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Quality Standards in Heritage Interpretation 6
Foreword All programmes run by the United Nations underline the paramount value of freedom. But resting on pillars like innovation and flexibility, it seems impossible to untie our current idea of freedom from the idea of continuous economic growth within free markets. For about 200 years, this alliance brought the Western world to the fore. But, for some decades, we have become aware of losing the ground beneath our feet by following that path. In our efforts to outdo each other, and predicated on loans from people and nature, we leave our children a world in debt. “A World in Debt” was the title of a book written during the crisis of the 1930s by an author, who became more renowned for his later work. The author was Freeman Tilden, and his later book was “Interpreting Our Heritage”. Freeman Tilden felt the tension between perpetuation and transformation. He suspected that a feeling of belonging is relevant to getting one’s feet back on the ground. This feeling of belonging in a changing world is key to heritage interpretation. And it becomes even more significant in the context of lifelong learning and education for sustainable development. More than 50 years ago, the idea of empowering people by helping them to interpret their natural and cultural heritage evolved from national parks through other protected areas, and from museums through other visitor-related facilities like zoos or botanical gardens. As one of the latest fruits of this development, ParcInterp resulted from the EU project called TOPAS (Training of Protected Area Staff) in 2008. TOPAS had determined that there was an urgent need for qualified staff to open the windows to our heritage at the stunning sites that can be found all over Europe, and aimed to set reliable quality standards and common criteria for training of interpretive staff. To reveal the meaning of their heritage to visitors and provoking them to relate what they experience to their daily lives, in terms of sustainably managing the future, is an ambitious goal. And to prove the effectiveness of the interpretive approach is critical. It calls for a reliable quality management system backed by scientific research. Because that task cannot be undertaken solely by one agency, ParcInterp seeks to bring together park authorities, non-governmental organisations and university faculties researching the field. And because that task cannot just be managed by one country, ParcInterp pursues the international approach of TOPAS. While the intent of ParcInterp is to define reliable qualities, standards and criteria, and to transfer them into practical training of protected area staff, the aim of this booklet is to describe the basics of the ParcInterp system, which have evolved over the last ten years from several pilot courses in protected areas in Germany. We hope that these ideas will contribute to fruitful discussions about the necessity and the quality of heritage interpretation, not only in our parks but in all places where people encounter their heritage in seeking better ways to enable and promote our collective concern for what the Brundtlandt report called, simply but evocatively, “our common future”. Thorsten Ludwig August 2012 7
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