EU Work Plan for Culture 2023-2026 adopted 

On 29 November, the Council of Culture Ministers of the EU adopted a Resolution on the EU Work Plan for Culture 2023-2026. It sets out priorities to address the main challenges facing the cultural and creative sectors today and corresponding actions to address them.

The implementation will involve close cooperation between the Member States, the Commission and the Presidencies of the Council. Among the priorities related to cultural heritage are:

• enhancing participation in culture and cultural heritage, creativity and the arts
• preparing cultural heritage and the cultural and creative sectors for future challenges, including climate change
• supporting innovation in the cultural and creative sectors, digital transformation and the accessibility of culture and cultural heritage in the digital space, in order to contribute to the sustainability transformation needed to meet the objectives of the European Green Deal and the 2030 Agenda
• and cultural co-creation in order to underpin and communicate our European values, including artistic liberties and cultural rights, in large parts of the world

Specific actions will be carried out in relation to the priorities identified, in the form of conferences, workshops, peer-learning activities, ad hoc expert groups, to name just a few.

New report on culture for sustainable development in EU actions On 9 December, the European Commission published a report on the cultural dimension of sustainable development in several present and upcoming EU policies, programmes and initiatives, such as sustainable cultural tourism, the protection of our cultural heritage, and the New European Bauhaus and its cross-cutting objectives.

This report follows an invitation in the Council’s Work Plan for Culture 2019-2022 for an action plan in this field. The report builds upon the results from UNESCO’s MONDIACULT 2022 conference (which called for culture to be included as a specific objective in its own right among the next United Nations Development Goals) and reconsiders the current role of cultural policies in the EU, and how aligned they are with the Union’s commitment to deliver on the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

A core message of renowned experts is that the challenges the EU faces linked to sustainable development require greater policy coherence between cultural policies and sustainable development strategies at different levels of policy making in Europe. The report suggests that a common approach, in the form of an EU strategic framework for culture, would strengthen the effectiveness of public policies on culture. The report complements the recommendations of EU Member States’ experts on the cultural dimension of sustainable development of 20 September 2022, and it follows the new EU Work Plan for Culture 2023-2026. Read the full report here.

Adoption of EU Action Plan against trafficking in cultural goods

On 13 December, the European Commission adopted the EU Action Plan against trafficking in cultural goods. The Action Plan aims to provide a clear, comprehensive and effective framework to the EU contribution to the fight against trafficking of cultural goods in the years 2023-2025.

The action plan focuses on four strategic objectives:

• it proposes how to improve prevention and detection of crimes by market participants and cultural heritage institutions
• it lists actions aiming to strengthen law enforcement and judicial capabilities
• it proposes how to boost international cooperation on combatting illicit trade
• it announces measures to raise awareness amongst other key stakeholders to protect cultural goods from crime

The document not only outlines the actions to be implemented by the EU but it also encourages the Member States to put in place solutions to curb trafficking in cultural goods.

 Winner and finalists of the Religious Heritage Innovator of the Year

Future for Religious Heritage (FRH) is delighted to announce the 2022 winner and four finalists of the Religious Heritage Innovator of the Year. The award launched on 9 May 2022 with the aim of celebrating excellence and highlighting best practices in the protection, enhancement and promotion of European sacred heritage. The first edition has been dedicated to the theme of sustainability, one of the five pillars of the European Commission’s Framework for Action on Cultural Heritage.

The five selected projects exemplify the different facets of sustainability and demonstrate that innovation does not have to be digital. FRH hopes that these noteworthy examples will serve as an inspiration to the cultural sector and as evidence of the efforts that heritage organisations are making to ensure a more sustainable future for cultural religious heritage.

The Award Ceremony of the Religious Heritage Innovator of the Year will take place in Lund, Sweden, on 21 April 2023 during the 2023 FRH Biennial Conference European Sustainable Religious Heritage.

Increase the social impact of your museum with new tool MOI Framework

The MOI! Museums of Impact project (2019-2022) has developed the MOI Framework to help museums discuss, evaluate, and choose development goals to increase their impact in society. It complements already existing models of quality requirements and impact measuring by focusing on internal capacity development in museums, helping organisations to take control of their own impact.

NEMO has been part of developing the framework and they are proud to host it on their website at: www.ne-mo.org/museumsofimpact
The free to use framework and tools are currently available in English and Eesti (Estonian). German, Italian and Icelandic translations will soon be made available. Find out more in this press release issued by MOI! Museums of Impact.

To cite this article: IE News Team (2022) ‘Round-up of European policy and news’ in Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2022, pg.23-24

Available online: https://interpret-europe.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Newsletter-2022_4-winter.pdf

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.

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