EU Heritage partners Emmanuele Curti (Materahub, Italy), Anda Georgiana Marinescu (National Institute for Research and Cultural Training, Romania) and Karsten Xuereb (the University of Malta) co-authored the article “Vision for the future. Innovative skills for cultural heritage managers in the post-COVID-19 scenario(s)”, published in the first issue of the ENCATC Magazine.
The article starts envisioning post-COVID-19 scenario(s) for the cultural heritage sector, and highlights that “it would be ideal to consider challenging contexts that do not prioritize our [cultural heritage] sector, and make a head start with efforts at mobilizing our own resources and maximizing them by linking them up with other areas that may be prioritized such as health, R&D, education and employment”.
In this context, the skills identified as key for cultural heritage managers according to the EU Heritage research “become more relevant after social distancing and will remain important after the opening of cultural heritage sites”. Among those, “communication skills are essential to inspire trust and confidence among visitors regarding their security”, as well as to develop the mentioned, much needed cross-sectoral links.
Authors close the reflection with some ideas about prospective action to face challenges before us. “We have now to go through a new collective redefinition of what keeps us together – not as a static window case, but as a continuous dynamic dialogue: this will allow us to overcome these times and start again with those new skills we discussed, with new instruments refocusing on a new public discourse”.
The full article is available for consultation in open access here.
