Heritage: Protecting Heritage? Professionally

England has some 9,300 conservation areas, places designated by local councils to protect their special character and appearance, but the latest edition of English Heritage’s annual Heritage at Risk register, launched in June reveals that 1 in 7 is at risk of neglect, decay or damaging change and many more give cause for concern. The results of English Heritage’s first ever survey of the condition of conservation areas shows the top threats to be: Plastic windows and doors (83%...

Today’s societies require appropriate protective environments in order to protect their cultural diversities, tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Conservation of Cultural Heritage (CH) is “the real and primary investment” of sustainable development of Nations. Cultural Heritage, while physically and mentally located within the artificial boundaries of states, must not be looked at as the property of a single nation, regardless of the moral, racial and religious rationale...

A new project titled Open SA! aims to make South African historical and cultural material widely accessible, by allowing ordinary people as well as professionals to share their heritage online and make it available for republishing and remixing, for the benefit of all. "We believe that getting ordinary people involved in sharing their history on the internet with artists, historians, students and researchers is a great way to keep local history alive and accessible," said the Open SA! team in a...

It has not been difficult to persuade the Indian government to accept monuments such as Sanchi Stupa and Humayun’s tomb as valuable heritage and invest in their protection. However, the same cannot be said of heritage structures such as the crumbling wadas of Pune and the colonial buildings in Chennai, which are not classified as monuments but possess distinctive architectural and historical merit. Though these structures contribute much to the nation’s cultural wealth, they have ...

From the spring of 1998 until the summer of 1999, Kosovo was the scene of armed conflict and savage ‘ethnic cleansing’. Thousands of the region's Kosovar Albanian inhabitants were killed and nearly a million were driven from their homes. Less well known than the human tragedy is the fate of Kosovo's rich cultural heritage – its churches, mosques, monasteries, and other religious monuments, traditional residential architecture, well-preserved historic urban centres, libraries, a...