Seeing with young Eyes” Sub-regional Southeast Asian Teacher-training Workshop on using art to teach about World Heritage

Penang, Malaysia, 15-21 January 2006

Event and objectives

See also published report. 

"Seeing with Young Eyes" workshop was meant to serve as a forum for discussion of 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 objective of the Workshop is to promote Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and in particular innovative teaching approaches using 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

Heritage education has three main objectives

Encourage the participation of school teachers and educators in conservation and awareness programs aimed at safeguarding heritage sites and cities in the Southeast Asian region

Help teachers and educators introduce heritage education in school curricula by providing them with a variety of pedagogic tools

Provide teachers and educators with a methodology which facilitates young people's engagement in World Heritage sites through engaged arts projects that reflect their local contexts, issues and concerns

Workshop recommendations

• Make cultural heritage accessible to all children to use it as a resource for cultural development
• Develop education module in a more systematic way
• Focus on content/messages/values/meaning of cultural heritage rather than on technical aspects and consider values of sustainability
• Coordinate your actions with others to have a greater impact
• Share knowledge/tools/material
• Find creative ways to work with a limited budget and deal with obstacles of bureaucracy
• Involve communal institutions

Participants

52 participants, of which:

40 educators, heritage experts, teachers, curriculum developers, archaeologists and heritage site managers and researchers
8 artists, speakers, facilitators and observers
4 UNESCO representatives

Countries represented

Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Philippines and Viet Nam

Organizers and sponsors

Japan Foundation
Penang Heritage Trust
Arts-Ed
Badan Warisan Malaysia (Malaysia Heritage Trust)
University of Penang
UNESCO