NODEM 2014 Proceedings

The Rotterdam Heritage Coalition: Cooperation between Heritage Institutions
term vision and their common goals. The Masterplan thus serves as a binding foundation for the cooperation
between all the members of the RHC.
Secondly, the RHC hired an external project manager. This project manager has no affiliations with any of the
members and is a neutral party. He has his office with the KCR, the only member that does not develop educational
content nor has its own collection or expositions. He receives support from the employees of the KCR,
which is useful as they are specialised in the relationships between cultural institutions and schools.
Lastly, the members had to decide how to divide the actual development of the tasks. The available funds and
hours were allocated by the project manager according to the expertise of each institution. In order to best
fit into the existing curriculum and accommodate teachers and pupils, the choice was made to use the same
pedagogical instruments as the teachers. This meant the use of the so-called ´periods of De Rooij´, which divide
the history of the Netherlands in ten periods. Each member had to indicate to which of these ten periods
they could contribute.
After the hours were divided according to this schedule, four of the members concluded they did not have
enough time to dedicate to this time-consuming task. 4 Next to this practical issue, there was a need for an
experienced educator with knowledge of both the heritage and the educational sector. So the four members
decided to combine their allocated hours and hire an external educator. This educator got the extra task of
coordinating all the development efforts. As she has a background as a teacher, she also got appointed with
facilitating the communication between the RHC and the primary schools. Her appointment has two advantages.
First of all, she is able to provide the educators of the RHC with inside knowledge of schools and the work
of teachers, as well as pedagogical instruments and methods used in the classroom. Secondly, she is able to
communicate to teachers what the main benefits are of participating in the project of the RHC, on a level they
can relate to directly; ‘how does this benefit my students?’.
So the three strategies for enabling internal cooperation were: a shared mission statement, a neutral project
manager and an experienced educator. So far, these strategies have worked well. The vision statement gives
the project meaning, stability and a clear goal. In the event of a conflict, the statement enables the project
manager to refer to the document as a contractual reminder of the shared obligations of the RHC. Since the
project manager and the educator are external employees, they are able to focus one hundred percent of their
time and energy on the project. Furthermore, they are neutral parties and therefore are not hindered by bias or
affiliation to any particular member of the RHC. To sum up: the strategies the RHC employed to enable internal
cooperation were successful.
Once this internal cooperation was established, the RHC employed two strategies to sustain their collaboration:
incorporation of the common goals of the project into the institutions’ individual programmes and
the use of a website. Incorporating the common goals of the project into the institutions’ individual programmes
has not been successful yet. This meant that the institutions would slowly have to merge their
own existing programmes with that of the RHC. This process is still going on and it has proved to be difficult,
though the problems vary. For instance, the Foundation of Archeological Research Rotterdam (BOOR) does
not have its own educational programme. By contrast, it has short projects and assignments at the requests
of clients, whereas the Photo Museum has its own educational programme with a broad range of activities
and very specific content.
The members of the RHC realize this will take time. The next years of the project will show whether this strategy
is going to be successful. In order to ensure it is successful, each member will have to evaluate their current
educational programme and plan the process of merging their programmes with that of the RHC.
4
Museum Rotterdam, The City Archive (Stadsarchief), The Foundation of Archeological Research Rotterdam (BOOR), The War and Resistance
Museum (Oorlogs en Verzetsmuseum)
NODEM 2014 Conference & Expo
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