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ERASMUS+ UNESCO
Making UNESCO World Heritage Sites Appealing to the Young
What would you do to make a heritage site appealing to the young?”
Alan
In order to make a heritage site appealing create interactive audio guide going through the site and showing all of it in a fun but serious atmosphere. They could include the surrounding sound that was there at the time the place was still habited/active. If the site, we are talking about has some sort of informational signs/boards that are explaining what has happened in the past at this very place they should as well include lots of fun facts and odd things that are hidden and can’t be seen if no one tells you.
There is a new technology that has just been installed in 3 castles in France. The visitors can walk around with an app on their phones and the camera would show them how the different parts of the castle were in the past. They could install this type of software in more heritage sites to make it more appealing to the youth.
Emira
I would say a country without a young generation that is not involved with its heritage, would lose its characteristic quality, meaning its cultural identity. It is a great responsibility to pass it on to future generations. Whether you are a curator, wildlife officer, youth worker or a young person yourself, you should find ways to develop heritage projects that successfully engages young people.
Young people often have a limited understanding of what heritage can be, and think that ‘It’s not for me’. Helping young people understand the word ‘heritage’ is an important first step in getting them involved. In my opinion, a successful heritage project to make them interested, would draw on young people’s interests, such as photography, music, sports or science.
All the young respond well to practical and creative activities, opportunities to try different skills and tasks or learn more about their local area. Their interests should be involved in these activities to make heritage appealing to them.
Harmony
Heritage for me is a form of storytelling. It is an inheritance of the art, creativity and hard work of millions of people who have lived, which makes it essential to be preserved for the future generation to see and marvel upon.
Firstly, I believe that in order to make a heritage cite appealing to young people you would need to get them involved in creative and engaging activities where they are split into groups of 5-10 people and they have to take pictures of different landmarks and of anything that makes them feel as if thy place is unique and memorable.
Secondly, when they are set off on a task it should be a task where they are rewarded for their participation and achievement, which is a great incentive for young people to get involved.
Thirdly, you could give the young people the opportunity of taking the mantle and by that i mean the chance to lead some activities because young people tend to feel happy or encouraged when they possess a certain level of control and responsibility.
Fourthly, you could involve a heritage professional or youth worker so that they could educate the young about the importance of world heritage cites and how it relates to their lives.
Lastly, it will be important for young people to visit world heritage cites in order to help them define the word "heritage" for themselves because everyone will come with different perceptions and views of it.
Kelvin
Growing up in Myanmar, a country known to have remained culturally intact from the outside world because of its once-closed borders, I am fully aware of the hardships faced in keeping tradition alive. Despite Western influences, I would say that Myanmar’s flame of tradition is still burning strong through the way we dress, our Buddhist values and the dedication we place in preserving our historic monuments and pagodas in excellent shape.
Across the world, every country has their own World Heritage Site to flaunt – their unique identity through natural landscape wonders or man-made structures of immense importance to their civilisation. But how can we ensure that the future generation will respect and preserve these sites as we once have? As a child, my father would tell me tales of how Myanmar was founded, dating back to the days of when kings and queens ruled. I was hooked with each story he told. When I finally did visit the ancient city of Bagan, I was filled with nostalgia, reliving the past through the stories I had been told. I felt an immense pride for being part of a culture that has raised thousands of palaces and pagodas and felt an urge to see them preserved.
It is hard to capture the attention of the mind of the young – they wish to be entertained. I believe that through telling the story of how a site came to be, and all the mishaps or good deeds that have taken place there over the years, the young will form a connection with the site like I have with Bagan. They will want to pass on the flame, rather than keep the ashes.
Mkye
Young people generally have short attention spans so the way to help with this is to get young people to take part in activities and games, so they could learn interesting things about the heritage sites. As interactive learning is extremely useful, and the information is more likely to stick in the heads of people who take part in these games. One potential game is that people are given clues and a map, and they have to find the areas of map using the clue. The place has either a specific letter or number and the winner gets a prize.
Nicolas
In my opinion to appeal young people to get interested into heritage would be to introduce their local heritage in their own city by organizing a trip with their school, this way student would at least get to know the history of them own city and probably get interested while they're traveling abroad in other heritage in the world.
Internet could be also a good way to attract young people by example using social media and creating short videos which give information about the heritage site of the world. Also, influencers like Youtubers or Instagramers could be invited to visit the site and then to share their experience on their social media. Influencers have a lot of impact on the youngster and it could motivate lots of their followers to get interested into World Heritage site. people will not necessarily go to the site but at least maybe do a little bit of research and get interested about any heritage site.
I feel there is no better way to learn about a heritage site but by going on the field, or internet with the using of relevant sources could get lots of pieces of knowledge to people.
Zofia
Cultural heritage has universal value for us as an individual, community and society. It is important to protect them and pass on to the next generations. Cultural heritage can be seen as something old-fashioned and static, but in reality, it is not. And this first impression can be easily changed through taking different activities as the goal is not to allow cultural heritage to decline or be destroyed.
That’s why I think that the best way to make a heritage site appealing to the young people is to make them involved into attractive activities which will support cultural heritage. Young people love to travel, to take pictures and share them with friends on social media.
I believe that the best way to make it attractive to young generation is to make trips for them to different places in the whole world to show young people the beauty not only of their place of residence, but also the rest of the surrounding world. More precisely to let young people visit places with the world heritage. Such trips will help them in defining the world “heritage”. For example, sightseeing and taking photos of the most memorable places they saw or places they just paid attention to. Also meeting people from different countries and talking to them about common values. Young people should discover how similar are people from different countries. After such trips young people are more likely to identify with the places they visited. For me this point is most important because it will let young people know cultural heritage through their own experience.
The other way to make a heritage site appealing to the young people is to use new technologies why communicating with young people. I still remember the exhibition I went to see about Pompei - ancient Roman city near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Due to technological tricks I had an impression that I was there and could observe the eruption of volcano from a distance. I will never forget about what happened there due to new technologies involved in exhibition.
Trejsi
The heritage of a country is “the key” to know more about the history of how everything began and all the generations that has been living there before us. It is really important to protect these heritage sites and also present them to the young.
In my opinion organized trips inside and outside the country to show the heritage sites will help “our generation” to know more the value and importance that they carry. Taking pictures and experiencing these heritage sites will make “the youth” more keen on knowing more and more about the story that they carry.
In the long run it will lead them to sharing this fascinating experiences with their friends and explaining to them the memories that the trip gave to them. Which in turn preserves the world Heritage sites.
Lorenzo
To begin with, we have to understand why young people do not visit heritage sites. The idea of visiting one might not even come across a youngsters mind. The issues are many: not enough promotion, far away and most importantly, boring. For instance, with all the respect, Stonehenge is not located in the most exciting place, and to fix this, we should encourage either governments or firms to invest and build special facilities to attract young people; any feature that will make their memory unforgettable.
Moreover, as most teenagers identify themselves with celebrities, we can also encourage celebrities to post selfies in front of one on social media such as Twitter or Instagram as they have millions of followers.
Furthermore, we could let film producers make films with the theme of heritage sites and include the scenes with them to promote their existence.
To sum up, I believe we should understand what teenagers are interested in and fit the idea of the heritage site into their schema when it comes to broadening their culture.
Mikhail
In my opinion first of all young people need to understand how important is our world heritage, because it gave our society everything what it have nowadays, this is development and progress which I think young people really should be interested in and explore also it gives opportunity to travel, share knowledge, culture and make new friends. So young people should just be promoted importance of heritage, going through the borders and see something new and I am sure it will make interest as I have in world heritage.
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