Course: First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis

Organised by the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) and the Smithsonian Institution, a new edition of the International Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis will be held in Washington DC, USA, between 23 May and 24 June 2016. The course is held in cooperation with the Cultural Emergency Response Programme (CER) of the Prince Claus Fund. The course is aimed at strengthening local responses and actors that can have the greatest immediate impact in the recovery and rehabilitation of communities impacted by disaster. The overall goal is to ensure crisis-affected communities have the ability to participate in their own cultural recovery. Many different types of professionals respond to an unfolding crisis. The Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis provides strategies for interlocking culture specialists with humanitarian specialists during an emergency situation and aims to unify these sometimes conflicting perspectives. The course imparts practical skills and knowledge for taking simple measures to secure and stabilise endangered cultural heritage during a complex emergency situation, which in turn can become a driver for peace and holistic development. The recovery and stabilisation of such cultural material can be a strategy that allows people to cope in a crisis. After four international, and more than nine regional and national editions in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the 2016 course is hosted in Washington D.C, USA, by the Smithsonian Institution. The content will be enriched through case examples on safeguarding cultural heritage in the aftermath of national disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and most recently, Hurricane Sandy. After the course, participants will be invited to submit proposals to carry out first aid projects or organize first aid training courses in their respective countries. Selected proposals will receive seed grants from the Prince Claus Fund's CER programme. The International Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis will be of particular interest to those who would like to proactively safeguard cultural heritage during an emergency situation while being sensitive to the local context and emergent human needs. Organisers seek heritage professionals ‒both practitioners and researchers‒ that have previous experience of facing an emergency situation that called for an immediate response to safeguard cultural heritage, or those who live/work in a risk-prone region that has an associated impact on cultural heritage. Humanitarian response specialists are also encouraged to apply in order to bolster their own understanding of how cultural heritage helps communities to recover, and how their work can be included of the response effort. The working language of the course is English. A limited number of scholarships covering accommodation and living expenses is available. The deadline for submitting application forms is 9 November. For additional information, please visit http://www.iccrom.org/international-course-on-first-aid-to-cultural-heritage-in-times-of-crisis/