PNC22 offered heritage practitioners, communities and decision-makers from all regions a platform to discuss how effectively managed World Heritage sites and heritage places can provide benefits and offer solutions for society and heritage itself.
The 2022 edition of the international course on Managing World Heritage: People-Nature-Culture, also known as the PNC22 course, welcomed participants in Seoul and Buyeo, Republic of Korea from 1 to 12 August 2022. The course brought together 21 national focal points, site coordinators, heritage practitioners, representatives of communities, heritage researchers, and municipal representatives from 18 countries - Albania, Armenia, Australia, Botswana, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Mauritius, Mexico, Nepal, Norway, Oman, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, and Viet Nam - offering a platform for capacity building, peer-learning, discussion, and exchange.
The PNC22 course was delivered by the ICCROM-IUCN World Heritage Leadership programme in close cooperation with the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea (CHA) and the Korea National University of Cultural Heritage (KNUCH) providing resources, facilities, and access to World Heritage properties in the Republic of Korea with the aim of utilizing the Korean heritage management system as a shared case study to be analyzed during the course.
During the Opening Ceremony of the course, participants were welcomed by Director-General Suhee Chae from CHA and Professor Yong Jae Chung, Acting President of KNUCH and Council member of ICCROM, who welcomed all participants and resource people to Korea and highlighted the importance of fostering capacity building cooperation across the heritage sector.
The course alternated both in-class and on-site field visits offering participants the opportunity to consolidate their knowledge of heritage management, explore how heritage places can be effectively managed and how the World Heritage Convention applies at the national and local levels. Field visits included site visits to components of the World Heritage properties of Getbol, Korean Tidal Flats, the Joseon Royal Tombs, the Baekje Historic Areas, and the Gochang, Hwasun, and Ganghwa Dolmen Sites.
The World Heritage property of ‘Getbol, Korean Tidal Flats’ inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2021 served as the key case study of the course. Participants used it to discuss essential heritage issues and expand on the services and benefits of heritage places. It also served as a shared case to apply selected tools of the upcoming Enhancing Our Heritage Toolkit 2.0.
The course discussed how heritage management ensures that heritage places actively contribute to the sustainable development of Indigenous and local communities, and people. This also further underlined during the field visits to the World Heritage property of ‘Getbol, Korean Tidal Flats’, which was used as official case study of the course, where local community representatives and the local Ramsar Gachang Tidal Flat Centre highlighted how local communities play a crucial role in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the tidal flat system and how they are engaged in conserving and communicating heritage places to younger generations and visitors. Using the tools of the upcoming Enhancing Our Heritage Toolkit 2.0, participants worked in groups to analyze the management system of the Getbol, which provided a platform to discuss how their different heritage management systems operate and exchange common challenges and possible solutions.
At the end of the course, participants were asked to think of 3 lessons learned and to suggest two transformative actions they would like to take at their heritage places and in their work, one that they can apply immediately and a second in the next 12 months. This final reflection offered a chance to see how many sites around the world are facing similar challenges and highlight the importance of continuing to share good practices and solutions to support the global heritage community.Participants will publish short solutions on PANORAMA Nature-Culture in the coming weeks to share their experience solving heritage management challenges at their World Heritage properties and heritage places worldwide.
About the People-Nature-Culture course
This flagship foundational course from the ICCROM-IUCN World Heritage Leadership programme is dedicated to site coordinators, members of management teams and institutions, and heritage practitioners managing and caring for World Heritage properties and heritage places around the world. The course is organized by the ICCROM-IUCN World Heritage Leadership programme in cooperation with the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea (CHA), the Korea National University of Cultural Heritage (KNUCH), and the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment.