Europa Nostra and its youth partners launch consultation on “Youth for the Future of Cultural Heritage in Europe”

Europa Nostra and its partner organisations working with youth in cultural heritage are launching a wide consultation on “Youth for the Future of Cultural Heritage in Europe” as a contribution to the European Year of Youth 2022. The consultation, aiming at empowering and raising the voice of Europe’s young generation, is developed in collaboration with the European Students’ Association for Cultural Heritage (ESACH), the Erasmus Student Network (ESN), the European Heritage Tribune (EHT), The Future is Heritage, Europeana Initiative Diversity & Inclusion Task Force, ICOMOS and the European Heritage Volunteers.

 

While fostering democratic participation, intergenerational dialogue and cooperation, the Europe-wide consultation shall identify young people’s most pressing needs, dreams and aspirations when it comes to the future of the cultural heritage sector. It will explore young people’s visions on how cultural heritage should be integrated in key aspects of society, such as digital transformation, peacebuilding, sustainable development, health, tourism, or everyday heritage, just to name a few strands. At the same time, the survey will seek to find out the degree of satisfaction of young people regarding the way cultural heritage is addressed at European level; and what are the main challenges young professionals, students, volunteers or enthusiasts are facing when interacting with and within the sector.

TAKE SURVEY

The consultation is made via a 10-minute online anonymous survey that will help compile a profile of the young people interested in cultural heritage, besides their perspectives and specific thoughts on the sector overall. The survey was developed following core principles of inclusivity, geographical balance, inter- and transdisciplinarity, and will therefore help collect key insight. The survey will be conducted until 31 August 2022.

The gathered responses will form the backbone of a policy paper that will be released towards the end of the year and which seeks to trigger concrete actions that would foster youth involvement in the cultural heritage sector, thus making use of its spillover benefits for the whole society. In this way, the youth heritage civil society wishes to demonstrate its readiness to act as a united front to ensure a long-term legacy of the European Year of Youth 2022 in the heritage field.

The partnership for this initiative is open to any institution or organisation working with the youth or in the broad cultural heritage sector. A practical communication toolkit is available to widely disseminate the survey online (website, social media, newsletter, etc).

This consultation takes place in the frame of Europa Nostra’s #Youth4Heritage activities within the network project “European Cultural Heritage Agora: Empowering Europe’s Civil Society Movement for Heritage” (2022-2024), which is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.