The ICCROM-IUCN World Heritage Leadership (WHL) Programme joined forces with the School of Landscape Architecture of the Beijing Forestry University (BFU) to host the Heritage and Landscape Conservation Conference and the first in-person workshop of the Heritage Place Lab 2024-2025.
This event marks the first milestone achieved through the collaboration between ICCROM and BFU, who are co-conveners of the Heritage and Landscape Conservation Lab.
Heritage and Landscape Conservation Conference 2024 – Linking Culture and Nature
The conference brought together researchers and site managers from World Heritage sites and other heritage places from around the world to showcase how the collaboration between site management institutions and academia is essential to find solutions and approaches to face management challenges that hinder the conservation and protection of heritage.
The conference showcased how practice-oriented research can improve the identification, conservation and management of heritage, offering a space where researchers and site managers can share and contribute knowledge to strengthen and establish place-based and culture-nature integrated approaches to heritage management.
WHL contributed to the discussion through its Heritage Place Lab and by presenting the results of the HPL pilot that was implemented between 2021 and 2023, and resulted in the establishment of Research Agendas for the World Heritage sites that participated in the pilot phase.
Check out the publication Heritage Place Lab. A Model for Research-Practice Collaboration in the Context of World Heritage
Heritage Place Lab 2024-2025 Workshop in Beijing
The first in-person meeting of the Heritage Place Lab 2024-2025 offered the chance to connect the HPL pilot implemented between 2021 and 2023 and the ongoing second edition. Representatives from the Research-Practice Teams from Norway and Zimbabwe had the chance to present the research agendas prepared during the HPL pilot and share their experience working across knowledge systems.
During the workshop, the Research-Practice Teams worked further to advance the analysis of existing heritage management challenges and began formulating research questions to establish a framework for the preparation of research agendas by early 2025. HPL 2024-2025 involves five World Heritage sites:
- Al-Ahsa Oasis, an Evolving Cultural Landscape, Saudi Arabia;
- Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork, Poland;
- Cultural Sites of Al Ain (Hafit, Hili, Bidaa Bint Saud and Oases Areas), United Arab Emirates
- Mount Huangshan, China;
- Port Arthur Historic Site, Coal Mines Historic Site, components of the Australian Convict Sites, Australia.
The five teams participating in this edition of HPL were selected through a competitive process based on the selection of five World Heritage site management teams that have been paired with researchers working on priority issues identified as management challenges by site managers.
Next month, HPL will convene two additional workshops focused on impact assessment and development issues, as well as climate change and Indigenous, Local and Traditional Knowledge.
