Young People's World Heritage Education

3rd Sub-regional (Southeast Asian) workshop in Penang, Malaysia 2006

Seeing With Young Eyes: Workshop on Using Art to Teach about World Heritage

In January 2006, teachers and experts in the field of heritage education (see list of participants below) came together for the "Seeing With Young Eyes: 3rd Sub-regional (Southeast Asian) Workshop on Using Art to Teach about World Heritage". This teacher training workshop, held in Penang, Malaysia, focused on art as a means of teaching about World Heritage and promoting its values.  

The overall goal of the workshop was to promote Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), through the use of innovative teaching approaches which use the creative arts to discover and learn about the historic environment and expose youth to new environments, different cultures and world influences captured in World Heritage sites.

The objective of the workshop was to encourage school teachers and educators to participate in conservation and awareness programmes aimed at safeguarding heritage sites and cities in the Southeast Asian region.  In practical terms, it provided an opportunity to help formulate a variety of pedagogic tools based on arts that could be introduced in school curricula in order to engage youth in World Heritage Sites (see link to pedagogic tools below). 

During the workshop participants reviewed and assessed the results of the multi-year workplans from the two previous sub-regional workshops (first sub-regional workshop: "Introduction and Evaluation of the UNESCO World Heritage Education Kit", held in Sukhothai, Thailand 2000 and second sub-regional workshop: "Introducing the Arts for Teaching on the Historic Environment", held in Vigan, Philippines 2001).

Based on the participants’ experience in promoting and implementing World Heritage education, and experimenting with newly developed materials and methods, achievements were recognized and follow-up workplans for the sub-region established, with the aim of mainstreaming World Heritage Education in national formal and informal curricula.

The workshop pursued principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and served as a forum for discussion on how to relate arts vocabulary and mediums to heritage themes and issues and how to facilitate creative thinking and problem solving skills through the arts and thereby create awareness of, and sensitivity to, heritage sites. 

The participants had the opportunity to learn about creative arts as a teaching tool and to develop innovative activities that can serve as and inspire imaginative teaching materials for use in Southeast Asia, the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.  

The workshop presentations can be downloaded here:

• Introduction to Cultural Mapping and Interpretation of a Site, by Richard A. Engelhardt, UNESCO (PDF, 1.41MB)
• World Heritage Education for Sustainability, by Dr Chan Lean Heng, Universiti Sains Malaysia (PDF, 76KB) 
• ARTS-ED Arts in Heritage Education Programme, by Janet Pillai, Universiti Sains Malaysia (PDF, 5.2MB)
• Mapping and Interpretation of Symbolism in Motifs in Penang, by David Yeo, AAK Artist-facilitator (PDF, 9.6MB)
• Balik Pulau: The Island Behind the Hills, by Janet Pillai, Universiti Sains Malaysia (PDF, 8.1MB)
• My BALIK pulau: A Mapping & Interpretation Heritage Education Programme for Young People (PDF, 5.5MB), by Ms Elizabeth Cardosa, Badan Warisan Malaysia
• George Town: the Historic Port Settlement of Penang, by Laurence Loh, Badan Warisan Malaysia (PDF, 7.4MB)

Related documents are availiable for download: