Values-based Heritage Approaches for Sustainable Development

UNICAMP students participate in a Photovoice discussion of significant places on their campus

The Challenges

• History and archaeology curricula focused on academic research with too little emphasis placed on dealing with practical skills such as community and stakeholder conflicts, resulting in a skills deficit for students who pursue careers in Public Heritage.
• Public engagement is often just a buzzword, lacking an effective set of methodologies, resulting in the inability of many heritage professionals to mobilize significant public interest, participation, and political support for their projects.
• History and Archaeology are often seen as ends in themselves, of primary relevance to scholars and history buffs, resulting in a failure to recognize how heritage activities can affect a far wider public through linkage to community identity and development.
• Top-down approaches to heritage interpretation often impose an expert perspective or PR spin on a heritage place, resulting in a narrative that can be seen as inauthentic or dissonant to the perceptions of local residents.

Our Work

• We designed and delivered a two-week field school for advanced students with daily lectures and hands-on participatory activities.
• We taught creative and emic approaches to the identification of places of significance, based in social scientific theories and methods rather than traditional heritage typologies and essentialisms.
• We supervised a final team project of a public heritage walking tour of the UNICAMP Campus that reflected the contemporary values of a sample of the university community.

Results

• Participation in course activities by almost 50 undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty.
• Exhibition of Photovoice images taken by course participants, demonstrating thought-provoking perceptions of their sense of place.
• Documentation of human use and traffic patterns of various campus localities, leading an understanding of how observational and behavioral ethnography can assist in site management.
• A prototype walking tour, accessible online, to provide an alternative visitor experience of UNICAMP for prospective students and their parents.