Abstract:

The state appears to possess the greatest means for the promotion of cultural heritage, which necessarily has an educational aspect. It legally defines the cultural heritage (usually in its tangible and intangible forms) and sets the legal conditions for its preservation and public use. It is also an active agent in promulgating its own narratives of what purpose the cultural heritage serves, as well as in promoting programmes that directly involve young people such as in the programme “School Bag” in Latvia. The analysis (how cultural heritage was represented and offered to young people at a mainstream heritage site and at an alternative heritage site) presented in this paper is part of a broader H2020 collaborative research project called “Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe’s Future” (CHIEF, Agreement No. 770464). The in-depths expert interviews at the National History Museum (selected as a mainstream heritage site) and the Mark Rothko Art Centre (an alternative heritage site) made it possible to clarify the experts’ subjective experience and to shape an inter-subjective narrative on the cultural education and the problems related to its implementation at particular heritage sites. The presentation will demonstrate the mutual dynamics of different means and approaches to cultural education by the state and the civil society sector, which tend to complement rather than contradict each other. Young people, in this case, are the target group of these two main agents that address them from above. When applied to particular sites such dynamics to certain extent problematize the clear-cut division of cultural heritage sites to mainstream and alternative. It also allows observation of how the particular concerns with the past via the concept of cultural heritage may be differently interpreted.

Keywords:

Cultural heritage, cultural education, young people, museum, history.