European Cultural Heritage Summit Agrees on Berlin Call to Action

News from 06/22/2018

Europa Nostra, the German Cultural Heritage Committee and the SPK call for better use of cultural heritage potential – summit in Berlin with more than 70 events and 1500 guests

„This is our European Heritage“ Messages from Young Professionals at the European Cultural Heritage Summit
© SPK / Friederike Schmidt

The European Cultural Heritage Summit has agreed on a Berlin Call to Action: Europa Nostra, German Cultural Heritage Committee and the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) signed a manifesto calling for an Action Plan for Cultural Heritage. The European Commission is currently preparing this plan, which is targeted to providing for a better use of Europe’s rich, diverse cultural heritage in order to create identity.

It further states that Project Europe should be based on more than only economic, financial and security policy. The action plan also sees cultural education and communication as a future field of activity. The EU institutions are called upon to “fully recognize cultural heritage as a strategic priority in the up-coming policy programmes and the EU’s new multi-annual financial framework (2021-2027).” In closing, it states that the European Cultural Heritage Year, which plans to reach more than a million visitors via 350 projects by 500 institutions, has mobilized a broad spectrum of stakeholders for European culture: “We must now consolidate and further leverage the synergies between the widest possible range of public and private stakeholders, including relevant European and international organisations and civil society.” The Berlin Call to Action will be signed by other public and private partners. Hermann Parzinger, president of the SPK, stated: “The Cultural Heritage Summit clearly showed that European institutions, including the EU Commission, have recognized the strategic significance of culture for Europe’s further development. It is encouraging that they are following through with the proposal for a new budget.”

The European Cultural Heritage Summit, which ended on June 24, included 70 events with 1,500 guests from all over Europe. On June 25, there was a small post-event when SPK president Hermann Parzinger and Michael Kretschmer, minister president of Saxony, opened the photography exhibition “Görlitz – A Cultural Heritage Site Resurrected” in the Kunstbibliothek (Art Library) at the Kulturforum.

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