How can heritage practitioners create meaningful opportunities for communities to shape the ways their heritage is understood, cared for and shared? This question guided HERITΛGE’s recent four-day online workshop, Engaging Communities in Cultural Heritage, which brought together 23 participants from 18 countries.

Participants joined from Poland, Lebanon, Italy, Iraq, Albania, Greece, Armenia, Rwanda, Serbia, Latvia, Mauritius, India, Egypt, Iran, South Africa, Kenya, Palestine and Nepal to explore 

The programme examined different understandings of community, identity, belonging and relationships with heritage, while emphasising the importance of positionality, research, inclusion, accessibility and meaningful participation. 

Participants were introduced to approaches including Asset-Based Community Development, asset mapping and ethnographic research, exploring how community assets, knowledge, relationships and networks can inform the design and implementation of engagement activities. 

Through collaborative exercises and practical discussions, they considered how engagement strategies can respond to different community contexts, needs and perspectives, while addressing issues such as trust, representation, internal dynamics, sustainability and informed consent.

The workshop also addressed the methodological and ethical dimensions of oral history, with a focus on interview preparation, questioning techniques, memory, documentation, consent and the responsibilities of researchers when working with sensitive narratives and communities. 

Participants explored how oral testimonies can be documented, analysed and contextualised, while reflecting on the relationship between the interviewer, the narrator and the resulting historical record. 

The programme was delivered by , Dr Aris Anagnostopoulos, HERITΛGE Public Director, and Dr Lena Stefanou Archaeologist-Museologist and Visiting Lecturer for Museum Studies ad the University of Bologna. It concluded with a guest lecture by Elijah Vanderpuye Cunnison, Cultural Officer at Ghana’s National Commission on Culture and a Theatre Studies graduate, who shared insights from his professional experience on Ghanaian culture and heritage, community engagement, oral history, heritage interpretation and community-based heritage initiatives. 

His contribution broadened the discussion to issues including community consent, heritage education, benefit sharing and intellectual property, as well as the wider connections between heritage and education, gender, climate change, human rights, sustainable development, tourism, science and technology, disaster management, media and intercultural competence.

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Alexandre Causse from RCH Co-ordinator FSP declaring the opening of the Kick off event

The Heritage Management Organization (HERITΛGE) marked this year’s European Heritage Days by joining our fellow consortium partners and hundreds of cultural heritage and climate professionals, researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders from around the world for the launch of the European Partnership for Resilient Cultural Heritage (RCH) in Marseille, France. RCH is co-funded by the European Union. 

With the 2026 European Heritage Days theme, “Heritage at Risk: Revive, Resist, Reimagine,” the gathering offered a timely opportunity to turn attention towards the future of heritage in a changing climate—and the role heritage itself can play in helping communities adapt.

The successful kick-off event, organised by RCH coordinators Fondation des sciences du patrimoine on 29 September 2026, brought together participants in Marseille and online to explore RCH’s ambitions and opportunities for collaboration. Alongside the public launch, meetings of the RCH Executive Board and Partnership Assembly provided opportunities for consortium members to advance their shared work and help shape the initiative’s next steps.

The Kick off event took place at Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucem) and the neighbouring Cosquer Méditerranée which hosted the panels. We extend our warm thanks to both venues, Mucem for organising the event, and the team at Cosquer Méditerranée for stepping in on the day of the launch when disruption caused by strike action in France required additional support. Their responsiveness and hospitality helped make the event a success. The Partnership Assembly came together at the Pharo Campus of the Aix Marseille University with which RCH signed an MoU for cooperation. 

HERITΛGE was represented by its Director, Dr. Evangelos Kyriakidis,  our Communications Lead, Maria Kagkelidou and Roula Gika, our Chief Administrative Officer.

Co-funded by the European Union, RCH brings together more than 90 partners from 30 countries in a ten-year collaboration connecting cultural heritage and climate research. It will support transnational research, strengthen cooperation and help translate knowledge into practical responses to climate change. Its ambition encompasses both protecting heritage from climate impacts and understanding how heritage, traditional knowledge and communities can contribute to adaptation.

HERITΛGE leads the Partnership’s communication, dissemination and exploitation efforts, helping its activities, findings and opportunities reach the people and organisations who can use them. We also contribute to mapping activities and to the development of the Partnership’s capacity-building programme for the coming decade.

That work is swiftly moving from discussion to delivery with the first RCH Seasonal School being delivered by HERITΛGE in Athens and online from 5 to 15 October 2026. Titled Heritage Adaptation to Climate Change, the School will bring together 15 participants in person and more than 100 online for an intensive programme connecting climate science with cultural heritage management. It is the culmination of HERITΛGE’s long standing commitment to climate change adaptation and mitigation for cultural and natural heritage and is led by Dr. Kyriakidis, Professor Peter Brimblecombe, and Dr. Jenny Richards. Through lectures, workshops, field visits and project-based learning, participants will explore climate-related risks and develop approaches to adapting heritage to a changing environment.

We thank our partners from around the world for joining us for the launch of RCH and supporting this major initiative as well as the Seasonal School. 

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Mark chatting to community members in the Red Rocks centre.

By Mark Goldstone* 

Ochre burnt-orange dust, which for convenience we call red, covers both the outside and the inside of my 4×4. Everything is a hill in Rwanda, and my trip today takes me up a thousand hills and down a thousand more. Power takes me up and gravity takes me down like a marble in a marble run. 

My destination is the Red Rocks Intercultural Exchange Centre in Rwanda’s highlands outside the city of Musanze. The journey is hard and I arrive tired and dusty, but within five minutes every member of staff knows my name. This is the kind of welcome you can expect at Red Rocks, a community-based initiative  working with communities living alongside protected areas and important natural ecosystems that has received one of HERITΛGE’s small grants for African projects and is also the recipient of another grant, fiscally sponsored by HERITΛGE.

The Musanze project combines accommodation with a cultural centre where local people ply traditional crafts, selling their wares in the onsite shop. There is basket weaving, a traditional kitchen serving vegetables grown in the onsite garden. Drums beat the dusk, reminding us that the end of the day is near. 

Proofing dough takes patience, you just have to wait till the right texture is achieved; in the Red Rocks kitchen they make everything fresh so some waiting is worthwhile. The Chef comes out to greet me in person and enquires about my tastes. Needless to say, he already knows my name. An hour later the freshly made samosas arrive hot from the kitchen. Too hot to touch, more patience required but eventually the spicy samosas taste of smiles. Love hides in the corners of the food. Love of the craft of cookery, love of the ability to sustain and entertain at once. A cold beer dances with the chilli heat and sleep will not be long. 

The next day is the opening ceremony of the Red Rocks Cultural Festival 2026. Many members of the local community leaders have gathered to kick off a week of celebration and dialogue. Much has already been achieved, but that just proves the potential of the Red Rocks approach, marrying community development with sustainable tourism. 

As I am here representing HERITΛGE, I am asked for some words. I talk about the 115 heritage projects in 35 African countries that have received small grants through the HerMaP Africa initiative* the Organization’s approach of supporting local action whilst situating the projects within global fellowship networks. I reflect on Rwanda’s extraordinary 9.2% growth in GDP, a young, increasingly educated population and the investment that is flowing into both tourism and the new knowledge economies. Rwanda punches above its weight class for a small nation in the hills. 

Lastly I conclude, “Good leaders get things done, great leaders create platforms for other leaders to emerge.” This is what I learn at Red Rocks, a platform in which leadership from the community is able drive change in a sustainable way. Red Rocks founder Greg still has many ambitions for the future.  

As I am preparing to leave I hear that the chef has been in an accident with a motorbike. Only once returned to Kigali do I hear the tragic news that our chef did not survive his injuries. This article is dedicated to the memory of Twizeyimana Faustin. Our thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family. 

* Mark Goldstone has researched and written HERITΛGE’s forthcoming publication showcasing projects supported through its grant programmes across Africa. This reflection emerged from his visit to Red Rocks Rwanda, one of the organisations featured in the publication.

**Through HerMaP Africa, HERITΛGE has provided 74 small grants for African heritage project and acted as a fiscal sponsor for another 29.   

*** HERITΛGE signed an MoU with Red Rocks Rwanda in 2024 and is currently supporting two of the organization’s heritage projects.

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The Heritage Management Organization (HERITΛGE) se complace en anunciar los 10 proyectos seleccionados para recibir apoyo a través de HerMaP México, su principal iniciativa para fortalecer la gestión del patrimonio cultural en la región fronteriza del norte de México.

Los proyectos seleccionados representan a Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León y Tamaulipas, garantizando así la representación de los seis estados que conforman el ámbito geográfico de HerMaP México en esta primera convocatoria de apoyos.

Los proyectos fueron seleccionados entre 115 solicitudes recibidas a través de una convocatoria abierta lanzada a principios de 2026, reflejando tanto la extraordinaria riqueza del patrimonio cultural de la región como el compromiso de las comunidades, profesionales e instituciones que trabajan para salvaguardarlo. 

Diez proyectos, múltiples expresiones del patrimonio

Las iniciativas seleccionadas ofrecen una ventana a la extraordinaria diversidad del norte de México. Abarcan desde técnicas agrícolas tradicionales y tradiciones gastronómicas hasta artesanías, música, sitios de memoria, museos y documentación fotográfica del patrimonio cultural inmaterial. Se desarrollan en paisajes igualmente diversos, que van desde las costas y los extensos desiertos hasta regiones montañosas y complejos entornos urbanos.

Igualmente importante es la diversidad de las personas y organizaciones que están detrás de estos proyectos y que trabajan por la salvaguardia del patrimonio en toda la región. Entre los beneficiarios se encuentran personas y comunidades indígenas, iniciativas comunitarias y asociaciones, profesionales independientes e instituciones públicas. Algunos proyectos se desarrollan en pequeñas comunidades, mientras que otros tienen el potencial de generar impacto a nivel estatal. Varios involucran a jóvenes, fomentan el diálogo intergeneracional y crean oportunidades para transmitir conocimientos y saberes de una generación a otra.

“Estos diez proyectos nos muestran lo que realmente significa el patrimonio cuando miramos más allá de monumentos o colecciones individuales: es conocimiento, memoria, habilidades, paisajes y prácticas profundamente arraigadas en la vida de las personas”, señaló el Dr. Evangelos Kyriakidis, Director de The Heritage Management Organization. “Nuestro objetivo no es simplemente proporcionar financiamiento. Queremos ofrecer a las personas y organizaciones con buenas ideas los recursos, las capacidades y las conexiones que necesitan para convertirlas en iniciativas sostenibles que generen beneficios duraderos para sus comunidades”.

El proceso de selección, que se desarrolló en cuatro etapas, fue diseñado no solo para identificar propuestas sólidas, sino también para ayudar a las personas y organizaciones participantes a fortalecer sus capacidades en gestión de proyectos.

Durante los próximos meses, HERITΛGE acompañará a los equipos seleccionados durante la implementación de sus proyectos. Asimismo, se organizarán actividades de creación de redes e intercambio de conocimientos que conectarán a los beneficiarios entre sí, generando oportunidades para compartir experiencias, desafíos y buenas prácticas entre distintos estados y sectores.

La aspiración es que el impacto vaya mucho más allá de estos 10 proyectos. Al reunir a personas con diferentes conocimientos, experiencias y enfoques sobre el patrimonio, HerMaP México busca contribuir a la creación de una red regional más sólida, capaz de impulsar la colaboración y la innovación mucho después de que los proyectos individuales hayan concluido.

Las iniciativas seleccionadas también contribuirán a acercar la diversidad del patrimonio del norte de México a un público internacional más amplio.

Lista de proyectos que han recibido apoyos

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The Heritage Management Organization (HERITΛGE) is delighted to announce the 10 projects selected to receive funding through HerMaP Mexico, its major initiative to strengthen cultural heritage management across Mexico’s northern border region.

The selected projects represent Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, ensuring that all six states within HerMaP Mexico’s geographic scope are represented in this first round of funding.

The projects were chosen from 115 applications submitted through an open call launched in early 2026, demonstrating both the extraordinary richness of the region’s cultural heritage and the commitment of communities, practitioners and institutions working to safeguard it. 

Ten projects, many different expressions of heritage

The selected initiatives offer a window onto the remarkable diversity of northern Mexico. They encompass heritage ranging from traditional farming techniques and gastronomic traditions to crafts, music, memorial sites, museums and the photographic documentation of intangible cultural heritage. They are rooted in landscapes that stretch from ocean coasts and vast deserts to mountain regions and complex urban environments.

Just as importantly, the people behind them reflect the diversity of those caring for heritage across the region. The successful applicants include Indigenous individuals and communities, grassroots and community-based initiatives, independent practitioners and public institutions Some projects operate within small communities, while others have the potential to create impact at state level. Several engage young people, foster intergenerational dialogue and create opportunities for knowledge to be passed between generations.

“These ten projects show us what heritage really means when we look beyond individual monuments or collections: it is knowledge, memory, skills, landscapes and practices that are embedded in people’s lives,” said Dr Evangelos Kyriakidis, Director of The Heritage Management Organization. “Our aim is not simply to provide funding. We want to give people and organizations with strong ideas the resources, skills and connections they need to turn those ideas into sustainable initiatives with lasting benefits for their communities.”

The selection process -that unfolded in four stages- was designed not only to identify strong proposals but also to help applicants develop their project-management skills. Over the coming months, HERITΛGE will work alongside the selected teams as they implement their projects. Networking and knowledge-sharing activities will also connect grantees with one another, creating opportunities to exchange experience, challenges and good practices across state and sector boundaries.

The ambition is that the impact will extend well beyond the 10 individual projects. By bringing together people with different expertise, lived experiences and approaches to heritage, HerMaP Mexico aims to help create a stronger regional network capable of supporting collaboration and innovation long after the individual projects have concluded. The selected initiatives will also help bring the diverse heritage of northern Mexico to a wider international audience.

List of awarded projects 

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The award commemorates Angela Bugeja of Malta, Molly Hude of the United States, and Ioanna Thomopoulou of Greece, students of the HERITΛGE MA in Heritage Management who passed prematurely on July 3, 2013, at the end of their fieldwork in Belize.

They gave a great deal to HERITΛGE in its early years, and the annual scholarship exists so that their names, and their contribution, are carried forward by other heritage professionals.

About the Angela Bugeja, Molly Hude and Ioanna Thomopoulou Memorial Scholarship
HERITΛGE aims to award one Memorial Scholarship each year. The award covers tuition fees only. It is offered to a student from the developing world, or from one of the three countries of the colleagues it commemorates – Malta, the United States, and Greece. Eligibility and application details are published at heritagemanagement.org.

About the Certificate in Digital Tools for Heritage Management
The certificate is a part-time, 30 ECTS program at EQF level 6, offered jointly by HERITΛGE and HOGENT. It runs over three months of online study followed by supervised fieldwork in Greece, and is aimed at students and young professionals working in archaeology, architecture, conservation, anthropology, geography, and heritage management who need practical command of spatial and digital documentation. Its modules are:

• Surveying methods (4 ECTS) – photogrammetry, laser scanning, and advanced spatial data acquisition
• Land surveying in practice (4 ECTS) – acquisition of photogrammetric and laser scanning data
• Data processing (4 ECTS) – processing acquired data in the relevant software
• International land surveying project (6 ECTS) – integrated fieldwork in Greece
• Cartography and GIS (4 ECTS) – geographic information systems, from basics to advanced use
• Introduction to heritage management 1 and 2 (4 ECTS each)

Full course details are available at the HERITΛGE Digital Tools certificate page.

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The programme’s second, in-person phase—the Community Lab: Developing Heritage Interpretation Skills through Participatory Approaches—took place from 28 August to 1 September 2026 at the Ethnological Museum of Thrace in Alexandroupoli, Greece. Participants had the opportunity to put into practice the knowledge and tools acquired during the programme’s initial online phase by working with local communities and co-creating approaches to cultural heritage interpretation.

At a time when the way we interpret heritage plays a crucial role in shaping the communities we build, the need for more participatory, inclusive, and collaborative approaches is more relevant than ever. The EMPATHS training programme seeks to develop an accessible framework and participatory methodology, equipping heritage professionals with the tools they need to engage actively with communities and co-create narratives that reflect diverse voices and experiences.

During the workshop, participants collaborated with local communities, applying participatory methods in real-world settings and co-creating new approaches to cultural heritage interpretation. The fieldwork followed six live online sessions organised as part of the project.

The participation of eleven heritage professionals in the Alexandroupoli workshop was made possible through the generous support of the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation, which funded the participation of eight professionals, and the Captain Vassilis and Carmen Constantakopoulos Foundation, which supported three participants.

“The well-structured programme offered a meaningful field experience, giving both me and my fellow participants the opportunity to collaborate and interact with members of the local communities,” said Panagiotis Adrianopoulos of the Society for the Preservation of Historical Archives and Cultural Heritage “Archeion Taxis”, whose participation was made possible with the support of the Captain Vassilis and Carmen Constantakopoulos Foundation.

“Warmest congratulations to the entire organising team for this experience!” said Iliana Zioga, Museologist and Exhibition Curator at the Papanikolaou Museum, who participated with the support of the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation.

The EMPATHS programme is co-funded by the European Union.

*This activity forms part of the programme “Developing Contemporary Skills in Cultural Management”, implemented by The Heritage Management Organization (HERITΛGE) with the support of the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation.

**The Community Lab was implemented in collaboration with and with the support of the Captain Vassilis and Carmen Constantakopoulos Foundation, as part of its broader mission to promote cohesive and sustainable development centred on people.

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To celebrate the start of a new academic year, HERITΛGE is proud to host a public roundtable bringing together distinguished heritage leaders from five African countries. The discussion will explore how heritage—and its effective management—can serve as a lever for community and economic development, and how this potential is being approached in different national contexts.

The roundtable marks the opening of a special edition of HERITΛGE’s Community and Economic Development workshop for heritage professionals in Africa. Around 30 participants from Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda will take part in the programme, developing the knowledge and practical tools needed to create sustainable economic and social benefits through heritage.

Joining the roundtable:

Essel Blankson – Executive Director, Ghana Museums & Monuments Board

Dr Fredrick Manthi – Director of Antiquities, Sites and Monuments, National Museums of Kenya

Abebaw Ayalew Gella – Director General, Ethiopian Heritage Authority

Amb. Robert Masozera – Director General, Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy

Sanna B. Jarju – Director of Literature, Performing and Fine Arts, National Centre for Arts and Culture, The Gambia

Roundtable: Heritage as a Driver of Community and Economic Development

Date:  16 September 2026 | 13:00–14:30 UTC

Register here: The roundtable is open to the public upon registration. Please register here.  

The discussion will be moderated by Dr Paul Burtenshaw, the workshop’s lead instructor and an expert in heritage economics, heritage tourism, and the role of cultural heritage in sustainable and community development. Dr Burtenshaw is currently Senior Director of Project Impact at World Monuments Fund.

Cultural heritage managers are increasingly expected both to demonstrate the economic value of heritage and to create tangible benefits for local, regional and national economies. The Community and Economic Development workshop provides participants with a firm understanding of why cultural resources are mobilised for economic benefit, the limits and potential risks of this mobilisation, the different strategies available, and the ways in which economic impacts can be measured and communicated.

Participants are guided through the development of an economic development plan for their own heritage projects or case studies. This includes setting goals, selecting appropriate strategies, assessing economic feasibility, and establishing effective monitoring and evaluation procedures. By the end of the workshop, participants are equipped to implement context-sensitive economic development strategies in their own locations.

HERITΛGE is also currently accepting applications for the next edition of the Community and Economic Development workshop, taking place in November 2026. Heritage professionals interested in strengthening the contribution of their projects and organisations to sustainable local and community development are warmly invited to apply.

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The Gate of No Return in Ouidah, Benin, commemorating the millions of enslaved Africans

By Philip Kwame Boafo, PhD

The museum has long been imagined as a place of preservation, education, and in recent times healing. Yet I wonder whether healing has become one of the most convenient metaphors through which museums avoid the harder work of confronting history. I have been contemplating on this question a lot lately, which is, if the museum heals too quickly, what kinds of wounds does it leave untouched? 

I recently participated in a webinar put together by the Europeana Network Association Communicators Community titled Decolonising Museum Practices: Collections, Interpretation and the Invisible. During the discussion, the host, HERITΛGE’s Maria Kagkelidou asked how museums might present painful narratives while remaining sensitive to audiences. My response was that it appears we have become too eager to sanitise the past to tidy history into something consumable and morally resolved. I further suggested that we sometimes need to sit with discomfort, relaying my intervention with Donna Haraway’s (2016) invitation to stay with the trouble(1). My answer gestured towards the fact that difficult histories should not always be resolved but should sometimes remain difficult because the past itself has not been resolved. 

Difficult histories should not always be resolved but should sometimes remain difficult because the past itself has not been resolved. 

My co-panellist, Peter Jegede, offered a different perspective. He argued that there are ways to address difficult histories without reopening old wounds. He noted that the museum ought to be a place of healing. It was a compelling position, and the conversation ended there. 

Days later, while scrolling through social media, I came across a short video featuring the Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong. He was reflecting on the distinction between writing violence and writing trauma. Although the clip was brief, Vuong suggested that trauma can sometimes become an easier narrative because it names the aftermath without requiring us to remain with the structures that produced it. He spoke further and made an illustration through the image of excavation. He noted that anytime you dig, you find some bones, and the question is who was it, how did that happened and what happens now. This metaphor brought me back to the earlier conversation about museums being a place of healing. 

I very much like Vough’s metaphor and want to stretch it to the webinar conversation. I want to suggest that the museum should be less concerned with covering wounds than with excavating them. The museum should rid itself from what seems to be the endless performance of guilt and spectacle. Within the workings of the museum, there should be an understanding or a recognition, that every collection is already an excavation. This is to say, that display case or ethnographic label sits upon histories of movement, extraction, violence, and asymmetry of power. The museum therefore is full of bones, literally and metaphorically. The various human remains, sacred objects, looted artworks, displaced archives, interrupted cosmologies, stolen futures are embedded within in the museum’s make-up. To curate is therefore to decide which histories become visible or disappear into storage. 

To curate is therefore to decide which histories become visible or disappear into storage. 

Scholars such as Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (2019) have argued that the modern museum is inseparable from imperial world-making(2). For her, museums do more than just simply collect the world. Museums actively participate in producing a world in which colonial conquest appear natural, ownership is regarded as legal, and dispossession is seen as heritage. In Potential History, Azoulay challenges us to refuse the museum’s claim that colonial violence belongs safely to the past. The objects behind glass remain evidence of relationships that have never been repaired and their presence continually implicates the present.

This critique is hardly new, scholars like Tony Bennett (1995) have demonstrated how museums emerged as technologies for producing disciplined citizens(3). Annie Coombes (1994) has also showed how imperial museums helped normalised colonial authority by transforming conquest into culture(4). Similarly, James Clifford (1997) has reminded us that museums are “contact zones” where unequal encounters continue to open up(5). 

Also, Løgstrup’s (2021) proposition of the museum as a conflict zone challenges the desire to move too quickly toward healing(6). If conflict is inherited within the museum itself, then difficult histories cannot simply be treated as wounds that need closure. Instead, museums must create conditions where these tensions can remain visible and productive.

More recently, Dan Hicks (2020) has argued that ethnographic collections are the material residue of colonial violence(7). This is to say, to display them without confronting the violence that enabled their acquisition is itself a political act. So, if these scholars are correct, then the question is no longer whether museums should heal rather the question becomes, heal whom?

We cannot speak of healing without asking whose pain is recognised and whose is ignored. If we do so, we risk reproducing the very inequalities museums now seek to overcome.

Healing in any stage or state is never politically innocent. We cannot speak of healing without asking whose pain is recognised and whose is ignored. If we do so, we risk reproducing the very inequalities museums now seek to overcome. For instance, for descendants of colonial powers, healing may mean reconciliation with an uncomfortable national past. For communities whose ancestors were dispossessed, healing may require acknowledgement, restitution, repatriation, or even the refusal of museum ownership altogether. I must emphasise that what feels like closure for one community may feel like erasure for another.

This is why I remain uneasy whenever museums speak too confidently about healing. Healing often assumes that the wound has been properly diagnosed but what if the wound has barely been named? Perhaps what museums need is not therapeutic certainty but something that may look like ethical uncertainty.

This is where Haraway’s notion of staying with the trouble becomes productive. Staying with trouble does not mean celebrating conflict or refusing repair. It means resisting the temptation of premature resolution and sometimes allowing exhibitions to remain unresolved enough that visitors leave carrying questions rather than comforting answers.

The museum, then, becomes less a sanctuary than an ongoing excavation. Ocean Vuong’s metaphor of digging which I mentioned earlier captures this beautifully. Digging inevitably exposes bones and once they are out, we face an ethical decision. We can quickly rebury them and preserve institutional comfort or we can place them behind glass as objects of detached curiosity. In a more difficult sense, we can ask challenging questions like who lived, who died, who profited, who remembers, who forgot and what responsibilities emerge now that we know. Alternatively we could also ask what should we do with the information like Seth Avusuglo once told me that one of the Black Atlantic Residents asked after watching Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (8). 

These questions extend beyond human remains and apply equally to looted bronzes, sacred masks, colonial photographs, linguistic archives, botanical collections, and scientific specimens. Every object carries multiple lives, and every exhibition chooses which life to narrate. Perhaps the most important question is whose sensibilities museums are so anxious to protect and not offend. When institutions speak of avoiding offence, they rarely ask whose comfort has historically structured the museum in the first place. Sanitisation thus become a politics of selective forgetting.

Museums should certainly aspire toward healing but that healing should not arrive through simplification or carefully managed discomfort. They should instead cultivate what could be called reparative discomfort or to put it differently a willingness to remain with histories that continue to demand accountability and imagination. Perhaps this is how healing begins; by refusing to pretend it has already healed. 

* Kwame Boafo is a scholar and artist from Accra, Ghana, exploring how ritual, religion, embodied knowledge and African cultural expression intersect.

** The views and opinions expressed in Opinion Pieces featured on the HERITΛGE website, including this article, are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Heritage Management Organization (HERITΛGE), its partners, or affiliated institutions.

Footnotes: 

1.  Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
2.  Azoulay, A. A. (2019). Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. Verso.
3. Bennett, T. (2009). The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (Reprinted). Routledge.
4. Coombes, A. E. (with Internet Archive). (1994). Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. New Haven ; London : Yale University Press. http://archive.org/details/reinventingafric0000coom
5. Clifford, J. (1997). Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Harvard Univ. Press.
6. Clifford, J. (1997). Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Harvard Univ. Press.
7.  Hicks, D. (2020). The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Pluto Press.
8.  Seth Avusuglo is the manager of the Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD), a decolonial library and cultural space in Accra, Ghana. As part of LOATAD’s programming, he curates films for the Black Atlantic Residents. Following a screening of Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, one resident posed a question: “What should I do with this information?” The question captures the tension between encountering difficult historical knowledge and determining how such knowledge might be transformed into action or responsibility.

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The Heritage Management Organization (HERITΛGE) is proud to announce that it will deliver the first capacity building activity of the European Partnership for Resilient Cultural Heritage (RCH)—a major new Horizon Europe-funded initiative bringing together 90 organisations from 30 countries to strengthen the resilience of cultural heritage in the face of climate change and explore heritage’s contribution to climate change adaptation.

As one of the Partnership’s flagship capacity-building initiatives, RCH will organise a series of seven international Seasonal Schools, each exploring a different dimension of climate resilience and equipping heritage professionals with the knowledge, skills and networks needed to respond to one of the defining challenges of our time.

HERITΛGE has been entrusted with delivering the inaugural programme, Heritage Adaptation to Climate Change, which will take place 5–15 October 2026 in Athens and online. The Seasonal School marks the beginning of an ambitious global training programme that combines scientific knowledge with practical, project-based learning to help heritage professionals develop effective adaptation strategies for the places, collections and communities they serve.

“Delivering the first RCH Seasonal School is both an honour and a responsibility, and we look forward to welcoming participants from across the globe to begin this exciting journey together,” Dr Evangelos Kyriakidis

The ten-day programme will bring together internationally recognised experts in heritage management, climate science and conservation. Rather than focusing solely on theory, participants will work throughout the School on a real project from their own professional practice, receiving personalised mentoring and expert guidance while developing practical adaptation strategies that can be implemented in their own organisations.

“For almost two decades, HERITΛGE has worked with heritage professionals around the world to build practical skills and lasting international networks. Delivering the first RCH Seasonal School is both an honour and a responsibility, and we look forward to welcoming participants from across Europe and beyond to begin this exciting journey together, said HERITΛGE Director, Dr. Evangelos Kyriakidis

More than a training course, the inaugural Climate School offers participants the opportunity to become part of the growing RCH community—an international network of researchers, practitioners, policymakers and cultural institutions committed to advancing resilient cultural heritage through collaboration, innovation and knowledge exchange.

Participation in the Seasonal School is free of charge. 

In-person participation is limited to seconded experts but applications are now open for online participants. Find out more and apply here before September 15th.

We look forward to welcoming the first cohort of participants and launching this exciting new initiative together.

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