Portugal’s Cultural Heritage – The Heritage Camps Model

There are around 34,000 monuments in Portugal with no official protection (cf. Estudo Património em Portugal - Avaliação do Valor Económico e Social). . This means that any person or entity may do whatever they wish with them; that no institution is responsible for these assets; and that they are not eligible for EU funding programmes that require heritage classification. How, then, can we attend to this heritage, assuming that such a “state of affairs” is clearly unacceptable in an advanced society?

To overcome similar circumstances, France created the Heritage Camps nearly 60 years ago: intervention models based on proximity management – local associations, collectives or groups of citizens who step forward to take part in the enhancement of their shared heritage; the definition, supervision and reporting of the work carried out by qualified professionals (conservator-restorers, architects, engineers, archaeologists, depending on the nature of the intervention); and a broad base of volunteer citizens, with no discrimination regarding origin, age, social background or specialization. The French Ministry of Culture finances part of these actions and delegates the decisions to those on site: to date, more than 1,000 monuments have been restored in France through this model.

At the AR-PA – Iberian Biennial of Cultural Heritage, in Sintra, on December 4th, the International Heritage Talk “Heritage Camps – Volunteering in Cultural Heritage” will take place, with the participation of the French Ministère de la Culture; Marie-Georges Pagel-Brousse from Union REMPART; José Delgado Rodrigues, heritage conservation consultant; Przemysław Nocuń from Jagiellonian University, Krakow, and ICOMOS Poland; Juan Miguel Gutiérrez Pulgar from Fundación Monasterio de Santa María de Rioseco, Spain; Marine Mizandari from the National Trust of Georgia; and more.

With around 34,000 monuments in Portugal lacking any form of protection, the Heritage Camps — with their methodology grounded in teams of conservator-restorers; the pedagogical training required of these professionals; the development of heritage education programmes for children; the “Open-Site” model that allows anyone to enter, observe and ask questions; the rich cultural exchange created by their international character; the encouragement of young people to pursue careers in heritage and conservation-restoration; and the alternative financial engineering that makes these initiatives feasible — represent a possible response to the protection gap affecting much of Portugal’s heritage, and one that deserves to be systematized. A response in which civil society plays a fundamental role.

Free admission. Because it is by speaking openly — face to face — that we truly understand one another.