership for professionals from both fields – in our common field of interpretation?  Anyone interested in contributing is welcome to contact Eva or Peter with comments and suggestions.

Eva Sandberg is the Director of the Swedish Centre for Nature Interpretation in the Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She can be contacted at: eva.k.sandberg@slu.se. 

Peter Seccombe is co-director of Red Kite Environment, a consultancy specialising in interpretation and learning experiences for heritage organisations throughout Europe. He can be contacted at: peter.seccombe@redkite-environment.co.uk.

To cite this article: Sandberg, Eva and Seccombe, Peter (2020) ‘Heritage is both nature and culture – How Interpret Europe could strengthen the connection’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2020, 4-5.

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