OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

2. LOCAL DEVELOPMENT BASED ON ATTRACTING VISITORS AND TOURISTS
Ecomuseums, interpretative centres and economuseums
The foregoing illustrations all refer to urban facilities and museums that relate to
classical or contemporary art. Yet rural territories have also shown great vitality in this
field, although it is more difficult to demonstrate the significance of spin-offs. By way
of illustration, we may look at three types of facilities: ecomuseums, interpretive
centres, and economuseums (Greffe, 2002).
Ecomuseums are designed to highlight an ethnographic, craft or industrial heritage
by presenting collections in symbolic settings. Three factors have fostered their growth:
- decentralisation, which encourages communities and territories to draw attention
to their ethnographic heritage as a means of confirming their image;
- the emergence of an organised market for popular art, with its attendant
intermediaries, pricing mechanisms and speculation;
- and the progress of archaeology, which is discovering buried vestiges that allow
unique cultures and societies to be studied.
In fact, these institutions employ few people (usually one or two, and often parttime)
and they are of marginal tourism importance, being of interest primarily to
local people. Moreover, they are often plunged into severe institutional and financial
difficulties by conflicts over how to interpret the past.
There is an important difference here between the ecomuseums movement, as it
has developed in Europe, and the related but distinct “interpretation centres” such as
have sprung up in North America. In the latter case, reinterpretation bears on a series
of dimensions: cultural, natural, environmental etc., and has more to do with understanding
the future that with celebrating the past. An interpretative centre seeks to organise and
display to varied audiences the significance of a theme or territory, and its corresponding
values, by means of all conceivable forms of communication. Related to this interpretive
function is that of “bringing things to life” (animation): direct contact with the individual
is used to impart personalised knowledge, in a manner custom-made for each visitor
in terms both of content and of the pace of the message. In contrast to the ecomuseum,
the point is not necessarily to make people aware of the value or the identity of their
own territory. The outlook is broader, and has to do with helping the general public to
understand a craft or know-how, a product, a group, an activity or a territory.
Although it is known in Canada and in the United States, the term “economuseum”
is new and somewhat elliptical. It reflects a desire to conserve the heritage built up
by small enterprises, often craft businesses, through arrangements where profitability
must be taken into consideration. The process starts with a small craft business
CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005 71