In the Cultural Heritage Act of 2002, contemplating and implementing the set-up of various committees, bodies corporate and operating agencies, we have in place a strong legislative framework catering for the conservation and protection of our cultural heritage, widely acknowledged as the common heritage of mankind. With Minister Jose Herrera responsible for our cultural heritage, we have a person genuinely in love and sincerely concerned with the promotion, proliferation and preservation of our vast cultural heritage. His Ministry has incredibly made great strides in bringing our cultural heritage to the fore of government agendas. During the last few years, we have seen Heritage Malta heavily investing in the necessary technical and digital infrastructure that has enabled us to view and learn about our cultural heritage from the comfort of our homes, thanks to innumerable virtual tours. The Heritage Malta Passport Scheme was an ingenious move meant to inculcate cultural heritage education and appreciation among the Maltese population. Moreover, we have a number of non-governmental organisations, like Din L-Art Ħelwa, who are doing sterling work with regard to the preservation and protection of our cultural heritage. So what is missing?
Cultural heritage is important for both society and the economy. It contributes to forming an individual and collective identity, supports improving social and territorial cohesion, is of great economic importance for the tourism industry and has the potential for defining new types of artistic careers. This importance for society and economy demands better protection, promotion and use of our cultural heritage. Our cultural heritage is a fragile resource and exposed to many threats such as climate change and pollution and increasing urbanisation and negligence. At the same time, the way of thinking about cultural heritage is evolving and the way cultural heritage is developed, appropriated, enriched, promoted and transmitted is also changing. As an example, sources of cultural heritage are increasingly preserved and transmitted digitally and online, offering new ways of sharing, analyzing and presenting cultural heritage. Another development is the increase in digital-born heritage, which includes artistic and cultural forms of expression that are only created digitally (for example, e-culture).
Despite these dynamics in cultural heritage, thinking about the future of cultural heritage is not widespread. Maybe it is because of the contradiction between the retrospective nature of cultural heritage and the prospective nature of foresight and futures studies. Nevertheless, future perspectives on relevant trends and drivers of change that may impact cultural heritage in Malta in the coming decades can support strategic thinking in cultural heritage management including preservation, promotion and use of cultural heritage sources. Any Planning Authority policies relevant to cultural heritage management will have to be seriously and radically revisited.
We need to identify the right people able to contribute to applying a future perspective on cultural heritage. They should be able to discern any change that may impact cultural heritage using the Steep structure (Society, Technology, Economy, Ecology and Policy). Furthermore, any such impact affecting the development, management, preservation, promotion, use and funding of cultural heritage will have to be analyzed. Thereafter, the focus should be on the challenges, needs, options and questions for research following from these impacts. The outcomes of this exercise would then be offered to stakeholders dealing with cultural heritage, including national policymakers, programming initiatives, agencies, institutes and research councils as inspiration to their strategic research agendas.
In addition, the general public should become a more prominent stakeholder in presenting and sharing cultural heritage collections. Nowadays, cultural heritage is attracting public attention again, so that the number of visitors to museums, art galleries and archaeological sites tends to increase year by year progressively. However, it is very common to find a passive, quick and superficial fruition in the average visitor, which does not allow him/her to fully understand the meaning and value of the cultural heritage he/she has enjoyed. This is a very common phenomenon that unfortunately generates negative educational repercussions, namely museum fruition, which is hasty, inattentive and “poor” from a cognitive, emotional, aesthetic and relational point of view. As regards museum attendance, for example, a student who perceives the visit to the museum as tedious and unimportant will hardly come back to a museum with his/her family when an adult. Regarding the promotion of active and democratic citizenship, if we recognise ourselves in the observed heritage and learn to care about it, we build our sense of belonging to a community and develop a protective mentality.
The basic idea of heritage education is to offer opportunities to engage in experiences to learn new concepts and skills. By directly experiencing or analysing cultural heritage, learners gain knowledge, intellectual skills and a wider range of competencies on issues such as cultural heritage maintenance or societal well-being. Cultural heritage is an expression of the ways of living developed by our community and passed on from generation to generation, including customs, practices, places, objects, artistic expressions and values.
I personally believe that unfortunately, there is still a sizable part of our population who lack adequate knowledge, appreciation and education aimed at not only the preservation and protection of our cultural heritage but, above all, its enhancement. On more than one occasion, I have witnessed people from all walks of life participating in various educational and general knowledge quizzes aired on different TV Maltese stations who did not have the faintest idea of the origins, significance and placement of many cultural sites, customs and traditions of our country. How we think about the past and ourselves determines how we understand the present and how we build for the future.
A population without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational and economic legacies – all of the things that quite literally make us who we are.
Dr Mark Said is an advocate