People, Places and Stories
TYPE OF PROJECT
PROJECT AREA
People, Places and Stories aims to raise the capacity of society to exploit cultural heritage as an environment and resource for sustainable social development. The project team will develop a competence framework, a curriculum and tools for the professional development of facilitators and multipliers to support all stakeholders involved in heritage community engagement. The project will create a training offer for the development of 'Faro competences': competences that are needed to build and maintain heritage communities to be inclusive and foster a sense of belonging.
About the Project
About the Project
Outputs and Results
Outputs and Results
Partners
Partners
Gallery
Gallery
In 2018, the “European Year of Cultural Heritage” established societal, cross-sectoral cooperation across Europe to increase awareness of the crucial role of culture and heritage for social inclusion and European cohesion. Cultural heritage is very broadly defined and includes cultural, natural, tangible and intangible heritage. The main objectives are set out in the so-called Action Plan of the FARO Convention:
the strengthening of the sense of belonging to a common European social and cultural space
the integration of cultural heritage into social, ecological and economic processes
the development of cultural heritage as a rich and meaningful interdisciplinary learning environment.
These goals can best be implemented and achieved by local groups and initiatives directly in their environment; the heritage communities. Heritage communities are self-organised, self-managed groups of individuals interested in progressive social transformation of relationships between people, places and histories. They are the ideal context for developing key competencies such as cultural awareness, citizenship skills and the ability to learn.
This is also where the new Erasmus+ funded project People, Places, Stories comes in. It develops tools and methods to support capacity building in heritage communities as socio-cultural spaces for creativity, learning, participation and inclusion. The project relies on competence-based training, blended learning and validation of non-formal learning.
The Council of Europe Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Faro, 2005) focuses on the role of cultural heritage in society. Its principles are taken on board in the European Commission’s “Cultural Heritage Strategy for the 21st Century”. Faro works along 4 themes: European identity, social sustainability, regional development, and learning. Cultural heritage is put forward as a vehicle for addressing social challenges and as an ideal ground for sustainable social development. In this view cultural heritage relates to tangible and intangible assets and present habits, customs and traditions which people value and pick up as part of their (common) identity. As such Faro also refers to the right of everyone to engage with the cultural heritage of his choice: the right to participate in cultural life.