Collaboratively assessing management effectiveness of World Heritage properties

The Heritage Place Lab tested concepts and tools being developed under or in collaboration with the WHL including the Knowledge Framework for Managing World Heritage, Enhancing Our Heritage Toolkit 2.0 (EOH 2.0), as well as the case studies’ database of PANORAMA Nature-Culture Community (https://panorama.solutions/en/portal/nature-culture).  For the purpose of developing World Heritage properties’ practice-led research agendas, the Heritage Place Lab proposed that each Research-Practice Team work on assignments between workshops that were later presented. The sequence of the assignments was designed to feed into the production of the research agendas for each World Hertage property, using the Tools 1, 2 and 4 of the EOH 2.0 Toolkit which aims at assessing management effectiveness. The Teams evaluated the shared understanding of values and attributes, governance arrangements and factor affecting their heritage places, which allowed to identify management issues and research priorities.

- The WHLP is currently developing a number of manuals and tools to support the management of World Heritage properties. These were possible to test during the Heritage Place Lab pilot phase.

- The involvement in the project of authors of these manuals and tools, as well as from practitioners that applied these tools on their sites facilitated the process.

- The manuals and tools have been created for the use of managers of World Heritage and other heritage places, and they were more difficult to understand by researchers. However, in the process of using the tools, it helped researchers to understand management more closely, and to identify management needs and research needs based on issues on the ground, connecting more closely with the sites.

- The collaborative work between researchers and site managers assessing management effectiveness was fundamental to strenghten the research-practice partnerships and enabled the inception of new potential projects and plans within Teams.