Global Excellence in Interpretation Webinars
Since 2022, the Global Alliance for Heritage Interpretation has hosted the Global Excellence in Interpretation series of webinars. These international webinars hosted by interpretation organisations around the world are free to all interpreters, regardless of membership or affiliation with any of the sponsor organisations! English-Spanish live translation will be available where possible.
2024 Webinars
The next webinar will be on Friday, 11 October, at 15.00hrs. Hosted by Interpret Europe
EVRYNOUS’, in Greek, means open-minded
In the remote NE corner of Greece, where cultures and ethnic groups intermingle for centuries, the project EVRYNOUS offered local people a challenge: to discover the half-forgotten stories of their own regions, weave them together with their own personal stories to create meaningful interpretive walks. The final result was a strong network of local people of the whole Evros prefecture, ready to inspire us with their newly acquired interpretive skills.
In this webinar we will share the highlights of this project, and the lessons learned both by participants and ourselves. Finally, we will try to reach some practical conclusions useful to anyone interested in co-creating heritage interpretation and engaging local communities.
Presenters:
Valentina Sokratous lives in Alexandroupoli Greece and has been working as a Museum coordinator since 2018 and head of Museum Learning since 2011 at the Ethnological Museum of Thrace.
She designs and implements community projects and workshops in various groups, using multiple techniques and approaches. As well as an experienced cultural manager in social change-based projects. Her studies are in the field of Pedagogy, and she has an MSc in Innovative Approaches in Learning in Multicultural Environments. She is an alumnus from START-Create Cultural Change /Goethe-Institute Thessaloniki & Bosch Foundation Germany 2019-20 and the US. State Department & Embassy of Greece residency recipient (2021 & 2023) for the “Promoting Social Change through the Arts” International Visitor Leadership Program. She has created and participated in various performance art projects and strongly believes that our heritage and culture is the key to implement social change.
Valya Stergioti is the founder of Alli Meria, a team of Greek professionals aiming in promoting heritage interpretation in Greece and beyond.
For the last twenty years, she has been a free-lance interpretive planner, writer and trainer, collaborating with NGOs, public institutions and governmental agencies, in many different countries of the world. She has been Interpret Europe's training coordinator for eight years and is still working closely with IE for the development and implementation of its training programme. She's especially interested on the co-creation of interpretive services with local communities and on heritage interpretation at sites seriously affected by the climate crisis.
Register free HERE
AHI hosted a webinar Using museum collections to spark climate conversations on Wednesday, 28 August 2024 at 18:00
A recording of this webinar is available via the via the GAHI website.
Stromness is a small town of around 2000 people and its museum is one of the oldest independent museums in Scotland. Its collection comprises ethnographic, social history, maritime and natural history collections. Katy and her team have been working to use the collections as a springboard to start climate conversations. This outreach and interpretation activity begun after COP26 in Glasgow and has continued ever since. Katy will describe the award-winning Changes in a Lifetime: Climate Cafes project and elaborate on this project’s legacy.
Katy Firth is Climate Change Exhibitions and Outreach Officer at Stromness Museum, Orkney, Scotland. Katy was born and brought up in Orkney and studied Archaeology and German at the University of Glasgow. In her heritage-related career she has had roles as Park Ranger, Community Archaeologist and has worked freelance in heritage education and learning since 2015. She is passionate about Orkney’s natural and cultural heritage
2024 Recordings:
Recordings of the previous webinars are available to view on the GAHI website:
Webinar 1 - 10 April 2024 – National Association for Interpretation: Parks for All!
Webinar 2 - 11 June 2024 – Interpretation Canada: New voices at the table: Using interdisciplinary Interpretive Planning to transform visitor experiences
Webinar 3 - 20 August 2024 – Interpretation Australia: Creating First Nations Community-led Digital Interpretation at Murrook Culture Centre
Webinar 4 - 28 August 2024 - AHI: Using museum collections to spark climate conversations
Webinar 5 - 27 September 2024 - InterpatMX - Experiencias interpretativas para niños y sus familias / Interpretive Experiences for Children and Their Families
Saving Ukrainian Heritage
Webinar 1, July 2022: The Love of Freedom: Why the World Needs Skovoroda, and Ukrainian Culture
On Friday night, May 6, 2022, a Russian missile set fire to the Hryhorii Skovoroda National Museum in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. Skovoroda was a beloved poet, philosopher, teacher and composer whose work is still influencing modern poets today. He has been seen as a symbol of the “love of freedom” and for many, the attack on the museum (which is actually originally Skovoroda’s home) felt like an attack on the soul of the country. We will learn about the Skovoroda museum, before and after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, why the world needs Skovoroda, how interpreters are helping make it visible to the world, and how you can help.
Webinar recording may be viewed on the GAHI Website.