In an online meeting beginning of May 2021, Entwicklungsagentur Rheinland-Pfalz presented the different outputs of the Heritage-Pro project to different organizations and stakeholders coming from different disciplines of the local cultural heritage sector, focussing especially on municipalities. In the beginning, it was discussed why interdisciplinary cooperation in cultural heritage management is important, and the leading question was: How can the cultural heritage sites located in Rhineland-Palatinate benefit from interdisciplinary cooperation?
The event was dedicated to introduce the training scheme, the guidelines, and the ready-to-apply Tool Kit and show participants different possibilities on how to apply these materials. Especially small municipalities with local cultural heritage sites in the rural areas work a lot with volunteers and citizens engaging in the preservation of cultural heritage sites. It appeared, that especially the inclusion of volunteers and the participation of citizens is an important factor, e.g. for municipalities. It became obvious, that the different modules can help people working in cultural heritage management to gain more interdisciplinary knowledge by working with the Heritage-Pro materials.
Furthermore, the Heritage-Pro materials offer sites not having a lot of financial resources an easy way to make interdisciplinary training available for their stakeholders, as the materials can also be used by self-learners in order to gain new knowledge from different disciplines. A special focus by participants was put on the Heritage-Pro Tool Kit as they welcomed the ready-to-apply templates as very useful and close to aspects needed from their professional working days. Participants were shown, that the materials already had their first practical test at a heritage site in Rhineland-Palatinate: In April 2021, 40 young people from all over Europe digitally developed new ideas for the restoration and use of the so-called Häusen Crane (see picture) in St. Goarshausen / Rhineland-Palatinate. It is an industrial monument built in 1917 which has been renovated in the past two years. Participants of the digital Heritage-Pro training camp applied the Heritage-Pro materials and elaborated new ideas and creative concepts on how to do the management of this cultural heritage site.
All in all, the different stakeholders were very interested in the materials and once more confirmed to Entwicklungsagentur Rheinland-Pfalz, that the Heritage-Pro project and its interdisciplinary approach were needed and fill a gap existing ever since in the field of cultural heritage management. This is the reason why Entwicklungsagentur decided to publish the German versions of the Heritage-Pro materials in a printed version and make them accessible to interested stakeholders. If you are interested in getting a free version, please write a mail to gill@ea-rlp.de The printed versions will be available in autumn 2021.
(picture credits: Entwicklungsagentur Rheinland-Pfalz)
