‘Guidelines on innovative/emerging cultural heritage education and training paths’ analyses the distinctive features of education and training (E&T) for cultural heritage (CH) professions in Europe, distils the CHARTER findings of what makes heritage E&T innovative and emerging and attempts an outlook on those segments (‘pathways’) of heritage E&T, all of which promise the greatest future potential.
… a flexible framework which can easily be adapted to different regional or national education systems…
Charter writes:
Education and training are at the heart of all Blueprint alliances, initiatives set up by the European Commission to solve skills shortages in certain employment sectors. Skills needs can only be addressed effectively by first identifying existing skills gaps and, secondly, filling these very gaps through E&T opportunities which are fit-to-purpose and support the overall sectoral strategy.
Work Package 3 of the CHARTER Alliance has committed to work towards these goals for the cultural heritage sector by pursuing the following objectives:
- investigate how formal and non-formal education are transmitted and develop a database of existing cultural heritage E&T institutions and programmes linking them to qualifications and professions;
- develop a literature collection on cultural heritage E&T;
- benchmark innovative/emerging curricula;
- explore quality standards and certifications schemes;
- identify gaps and needs in existing education and training programmes;
- propose innovative/emerging occupations and curricula guidelines.
The report at hand outlines eight pathways of E&T opportunities which address current – and in all likelihood – future gaps and needs of the CH sector. These pathways constitute those segments of heritage E&T for which CHARTER recommends that new curricula should be developed, or current curricula should be adapted to new requirements.
The Guidelines are intended as a flexible framework which can easily be adapted to different regional or national education systems or national/regional variations in skills needs and gaps. They have been designed to support education providers in creating/modifying cultural heritage curricula, cultural heritage organisations/employers in developing in-house training for their staff, (potential) students in selecting heritage E&T programmes, policy makers when deciding on relevant laws and regulations and scholars in their research on the CH sector. Moreover, the authors hope that the report will also prove interesting for any other stakeholders with an interest in cultural heritage.
