Tag Archives: workshops
Introducing the principles of quality heritage interpretation for site managers
HERITΛGE kicked off its 2024-2025 Online Workshop program with the Introduction to Heritage Interpretation for Site Managers workshop in early October. 19 participants from 15 different countries (Afghanistan, Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Romania, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda) attended the online course which aimed to introduce the principles of quality heritage interpretation and how these can be applied to a range of sites.
The course was led by Valya Stergioti, an interpretive trainer, planner and consultant who has run a multitude of heritage training interpretation workshops all over Europe. Penelope Gkini* delivered the keynote speech where she shared insights on Heritage Interpretation from her project in Armenoi village, Northwest Crete.
Heritage Interpretation provides a well-structured framework for non-formal learning, aimed at creating meaningful and unforgettable experiences for visitors. Over the course of three days, participants were introduced to the concept of heritage interpretation and through a combination of interactive exercises, group work, presentations and discussions, participants learned how to turn phenomena into experiences.
The 3-day intensive workshop was well received and participants were able to develop knowledge of how to provoke resonance in visitors of heritage sites and foster a greater respect for all heritage across a range of sites in different countries.
“I’ve loved everything of this course. Particularly that we were able to take part in all discussions. As a person who wanted to know more about Heritage I was pleasantly surprised on what it entails,” said Miriam Uithaler, from the Jounou Arts and Culture Foundation
“What I liked the most about the course is the opportunity it gave me to learn from other heritage site managers, to see the work that they are doing in their respective countries” said Pontso Masithela, from Sereti sa Makhoarane Heritage and Tourism Network. “It really inspired me and increased my love and appreciation for heritage management. My project is going to benefit greatly because now I have acquired new skills and knowledge on ways to effectively interpret heritage sites or objects. And I am going to share it with my colleagues.”
* Penelope Gkini, studied Communication and Media in Athens Kapodistrian Univeristy, Arts and Languages in Dijon’s University and in 2022 she finished the Master of Science in Alternative Approaches of Psychology in Education at the University of Crete. She is interested in travelling, natural and cultural heritage interpretation, piano and nature. She works as a mountain guide since 2007, she has participated in the collective work of Aristotle University” Environmental journalism and communication. She conceives and implements some programs in the countryside (The postman’s road) and she runs the “Porizo” project with psycho-pedagogical objectives.
Legacy Builders: Simen André Singstad Knutssøn
Simen André Singstad Knutssøn | Advisor, Nordland County Council, Norway
Which workshop did you attend?
Successful Fundraising for Heritage Managers: Strategies and Best Practices.
Was the training an opportunity to enhance your connection with your peers?
Yes, the workshop gave me the opportunity to meet with others from my field across the world. I found it rewarding to learn from their perspectives.
Has the training contributed towards the improvement of your career?
Indeed it has. I received a slight pay raise, but the biggest benefit for me has been that I consider funding in a different way than I did before attending the course.
The biggest benefit for me has been that I consider funding in a different way.
Do you feel that your ability to perform relevant tasks has improved?
Yes. My job allows me to both ensure funding for external projects through grants and, more often, to evaluate incoming grant applications. I believe I can give better advice to applicants, and better evaluate applications than before.
I can give better advice to applicants, and better evaluate applications than before.
Following the completion of the training, has your project benefited?
No doubt my project has benefited from my participation in the HERITΛGE management training. The project I brought into the course was “Fotefar mot Nord” (Trails to the North) which is under revitalization. During the workshop, I learnt about different organizations that can give funding to such projects and this has given us new ideas and perspectives.
Would you recommend this training to others?
I would recommend the course to cultural heritage officers to increase their understanding of applying for grants. I believe the course might be more beneficial to NGO’s than to public sector workers, but it was well worth my time.
Legacy Builders: Zoitsa Gkinni
Dr Zoitsa (Zoe) Gkinni | Senior Book and Paper Conservator, National Library of Greece
Which workshop did you attend?
Strategic Planning for Heritage Managers (2020) & Successful Fundraising for Heritage Managers: Strategies and Best Practices (2021)
Were the training workshops opportunities to enhance your connections with your peers?
Yes in a number of ways. To begin with I started feeling safer when I was training, as I also train people. During these training sessions you come across people from different communities, the workshops are intercultural meetings, and this enriches us participants professionally, in the way we approach things. I benefited both by acquiring knowledge and by enhancing my understanding of peers from around the world, from diverse cultural backgrounds. I became conscious of theses benefits when I went on to take part in working groups with peers from North Africa and Asia.
The workshops are intercultural meetings and this enriches us professionally in the way we approach things.
The training workshops also helped me enhance my mentoring work for the International Institute of Conservation by widening my horizons and giving me yet another solid foundation that I could then share with mentees.
Do you feel that your ability to perform relevant tasks has improved?
Yes, my heritage management and fundraising skills have been upgraded. I was part of the team that coordinated the National Library of Greece’s move to its new building and that experience, along with the heritage management training workshops, helped me gain a deeper understanding of many aspects of my work.I feel confident to use the knowledge and skills I gained in the fundraising workshop in practice when approaching third parties and writing funding proposals.
The fundraising workshop has proved particularly helpful when I am part of organising committees for conferences or events; it has proved very useful when approaching people or companies to fundraise.
Following of your training, have your projects benefited?
Yes, I feel the projects I have worked on have benefited from the HERITΛGE training I received. I do not fundraise every day but I have had to fundraise and I will need to do so in the future. I have also discussed the workshops with colleagues and I have recommended that they also sign up for the fundraising workshop with the Heritage Management Organization. I believe it is a very compact training session that provides a great amount of knowledge. I always have what I learned during the fundraising workshop at the back of my head when I am organising conference and events and it has proved very useful when approaching people in order to fundraise.
How would you summarise your HERITΛGE training experience in your own words?
The training offered by the Heritage Management Organization is well-organised, well-designed, and the instructors are well-selected. I have attended a number of training workshops with a variety of providers and I am very satisfied with how the HERITΛGE workshops were organised and how they were delivered and as a result I have recommended them to colleagues and I will keep recommending them in the future.
New Training Calendar: Online Workshops for Heritage Managers
The Heritage Management Organization (HERITΛGE) is happy to announce a series of online training workshops for heritage professionals and caretakers for 2024-2025. A variety of scholarships and funding opportunities are available. As places are limited, candidates are advised to apply as soon as possible.
Online Workshop Calendar 2024-2025
Introduction to Heritage Interpretation for Site Managers | 01–03 October 2024
Master the principles of high-quality heritage interpretation and gain hands-on experience in implementing them at your site/organization in order to create meaningful and unforgettable experiences for visitors.
Engaging Communities in Cultural Heritage | 11–13 October 2024
Understand the community engagement process, a key heritage management strategy. Master the challenges of working with local communities discern between communities and audiences and understand audience segmentation, get introduced to ethnographic approaches to creating collaborative research-based programs, and learn the methods and techniques of oral history to elicit and document tangible and intangible heritage.
Conservation III: Preventive Conservation (pilot) | 15-17 November
A pilot workshop only open to heritage managers that have previously completed Conservation II: First Aid for Finds.
Interpretive Writing for Natural and Cultural Heritage | 25–27 November 2024
Learn how to write text that grabs and holds the reader’s attention. Discover and practice a wide range of techniques to engage visitors and master the techniques of interpretive writing. Participants will work to become a HERITΛGE-accredited Interpretive Writer, after successfully completing, and being assessed on, the exercises and activities.
Project Management for Heritage Managers | 13-15 December 2024
Gain the skills and knowledge to run a successful project from inception, through the planning and implementation phases to closure. Create a work breakdown structure, a critical path diagram and a Gantt chart. Research potential funders and write a grant application. Improve personal time management skills. Learn to think critically, identify risks and create solutions.
Organising Temporary Exhibitions from your Collections and Touring Strategies | 14–16 February 2025
The focus of this workshop is to give you the skills to ensure temporary, touring and partnership exhibitions can enhance and promote your institution’s mission, create new audiences and mutually beneficial partnerships. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own exhibition ideas to the workshop for discussion and development.
Communication Strategy and Strategic Marketing for Cultural Organizations | 07-09 March 2025
Join a focused learning experience that provides a systemic approach to successfully attract key audiences’ attention through traditional, new, and social media. Acquire a working guide to effectively communicate news, initiatives, and announcements of your organization and manage communication around a crisis or issue.
Successful Fundraising for Heritage Managers: Strategies and Best Practices | 28-30 March 2025
Start-up and build an organization’s contributed revenue to increase its impact in the world. Participants learn best practices and apply them to create the case for support and letter of inquiry for their own organization or project. Workshop sessions combine live and asynchronous lectures, case studies, class discussions and interactive exercises.
Conservation I: Introduction to the General Principles of Cultural Heritage Conservation | 4-6 April 2025
Learn the fundamentals, the ethics, the evolution, and the contemporary international context of conservation. At the end of the course, participants will be able to understand the potential of conservation, together with the processes which are necessary to maximize it.
Strategic Planning for Heritage Managers | 9-11 May 2025
Successful strategy can lead to success and this course will provide participants with the tools and methodologies to successfully formulate and implement strategy in organizations managing cultural heritage. Learn the methods and tools of strategic analysis that will enable you devise and evaluate alternative strategic choices and comprehend the demands of a strategy implementation project.
More workshop dates will be announced soon. To apply visit our Executive Leadership Training page.
2023- 2024: Our academic year in review
On Saturday, June 30th, the HERITΛGE team wrapped up the 2023-2024 academic year with an event on the Greek island of Paros island to mark the end of our Community Engagement for Cultural Heritage Summer Field School. The event was the culmination of possibly the most successful academic year since the organization was founded 15 years ago.
During the last 12 months, HERITΛGE completed 40 training activities that included online and in-person workshops, two hybrid summer schools, and an academic Certificate program bearing ECTS credits, delivered in cooperation with HOGENT University in Belgium. Over 650 heritage managers and caretakers were trained in managing heritage assets, independent of project specifics.
We expanded our curriculum with a new conservation course, First Aid for Finds. The 3-day online workshop complements the Introduction to the General Principles of Cultural Heritage Conservation workshop we introduced in the academic year 2022-2023. In the past year, we also ran two successful pilot programs in Interpreting Heritage and Engaging Communities for Climate Change and in Community and Economic Development, focusing on community-based tourism. Both will form part of our 2024-2025 academic year training offerings.
We also expanded our partnership with the Mellon Foundation through our HerMaP Africa program, funded by the Foundation’s Humanities in Place initiative. Through HerMaP Africa we have already awarded 60 grants and 60 fellowships to heritage organizations and professionals across Africa. Through HerMaP Gambia, a program co-funded by the European Union, we continued to work to strengthen The Gambia’s heritage sector in order to contribute to the creation of more and better jobs for the country.
Thanks to the British Council, our project in Pakistan on the protection of Buddhist rock carvings in Swat (in partnership with the Italian Mission and EssaNoor Associates) has gotten off the ground. Our J.M. Kaplan Fund work in Iraq has been completed and so has our Creative Europe project in Ukraine, training heritage managers in digital storytelling for Ukrainian Museums – together with Ukrainian partners. Our cooperation with Aliph and local partners enabled us to contribute to the efforts to safeguard local heritage in the aftermath of last year’s catastrophic earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. This academic year we also helped create the Living Heritage Network which aims to bring together and empower all organizations and individuals working with Greek living heritage.
Meanwhile, we continued working with some of Europe’s best-known academic and research institutions as well as heritage organizations and private businesses to make cultural heritage more accessible and inclusive through SHIFT, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program.
Finally, earlier in 2024 we started working on AHEAD, another Creative Europe program, this time aiming to strengthen European cultural heritage institutions’ audience development efforts.
These are most but by no means all the projects our team is working on, all the while expanding HERITΛGE’s impact and outreach efforts. Stay tuned for more!