In today’s volatile world, links to the past and to place are becoming more tenuous and contested, and threats to cultural heritage – both tangible and intangible – are extremely socially and politically difficult to counter. It is a critical moment to ask what cultural heritage actually means to different people and regions, especially in the digital era, and why it is more important than ever to preserve, enhance and share cultural heritage through all available means.

Part of the long-running Culture, Arts and Society series, this invitation-only program will bring together creative thinkers and groundbreaking practitioners from around the world to reflect on and critique current approaches to cultural heritage, and to explore new frontiers in heritage innovation and collaboration.

By invitation only

The program will be structured along a continuum of inquiry: perceptions of the past, problematics of the present, and potential for the future.

The first area of inquiry – perceptions of the past – will have a philosophical focus, considering both positive and negative associations of cultural heritage. Participants will contrast its positive potential to create a sense of identity, reinforce social cohesion, and advance reconciliation with its negative potential to trigger conflict, perpetuate or reinforce symbols of oppression, and recreate trauma. Taking indigenous, decolonized, non-nationalistic, and non-Western interpretations into full account, they will explore whose culture and whose heritage is the focus of discourse, and how and why the language we use to talk about cultural heritage is changing. Specific questions will relate to shifting perceptions of cultural heritage in recent decades, including new concepts of tangible and intangible heritage.

The second area of inquiry – problematics of the present – will have a pragmatic focus and address ways to tackle the manifold threats to cultural heritage. Looking outwards, these include: unsustainable tourism and “destination thinking” in heritage; the impacts of climate change on tangible and intangible heritage; the destruction of cultural heritage through conflict; the illicit trafficking of cultural objects; the dislocation from roots and history linked to population displacement and rapid urbanization; and the impact of accelerating globalization on a shared sense of identity and belonging.

The third area of inquiry – potential for the future – aims to develop a visionary and transformative agenda for the cultural heritage field, supported by new advocacy tools for a range of target audiences. Participants will seek to better articulate why heritage matters to people today and in the future, and how we can unlock the amazing potential of cultural heritage.

KEY QUESTIONS

• In societies striving to be inclusive and equitable, how can we move toward more expansive approaches to and notions of cultural heritage?
• What practical approaches and innovations are already being taken to counter threats to cultural heritage? What obstacles are preventing success and how can collaboration be expanded to overcome these challenges and connect new generations to their cultural heritage?
• How could the cultural heritage sector better communicate with other sectors for mutual benefit, especially in the fields of education, urban development and tourism?
• What innovative strategies can connect more people from all walks of life, especially new urban generations, to cultural heritage?
• What potential does digitization have for making cultural heritage come alive in groundbreaking new ways?
• How can advocacy work around heritage be improved? What do these developments imply for the education and training of the next generation of cultural heritage professionals?

PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Participants will include practitioners from the cultural heritage sector, such as museum, library, and archive professionals, as well as representatives of cultural ministries and heritage associations. They will be joined by a cross-cutting mix of technology innovators, social entrepreneurs, civil society leaders, historians and researchers, policymakers, anthropologists and cultural philanthropists.

PROGRAM FORMAT

The highly interactive program will be structured around a mix of thought-provoking presentations, curated conversations, informal interactions, knowledge exchange, and practical group work. The process seeks to combine theory, policy and practice across sectoral silos, opening up new perspectives and intensive learning opportunities. Participants will also work intensively in focus groups, allowing for in-depth group work on key issues.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES AND IMPACT

This program seeks to:

• Facilitate dialogue, exchange and new forms of networking and collaboration;
• Develop strategies for raising greater awareness of the unique and often poorly-understood role of cultural heritage;
• Share learning from the program through dynamic reporting (blogs, newsletters, a substantive report) with a broad, international group of stakeholders, and with the help of a media partner;
• Jointly draft and widely disseminate a Salzburg Global Statement on the problematics and potential of cultural heritage in the 21st Century, building and expanding on the 2009 Salzburg Declaration on the Conservation and Preservation of Cultural Heritage; and
• Inspire, incubate, and catalyze several creative and unorthodox/unconventional cultural heritage projects and networks, across generations, regions, disciplines, and sectors.

After attending this program as a participant, Prof. Dr. Amareswar Galla published his reflections in the Amaravati Express.

Download the article as a PDF.

Download the PDF

All images are available for download. Please credit Salzburg Global Seminar/Herman Seidl. Unwatermarked images are available on request.

Allmann, Kira and Anasuya Sengupta. “Beyond Internet Access: Seeking Knowledge Justice Online”. Open Global Rights, January 22, 2019.

Arewa, Olufunmilayo. “Cultural appropriation: when 'borrowing' becomes exploitation”. UK: The Conversation Trust, 2016.

Professor Arewa's research centers around intellectual property and business, with a primary focus on copyright and music. Her work also focuses on copyright and the entertainment industries, law and technology, law and society, and various business issues, including accounting, corporate and securities law, private equity, and entrepreneurship.

Aruna, Sanghapalt, Siko Bouterse, Az Causevic, Michael Connolly Miskwish, Persephone Hooper Lewis, Jake Orlowitz, Anasuya Sengupta, Belma Steta and Maari Zwick-Maitreyi. “Our Stories Our Knowledges”. San Diego: University of San Diego, December, 2018.

Bell, Susan. “USC Dornsife's Viet Thanh Nguyen wins Pulitzer Prize for Fiction”. Los Angeles: Dornsife University of Southern California, 2016.

            Bio for Viet Thanh Nguyen

Bokova, Irina. “UNESCO Moving Forward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. UNESCO, 2017.

Bouterse, Siko and Anasuya Sengupta. “Decolonizing the Internet”. Las Vegas: October, 2018.

Brown, Kate. “With a $84 Million Makeover, Belguim's Africa Museum Is Trying to Appease Critics of the Country's Colonial Crimes” Berlin: artnet news, December 8, 2018.

Clarke, Jessica Colley.“Will U.S. Withdrawal from UNESCO Affect Heritage Sites?” The New York Times, April 12, 2018.

Convery, Stephanie. “We need to talk about cultural appropriation: why Lionel Shriver's speech touched a nerve”. Australia: The Guardian, 2016.

“Culture in the Sustainable Development Goals: A Guide for Local Action”. United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), May 2018.

Cultural Rights 10^th Anniversary Report. Human Rights Council, January 17, 2019.

“Culture Urban Future: Global Report on Culture for Sustainable Urban Development” UNESCO, 2016.

Cunliffe, Emma and Luigi Curini. “How Islamic State's destruction of ancient Palmyra played out on Arabic-language Twitter - New Study”. UK: The Conversation Trust, December 12, 2018.

“Declaration on the Inclusion of Culture in the Sustainable Development Goals”. Culture 2015 Goal, May 1, 2014.

Devitt, Aedín Mac. Museums & Contested Histories. International Council of Museums (ICOM) and Blackwell Publishing, 2018.

Disko, Stefan and Helen Tugendhat. “International Expert Workshop on the World Heritage Convention and Indigenous Peoples Report”. Copenhagen: The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2013.

Friedersdorf, Conor. “What Does 'Cultural Appropriation' Actually Mean?” The Atlantic, April 3, 2017.

            Jonathan Blanks, a researcher at the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice

Conor Friedersdorf is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He lives in Venice, California, and is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.

Gersema, Emily. “Where is the line between cultural appropriation and appreciation?” Los Angeles: Dornsife University of Southern California, 2018.

Giuffrida, Angela.“The death of Venice? City’s battles with tourism and flooding reach crisis level”. The Guardian, January 6, 2019.

Giuffrida, Angela. “Getty museum must return 2,000-year-old statue, Italian court rules”. Rome: The Guardian, 2018.

Graham, Mark and Anasuya Sengupta. “We're all connected now, so why is the internet so white and western?” The Guardian, October 5, 2017.

Horton, Mark. “Returning looter artefacts will finally restore heritage to the brilliant cultures that made them”. UK: The Conversation Trust, 2018.

Horton, Mark. “Mark Horton Bio”. UK: The Conversation Trust, 2015.

Hosagrahar, Jyoti, Jeffrey Soule, Luigi Fusco Girard and Andrew Potts. “Cultural Hertiage, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the New Urban Agenda”. ICOMOS, February 15, 2016.

“ICOMOS Leaflet: Sustainable Development Goals”.  ICOMOS, 2017.

ICOMOS Website. ICOMOS, 2019.

“Innovation & Cultural Heritage: High-level Horizon 2020 conference of The European Year of Cultural Heritage” Brussels: European Commission, March 20, 2018.

“Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development”. UNESCO.

“The International Journal of The Inclusive Museum”. Melbourne, Australia and Champaign, Illinois: Common Ground Publishing, 2008/2014.

Koshy, Yohann. “Hey, that's our stuff: Maasi Tribespeople tackle Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum”. The Guardian, 2018.

Kuhn, Nicola. Rückgabe? Wichtiger ist die geteilte Geschichte? Der Tagesspiegel, July 23, 2018.

Larsen, Peter Bille and William Logan (eds), World Heritage and Sustainable Development. New Directions in World Heritage Management, Routledge: London and New York, 2018

Lewis, Rosanna, Kate Arthurs, Melike Berker, Alex Bishop, Thom Louis, Jo Slack, Stephen Stenning, Helen Thomas, and Ian Thomas. “Cultural Heritage for Inclusive Growth”. British Council. 2018.

Mack, Deborah L.. “Libraries and Museums in the Era of Participatory Culture: Session 482 Report”. Salzburg: Salzburg Global Seminar, 2011.

Oswald, Margareta von. “The 'Restitution Report' Frist Reactions in Academia, Museums, and Politics” Wie weiter mit Humboldt’s Erbe?, 2018.

“Overtourism? New UNWTO Report Offers Case Studies to Tackle Challenges”. Madrid: UNWTO World Tourism Organization, March 6, 2019.

Parker, Emma. “Mobilising the Past to Support Human Rights and the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Literature Review”. Leeds: University of Leeds, 2018.

Pozo, Claudia and Kira Allmann. “Exploring Knowledge Through Art: A Virtual Exhibition”. Cape Town: Whose Knowledge? September 7, 2018.

Reimann, Lena, Athanasios T. Vafeidis, Sally Brown, Jochen Hinkel, and Richard S. J. Tol. “Mediterranean UNESCO World Heritage at risk from coastal flooding and erosion due to sea-level rise” Springer Nature Publishing AG, 2018.

Rubin, Erin. “Museums Under Fire: Decolonization Protests Heat Up”. Non-Profit Quarterly, December 5, 2018.

Safi, Michael. “Statue of 'racist' Gandhi removed from University of Ghana”. The Guardian, December 14, 2018.

Scott, Katy.“Before they disappear: Treasured UNESCO sites at risk from climate change”. CNN, January 7, 2019.

“Selected Resources on Heritage and Sustainable Development”. ICOMOS.

Sengupta, Anasuya, Siko Bouterse and Kira Allman. “Build an Internet for, and from, us all”.  Springer Nature Publishing AG, November 28, 2018.

“Sustaining Development IUCN and the Sustainable Development Goals”. IUCN, 2017.

Stoner, Joyce Hill. “Connecting to the World’s Collection: Session 466 Report”. Salzburg: Salzburg Global Seminar, 2009.

UCLG Committee on Culture. “Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Cities: Key Themes and Examples in European cities” United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), October 2018.

“UNESCO moving forward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. UNESCO, 2017.

Wexelamn, Alex. “Google has virtually recreated the National Museum of Brazil, following a devastating fire.”  Artsy, December 18, 2018.

Yildirim, Ege. “ICOMOS Action Plan: Cultural Heritgae and Localizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”. Istanbul: ICOMOS, July 21, 2017.