The Grup d’ Arqueología Pública i Patrimoni (Public Archaeology and Heritage Group) lead by Margarita Diaz-Andreu (ICREA-UB) organized a seminar and a workshop during the 18 to 20 of February, 2015. Both events were held in the Universitat de Barcelona (Spain), and linked to the European project Heritage@Values Network.
The first day, a seminar co-organized by Apen Ruiz Martinez (UOC-UB) and Ana Pastor (PhD, UB) received an outstanding turnout of students and professionals who attended to a full-day of presentations. The seminar was divided in three sessions to discuss themes such as social inclusion and heritage, participatory archaeological tourism, virtual heritage and public archeology. The presenters offered an insightful and diverse perspective on heritage values and the interactions between archaeology and the public, indicating the existing growing interest about these themes in Spain.
The following two days (19-20 February) were dedicated to the "Heritage Values and the Public" workshop organized by a European-funded project led by University College of London, and with partners from the University of Leiden, the Technical University of Eindhoven, Norwegian Conservation Center NIKU and the University of Barcelona. This workshop was the last of three meetings celebrated during the project. In this occasion, around forty specialists from more than fifteen countries belonging to different disciplines associated with heritage conservation, management, museums, university or private sphere, participated in two fruitful days of discussion. The workshop was divided in five sessions: Making Heritage Inclusive; Participatory and Sustainable heritage; Virtual Heritage and the Public; Tourism, and, finally, World Heritage. The meeting shed light on how specialists are currently thinking about issues such as the role of heritage as a tool of social inclusion, heritage and collective memory in today´s changing European scenario, urban transformations and heritage values, or the impact of World Heritage nominations on local communities. Some of the papers addressed methodological aspects that are emerging in the research on heritage and the public, for example the use of oral histories, virtual exhibitions, ethnography, and participatory mappings. For more information of both events, the GAPP’s activities and the Heritage Values Project follow @gapp_bcn and @heritage_values on twitter and visit the webpage www.heritagevalues.net.