The 44th Session of the World Heritage Committee will be held in Fuzhou (China) on July 16. There will be a parallel event held on the same day, dedicated to the theme of World Heritage Education for the Future - Cultural Heritage, Lifelong Learning and Sustainable Development.
For this special session, the organisation received more than 100 proposals from entities around the world, who submitted case studies related to ​​World Heritage Education, in order to have their work presented.
One of the selected case-studies is the programme aimed at the school public “Wish you were here!”, that has been created within the framework of the international project AtlaS.WH – World Heritage in the Atlantic Area: Sustainability of Urban Sites World Heritage, of which Porto is the lead city and which also involves the cities of Santiago de Compostela, Bordeaux, Florence and Edinburgh. The jury stated that is an exceptional case, which exemplifies an approach that may be replicated on a global scale, and is a good practice that should be disseminated to a wide international audience and which promotes the future development of education in the area of ​​World Heritage.
Throughout the 2019-2020 school year, various exploratory initiatives, learning resources and activities were developed with around 1,400 children from the five partner cities. In the case of Porto, the project aimed at middle school students (Years 5 and 6) consisted of three sessions: an initial classroom session, that addressed the concepts of Heritage and Sustainability; a guided visit to the Historic Centre, from the Sé cathedral to the Ribeira; and a third session which corresponded to a visit and exploration of a station of the City Museum.
All participants were invited to create a postcard about their city's Heritage, which would be sent and shared with children from the other partner cities. In the other sites of the partnership, various world heritage educational activities were also developed that used postcards to record the children’s contributions – in Bordeaux, using calligrams, in Santiago de Compostela with workshops for families, in Edinburgh with children aged between 6 and 12 years old and in Florence with a unique tour of the Historic Centre. In Porto, the works gave rise to the publication “Wish you were here!” designed to function as a pocket notepad and a notebook for drawings, thereby also encouraging people to use their imagination and inspiration.
The AtlaS.WH project is funded by the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme through the European Regional Development Fund