Culture

‘Cultural awareness and expression’ is one of the eight key competences that form the reference tool which EU Member States to be integrate into strategies and infrastructure in the context of lifelong learning.

The other key competences are:

1) Communication in the mother tongue,

2) Communication in foreign languages,

Teenagers and heritage

Teenagers tend to question the customs, traditions, habits, beliefs and attitudes which had been passed on to them during their childhood, while they seek their own place in the world and their own identity. During this search for one’s place in the world and among others, meaningful heritage can help young people reshape their own value system and identities.

Digital heritage resources:

Resources that have been digitalised as a way to preserve them (including text, images, video and records)

Tips

For engaging young people with cultural heritage in a meaningful way, educational activities included the following characteristics

Heritage education

Cultural heritage is used in the teaching environment, mainly to bring cultural heritage to the attention of as many pupils as possible and to enrich the learning processes.

Heritage education is an approach to teaching and learning based on the idea that heritage offers the opportunity to learners to engage in experiences that make them learn. By directly experiencing, examining, analysing and evaluating cultural heritage such as buildings, monuments, workplaces, landscapes, artefacts, rituals and traditions, learners gain knowledge, intellectual skills and a wider range of competences that enhance their capacities for maintenance and improvement of the society and ways of living.

Cultural heritage shapes our everyday lives. It surrounds us in Europe’s towns and cities, natural landscapes and archaeological sites. It is not only found in literature, art and objects, but also in the crafts we learn from our ancestors, the stories we tell our children, the food we enjoy and the films we watch and recognise ourselves in.

Cultural heritage includes

The Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for the Society (Faro, 2005) gives most comprehensive definition of cultural heritage, embracing its tangible, intangible and digital dimension in a holistic way:

Cultural Heritage is a group of resources inherited from the past, which people identify, independently of ownership, as a reflection and expression of their constantly evolving values, beliefs, knowledge and transitions. It includes all aspects of the environment resulting from the interaction between people and places through time (Faro 2005).