CIE–Centre for International
Heritage Activities
Young people exploring a coastal heritage site in Galle, Sri Lanka
HomeOur workDhakiraLegacy programme

Our World Heritage

Opening World Heritage to new approaches, civil society and voices outside established systems.

2020–2021Continuing legacy

Programme history

Who shapes World Heritage?

In the lead-up to the fiftieth anniversary of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, CIE joined the global Our World Heritage initiative. CIE contributed to Theme 6, New Approaches to World Heritage, and coordinated Theme 12, Opening Up to Civil Society.

The programme examined the power structures embedded in heritage production and management. It asked how local stakeholders, civil-society organisations, researchers and communities could participate more meaningfully in decisions about places whose significance is often defined through national and international systems.

World Heritage becomes more inclusive when authority is shared with the people who live its meanings.

Two connected themes

Changing systems,
opening participation

Critical reflection and public participation moved together throughout the programme.

Theme 06New approaches

Question categories

Four public webinars examined heritage categories, cross-convention thinking, decolonisation and the assumptions shaping World Heritage practice.

Theme 12Civil society

Open the process

Nine events explored governance, unframed voices, public memory, academia, community practice and the possibilities of wider participation.

Public experimentAudio

Let heritage sound

The season culminated in World Heritage Radio, a shared audio space for interviews, poetry, storytelling and soundscapes.

Enter the radio project ↗

Programme season

Questions made public

Selected activities from the wider series of workshops, lectures and webinars.

2020

New Approaches to World Heritage

Public webinars and student workshops challenged inherited categories and explored cross-convention and decolonising approaches.

2021

Mapping Unframed Voices

A workshop on civil-society participation, heritage governance and the continuing dominance of state-centred management.

2021

Lest We Forget

Research on locating graves and identifying political prisoners who died at Robben Island’s Maximum Security Prison.

2021

Other Stories: Sultanahmet

Oral histories opened alternative perceptions of Istanbul’s heavily visited archaeological and World Heritage landscape.

Dec 2021

World Heritage Radio launch

The programme concluded by turning collected voices, words and sounds into a public audio archive and experiment.

Principal sourceAnnual Report 2020–2021 ↗

Continue opening heritage to civil society.

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