heritage and innovation (non-profit)
We value and evaluate heritage in an innovative way. Together with the stakeholders, we seek inspiring insights into landscapes, monuments, and traditions.
Are you looking for a heritage story that inspires? Then we engage with you and all the relevant stakeholders. This ensures that all available knowledge is respected and used. Where necessary, we draw on our academic network. In this way, we highlight the essence of heritage from different perspectives.
On the policy side, we help decision-makers and advisory bodies develop compelling long-term visions and propose new opportunities to engage with heritage.
We create visitor centres, heritage atlases, management plans, documentaries, exhibitions, we conduct interviews, we co-ordinate projects, and develop storytelling.
In addition, our role can be that of process supervisor, advisor or sounding board.
We also advise on the use of the right technology in the right context.
We place heritage elements in a spatial context, connect them through time and link them to an evaluation tool. The result is a multi-layered data structure in words, images and sound.
We link intangible heritage to places and events. We link tangible heritage to history, culture and customs. We link nature conservation with heritage preservation.
This approach enables local policy to be guided in a coherent and considered way.
The time dimension helps us to connect heritage elements over time and to make visible changes over time. Some heritage elements are very old and live on through time, others disappear or leave relics in the landscape and are experienced and perceived differently over time.
Our approach objectifies the evaluation of both tangible and intangible heritage and of their interrelationships. This objectifying valuation is based on criteria laid down in international conventions and charters such as those of UNESCO, ICOMOS, the Council of Europe, or in laws and decrees of national and regional governments.
Stories enrich, relax, inform, surprise, move, but can also confront. Stories can bring together different elements to form a whole. They give structure, make us experience and invite us to reflect. Our storytelling brings the different elements of heritage to life.
Aligned with the Council of Europe’s Landscape Convention, we understand landscape as a dynamic interplay of natural and human influences that create specific experiences. Alongside quantitative evaluations, we also provide qualitative assessments of the landscape and its heritage elements.
Buildings with a past tell a story. They bear witness to who inhabited them, to what happened, to a zeitgeist. Sometimes they are remnants of a larger ensemble. Sometimes they are part of an archaeological context. Sometimes they are gone, but the memories remain. Our approach ensures that sites and monuments are brought back to life and that their stories are told.
Museums and repositories preserve objects that have lost their original context. Archaeological finds, instruments, tools, paintings, cult objects or artefacts all have a story to tell. Sometimes an object stands alone, but often it has been taken out of a context that is now lost. Bringing that context back to life gives meaning to the object.
Traditions and customs come in many forms. They may be crafts that survive in an economic niche because large-scale mechanisation is not the answer in a particular context. Think, for example, of traditional forest management that respects nature. It can also be large events that bring a whole community together, such as processions, carnivals or commemorations of important events. Our approach helps to safeguard these forms of heritage and pass them on to the next generation.
Through interviews, we let people testify about what heritage means to them. They may be people who have innovative insights through their research, participants who have stories about their connection to old traditions, or people with specific knowledge and skills that have been passed down from generation to generation. It is more than just oral history. Our approach links these testimonies to each other and to relevant heritage elements in the wider context of time and place.
Our approach effectively enhances public engagement with heritage. Based on available resources and goals, we enrich exhibitions, visitor centres, heritage trails, colloquia, and events, ensuring they align with a long-term vision.
Contact us for more information or questions.
e-mail: erfgoedbureau@gmail.com