Global Heritage Fund?

This is a link to a few videos on the work the Global Heritage Fund is doing. Should anyone know anything more about them, please, let us know. It seems really interesting.

http://www.globalheritagefund.org/news/ghf_in_the_news/ghf_mirador_on_cnni_102009.asp

Shallow and brutal archaeology

Raphi Greenberg has just published this highly critical piece in Haaretz on the nature of the archaeological work being done in Jerusalem these days. It highlights the way that archaeological best practice evaporates when projects are done for ideological purposes.

Enhancing Economic Benefits of Archaeological World Heritage Sites

Prof. Brent Lane (Director University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and ICAHM Expert Member) presented a paper at the World Bank on the status of his ongoing research on the economic benefit of inscribing archaeological sites on the World Heritage List.

To see a pdf of his PowerPoint presentation, see What, Who and How? Enhancing Economic Benefits of Archaeological World Heritage Sites.

The World Monuments Fund's watch list for 2010

The WMF's watch list for 2010 includes 93 sites from 47 countries. The list includes: Phajoding, a remote monastery in Bhutan, traditional town houses in Kyoto, Machu Picchu, The Old City of Herat (Western Afghanistan - left) and bridges along Connecticut's Merritt Parkway.

"The 2010 watch makes it clear that cultural heritage efforts in the 21st century must recognize the critical importance of sustainable stewardship and that we must work closely with local partners to create viable and appropriate opportunities to advance this" World Monuments Fund President Bonnie Burnham.

Check out the Watch List.

Conservation Management Planning: case study from El Salvador

Castellanos, Carolina, and Françoise Descamps. Conservation Management Planning: Putting Theory into Practice. The Case of Joya de Cerén, El Salvador. Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 2009.

This document analyzes the experience at Joya de Cerén. It illustrates the flexibility of the method used and critically reflects on the limitations and challenges faced throughout implementation of the planning process. Through examination of lessons learned, the document highlights key matters to consider for implementing a sustainable and successful management planning effort.

Downloadable in two sections.

Getty AATA Online

AATA Online is a free online database containing over 110,000 abstracts of literature published from 1932 to the present covering the conservation and management of material cultural heritage, including works of art, cultural objects, architectural heritage, archaeological sites and materials, and ethical and legal issues. Approximately 1,000 new abstracts of journal articles, conference proceedings, books, theses, audiovisual works, and technical reports are added each quarter.

Check for the latest AATA.

IX World Congress of the Organization of World Heritage Cities

Historic cities are often perceived as a major asset for economic development. The IX World Congress of the OWHC—held in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russian Federation, in June 2007— focused on the challenges and opportunities presented by historic cities. The proceedings are availalble in English, Spanish and French.

Access the proceedings online.

Cornerstones of Communities

Cornerstones of Communities research report is now available on the Museums Galleries Scotland website. The research looked at the role of museums in creating community cohesion and identity. The research developed five case studies to explore this.

You can download the report by clicking on the following link,

http://www.museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk/news-2/news-article/247/new-research-published-on-museum-role-in-communities

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

http://www.diaspora.uiuc.edu/newsletter.html

Interesting range of papers including some of relevance to archaeological resource management and cultural heritage, eg in the September 2009 issue:

Stabilization and Tourism at the Gambia River’s Atlantic Trade Sites: the James Island Conservation and Survey Project by Liza Gijanto

Vietnam Field School

International Field School in Museums & Sustainable Heritage Development
Vietnam Monday 11– Saturday 30 January, 2010

Website: http://www.uq.edu.au/emsah/index.html?page=66307&pid=20385

The International Field School in Museums and Sustainable Heritage Development offered by the Museum Studies Program at University of Queensland aims to provide first-hand experience to graduate students and Professional Development Program participants in locating culture in sustainable development in a rapidly globalising world. Museums and heritage places kinds are considered in the context of sustainable economic, environmental and social development, with a focus on documented case studies and real-life examples in Vietnam. Participants will consider how museums, cultural institutions, and heritage tourism can play a role in the revitalization of local culture and economy, and how international conventions for heritage protection, governance structures, and local area planning intersect within holistic heritage management frameworks. The course provides a critical introduction to cultural mapping, gender and youth issues in community engagement, poverty alleviation and Millennium Development Goals. It also examines the challenges posed by the conflicts between conservation and development, particularly in World Heritage Areas.

This Field School provides practical field experience not only to graduate students and researchers in museum, heritage and environmental studies, practicing museum and heritage professionals, but will also be of interest to those involved in archaeology, anthropology, planning, postcolonial studies, sustainable development and cultural heritage law.

Preliminary Application

Expressions of Interest are being received now:

• A brief Expression of Interest (150 words) stating how you will benefit from the Field School.
• Current Curriculum Vitae. It should include details of graduate qualifications.
• Professional Development Participants may need a supporting letter from a referee or employer at a later date.
• Further documentation of educational qualifications may be required for the admission to the Field School.

Past participants include an equal number of museum and heritage professionals, along with Masters students, Doctoral candidates and Post Doctoral Fellows from major universities in Europe, Southeast Asia, USA, Canada, UK, Australia, China, Turkey, Korea, and Japan. The International Field School is the only one of its kind accredited and offered in partnership with the local, provincial and national cultural and environmental institutions and their respective Vietnamese authorities. It is not a study tour.

The Getty Conservation Institute - scholarships

• Guest Scholar Program
  Applications deadline: 1 November 2009
• Conservation Guest Scholar Program
  Applications deadline: 1 November 2009
• Pre and Postdoctoral Fellowship in Conservation Science
  Applications deadline: 1 November 2009
  
• Graduate Internships at the Conservation Institute
  Applications deadline: 15 December 2009
• Getty Conservation Grants
• Applications deadline: see website

Call for UNESCO-Keizo Obuchi Fellowship applications from young researchers

UNESCO is inviting young researchers in developing countries to apply for grants through the UNESCO/Keizo Obuchi Research Fellowship Programme, financed for the tenth time by Japan through funds-in-trust dedicated to the development of human resources.

The programme – named after the late Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi who was known for his commitment to development issues – offers a total of 20 fellowships for a maximum value of US$6,000-10,000 each. They target post-graduate university researchers with a Masters Degree or equivalent in one of four fields: the environment, inter-cultural dialogue, information and communication technology, and peaceful conflict resolution.

In a series of letters, the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, has called on UNESCO’s National Commissions, Permanent Delegations to UNESCO and the Organization’s field offices to invite potential candidates from 144 countries to apply for the fellowships. Applications must reach UNESCO Headquarters in Paris before 8 January, 2010.

Researchers under 40 years of age must submit their applications to their country’s National Commission for UNESCO, which will select a maximum of two candidates. A special selection committee of experts in the four research fields concerned will review the applications and propose a pre-selection to the Director-General of the Organization.

Website: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=46115&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

World Heritage and Tourism: Managing for the Global and the Local (2010)

3-4 June 2010, Quebec City, Canada

CALL FOR PAPERS

Original papers are invited to consider subject areas including, but not limited to, the following themes:

· Marketing in the management of World Heritage Sites;

· The pragmatics of managing tourists;

· Financing World Heritage;

· Community involvement in Site management;

· Relations between intangible cultural heritage and Site management;

· The role of the private tourism sector;

· The nature of tourist experience and behaviour at World Heritage Sites;

· Shaping local, regional and national identities through Site inscription;

· Issues of governance and transnational regulation;

· Legal rights and notions of ‘ownership’;

· The management of World Heritage ‘values’;

· The geo-politics of inclusion and exclusion;

· Methods of Site evaluation;

· Managing spiritual values and biodiversity;

· The role of UNESCO and the political economies of designation.

Please submit your 500 words abstract (in French or English) including a title and full contact details as an electronic file to Professor Maria Gravari-Barbas (Maria.Gravari-Barbas@univ-paris1.fr) or Laurent Bourdeau (laurent.bourdeau@fsa.ulaval.ca) as soon as possible but no later than 15 December 2009.

Publication opportunity:

Papers accepted for the conference will be published in the conference proceedings, subject to author registration. Best papers from the conference will also be considered for publication in a special issue of the Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change.

Website: http://www.tourism-culture.com/news_3.html

Heritage in Conflict and Consensus: New Approaches to the Social, Political, and Religious Impact of Public Heritage in the 21st Century

November 9 - 13, 2009

International workshop to take place over five days at the campuses of UMass Amherst, Massachusetts, and Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The public portion of the workshop will be held at UMass Amherst on November 9-10. There will then be a roundtable for invited participants and the Bard campus community on November 12-13.

"Throughout the world, historic districts, archaeological sites, religious monuments, ethnic traditions, and traditional customs—once cherished as timeless symbols of collective identity and continuity—have increasingly become the targets of violence and a source of discord. The destruction of the Mostar Bridge in Sarajevo, the obliteration of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the battle between Hindus and Muslims for the site of Ayodhya in India, the controversies over the Temple Mount/Haram esh-Sharif in Jerusalem, and the looting of the Baghdad Museum are but a few recent examples of significant damage to cultural heritage in times of ethnic and religious conflict and state-to-state war.

Yet while the term “heritage in conflict” has been primarily associated with armed or violent conflicts, it should also be linked to the wider issues of conflicting interpretations or conflicting domains of intangible heritage that may endure even after violent conflict has ceased.

It has become increasingly clear in the 21st century that people, working in an increasingly multicultural environment, must be able to cope more effectively with contested heritage in city streets and rural regions—as well as on the battlefield. We must examine and understand the role of interpretation—not merely as the dissemination of objective facts about the past—but as a public means of reflection about the contemporary cultural significance of tangible and intangible heritage and the modern identities that are based on it. We should reexamine the processes of management, presentation, and heritage commemoration to assess their effectiveness in a world that is not made up of homogeneous, territorially discrete populations, with a single historical perspective, but a dynamically evolving mosaic of immigrant and diasporic communities, ethnic groups, and new nations living together in a globalized world."

Website: http://www.umass.edu/chs/news/workshop.html

ICCROM Conservation Series

PDFs: ICCROM Conservation Series

The ICCROM Conservation Series (ICS) is now available in electronic format.

http://www.iccrom.org/eng/02info_en/02_04pdf-pubs_en.shtml

ATHAR - documentation of heritage sites in the Arab Region

ATHAR - documentation of heritage sites in the Arab Region

Applications are now open for the ATHAR 2009 course on 'documentation of heritage sites in the Arab Region', to be held in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates from 3 - 14 January 2010.

Application deadline: 5 October 2009

http://www.iccrom.org/eng/01train_en/announce_en/2010_01AtharUAE_en.shtml

ATHAR-MOSAIKON: Conservation and Management of Mosaics on Archaeological Sites

ATHAR-MOSAIKON: conservation and management of mosaics on archaeological sites

Applications are now open for the ATHAR-MOSAIKON course on 'conservation and management of mosaics on Archaeological sites', to be held in Tyre, Lebanon from 3-21 May 2010.

Application deadline: 30 November 2009

http://www.iccrom.org/eng/01train_en/announce_en/2010_05AtharLBN_en.shtml

Archaeology of Contemporary Europe (ACE) project questionnaire

The Archaeology Of Contemporary Europe (ACE) project, http://www.ace-archaeology.eu/, funded by European Union Culture Programme, is a wide ranging project researching many aspects of professional archaeological practice in a number of European countries. As part of this process ACE have produced a questionnaire which gives archaeologists the opportunity to let colleagues out with the UK know how they work, how their organisations are structured and what changes might have occurred in their practice in the last year or so.

If you are interested in participating in this phase of the project by completing a questionnaire please let the ADS know(sj523@york.ac.uk) and they will send out a questionnaire to you (in MS Word format) in the next week or two. Although the questionnaire is quite short, it asks some detailed questions relating to the number of archaeologists in an organisation, how it is funded and how many and what type of archaeological interventions it has been involved with. The ACE project is particularly interested in responses from archaeological contractors, local authority and university archaeologists.

HERITAGE 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Heritage and Sustainable Development

The Green Lines Institute is organizing the international event 'HERITAGE 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Heritage and Sustainable Development', that will be held at the City of Evora, Portugal, from 22 to 26 June 2010.

Submission of Abstracts is open until 30 November 2009.

Papers addressing the following topics are welcome:

Heritage and Governance for Development, Heritage and Education Policies, Heritage and Culture, Heritage and Economics, Heritage and Environment, and Heritage and Society .

For further detailed information, please visit the conference Website at http://www.heritage2010.greenlines-institute.org .

For further information on the Scientific Committee, please visit http://heritage2010.greenlines-institute.org/H2010website/com_scientific.html.

LSE Arts and Thames & Hudson 60th anniversary discussion

The Museum of the 21st Century

Date: Tuesday 7 July 2009
Time: 6.30-8pm
Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Neil MacGregor, Nicholas Serota
Chair: John Wilson

In this 60th anniversary year of publishers Thames & Hudson, Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, and Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, will be in conversation exploring the various roles of national, and other, collections in the 21st century. This rare joint appearance by two of today's most influential figures in the international world of arts and culture promises to provide a stimulating discussion touching on topics of contemporary global significance.

For information on how to obtain an entry ticket to this free event go to:

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/LSEPublicLecturesAndEvents/events/2009/20090311t1917z001.htm

Commodifying the Revolution

Here's an interesting article from Counterpunch, about the struggle by indigenous groups in Mexico to gain some control of heritage sites in their region: http://www.counterpunch.org/ross02172009.html

India to improve heritage management

The Indian government is to set up a National Commission for Heritage Sites, which will maintain a national register of heritage sites based on the UK model (article in The Hindu). This will be a positive step towards better preservation of the countless buildings and sites of historical importance in the country, many of which are under constant threat of damage or demolition.