Artistic Education for the Heritage

The world development is running in such a high speed that it is hard to maintain a constant definition in terms of cultural goods and their value on the global market. Cultural values are changing their traditional dimension, the things we used to consider domestic manufactured objects, meant to serve in peasant's houses and farms as tools, are becoming culture artefacts belonging to museums. Due to technological revolution the cultural heritage of the world is changing permanently its dimension, museums are becoming more and more interactive, everything is moving, speaking, making loud to attract the attention to the new Homo Sapiens, product of the XXI Century – Homo Advertisingus. Without advertising, signs labelled everywhere this creature of visual culture are feeling lost and frightened. From its traditional value of nominating literature, art, behaviour and crafts - culture is becoming something else – a tool of orientation in the big variety of offer, proposals and recommendations coming from everywhere: walls, doors, elevators, streets, public transport, radio, televisions, computers, museums, ordinary mail etc. Lost in this multiplicity of offers Homo Advertisingus is trying to define its scale of values and it is pretty difficult to find for him a cultural identity as far as in an very Orthodox Church (Orthodoxy by its term means tradition) let say from Romania you can buy a very traditional Orthodox plastic icon printed in a very traditional China factory and it is just a funny example defining the situation from the limit of sacred and profane values of modern culture.

Global culture is affecting small cultures or lazy and ignorant cultural factors. In the middle of XX-th Century French Philosopher Paul Ricoeur(1955) was stressing about this issue:" we do not have only global techniques of production, but also universal techniques of transport, relations, welfare, entertainment, information; we can speak about universal technique values of elementary culture, or may be culture of consume: we are dealing with a phenomena of consume culture with a global effect that is developing an universal lifestyle". The issue was published in 1955 and from that time until nowadays Ricoeur's predictions about the appearance of subculture – and its destructive influence from the epistemological point of view is so real!

In 1972 at 17-th General Conference at UNESCO from Paris was adopted the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. UNESCO started to be conscious about the impact of globalisation – the convention was meant to protect and promote traditional cultural values and to confer them a special status. By that time 20 countries ratified the Convention.

In 2002, at the 30-th Anniversary of Convention 175 States Parties adhere to it. World community is using UNESCO World Heritage List as a point of reference than speaking about the importance of a monument. Every year thousands of volunteers are fighting for salvation of cultural and natural objectives. It is good to know that the humanity is still fighting for recovery of its cultural and natural and cultural goods! UNESCO has done a great job from this perspective – has offered a good frame for a unique masterpiece – cultural and natural diversity. It is the mission of every State to supervise and to contribute to the wellbeing of this opus magnum that can define in real and unique sense an identity of a country or a nation.

Every objective is reflecting a unique value, is moving the visitor to another dimension of perception o history and culture. Are we able to preserve their tangible value and to leave it to future generations or it is a useless task? Is it necessary to fight to their restoration and promotion or it's enough to digitalise and to let them disappear?

The answers will come sooner than we expect.

The attitudes are not enough; the concrete actions are defining a conscious Homo Sapiens...

Since 1999 Art& Heritage Association is doing actions of Cultural Heritage Education inside UNESCO World heritage sites and museums. Artists all around the world are invited during a 2 weeks or one month residency to explore UNESCO World heritage sites, museums and cultural points of interest. After a period of documentation they are creating paintings or cultural products connected to the findings from the field exploration process. Also they are invited to work with local population (especially young generation) and to share with them their artistic abilities and knowledge, working together. 

The Artistic Education for Heritage was presented as a case study at UNESCO World Conference for Artistic Education from Lisbon, Portugal in 2006 and was rewarded by a diploma of good practice.

The main idea of the project is to use art as an instrument for education of cultural identity and to increase artistic abilities of people through artistic education and creativity workshops.

Global culture is changing the child perception of the world. Kids are not playing with Dragons and Fairy Ladies – their heroes are robots and alien creatures – the same from Japan to Europe, from Europe to Americas. Kids are loosing the sense of mystery, magic, kind and patient heroes. The heroes of their time, as predicted by Paul Ricoeur … are universal heroes, global heroes…with no cultural background…

Since 2009 Art &Heritage Association was “adopted” by Cultural Centre for UNESCO “Nicolae Balcescu” and we are building projects together. We have already a nice tradition doing artistic residencies inside Romanian UNESCO World Heritage sites, organising painting, dance and music workshops, educational actions and happenings.

The idea of Artistic Education for the Heritage in the museum came after we discovered the interest of our small friends to know more about Romanian fairy tales. We decided that the National Museum of Romanian Peasant is the right place to start the quest of captivating, sacred places of our cultural heritage.

The Artistic Education for Heritage workshop is meant to bring kids into a magic universe of cultural and historic values and to tell them stories that are connecting them with cultural identity they belong to.

The experience starts right in the museum – they are exploring places, objects, listening to stories about the people and their life and habits…Myths, legends, symbols generated by these cultural dimensions are raw material for future creativity workshops.

After the documentation process in the museum, where kids are allowed to make photos of different objects and findings of their interest, follow a small round table (tea and biscuits) discussion… where the group is deciding the direction of work.

By the end of every lesson participants are invited to talk about the objects they painted and the way they did it.

In 2013 at Arocena Museum in Torreon, Mexico was opened an exhibition of 120 paintings realised during the workshop “Artistic Education for the Heritage” from the Cultural Centre for UNESCO from Bucuresti: 26 Romanian young painters were exhibiting in Arocena Museum! The Exhibition was followed by a workshop experiment in Arocena Museum and it was a success.

http://www.museoarocena.com/artistic-education-for-the-heritage/

Arocena Museum was the place of documentation and work for 56 young people from German College of Torreon , Torreon American University, Anglo-American University and by the week-end 32 children from a kids refuge Casa Hogar were participating at lectures and workshops. By the end of activity a big exhibition was opened with all realized works (almost 200) and the activity continues done by the employees of the museum.

http://www.museoarocena.com/educar-para-conocer-y-preservar/

Art & Heritage Association is happy to share the experience of “discovering together cultural treasures and identities” , and to invite the others to join this quest .

PhD Zagura Nicoleta

Curator of the Artistic Education for the Heritage Project

Pesident

ART&HERITAGE ASSOCIATION

www.artandheritage.org