European trends and developments affecting heritage interpretation

Аннотация

As part of Interpret Europe’s (IE) strategic development process, this study is based on a short-term volunteer research project undertaken by 15 IE members at the request of IE Management. It defines more than 60 trends that may affect the development of Heritage Interpretation (HI) in Europe within the five next years. Paving the way for a later SWOT analysis (analysing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats related to IE), the study also highlights the opportunities and threats resulting from IE’s macro-environment. As a STEP analysis, the research focuses on socio-cultural, technological, economic and political trends. The two latter are split into two parts each: one for general economic trends and one focused on economic trends related to tourism, and one for natural heritage and one for cultural heritage as European policy in these two fields is clearly separate. In this context, it should nevertheless be emphasised that UNESCO claims “respect for cultural and biological diversity as a whole” and advocates for “an inclusive approach, considering environmental, cultural and socio-economic needs“ when highlighting the role of heritage for the transformational change towards sustainability (The Kyoto Vision 2012).