| Guests
Judith Broeker, of Heritage Conservation Network [Bio]; Jamie Donahoe, of Heritage Conservation Network [Bio]; Mark Hintzke, of Cultural Restoration Tourism Project [Bio]; and Joshua Weiss, PhD, of The Abraham Path [Bio].
Quotables
[Judith, you come into this as a "trainer" around cultural restoration? Is that correct? Is that really your background?]
"Well, I have a degree in History, with an emphasis in Preservation and the part that I really enjoy is the hands-on aspect, getting your hands in the materials and learning - - if you have wood-deterioration, what causes it? What do you need to do? And that sort of thing.
So, I did attend a number of specific materials-conservation training courses and that's really my interest. Although, you bring that into some of the aspects that the others (Jamie, Joshua, Mark) have been talking about, when you get to a community, even though you are focusing on one building and what the problems are material-wise with that building, there's so much more to the project in the sense of developing community pride in their heritage; and then, a little off the topic, but you get into developing their heritage tourism and creating sustainble living for them and that sort of thing.
So, it did start, yes, as a pretty specific interest in materials conservation, and then it has really broadened since then in the last seven years." Judith Broeker
[Listen To This Quote]
[And, Jamie, if you're looking at the term 'cultural restoration' what comes to your mind when you think of that?]
"Judith and I had talked about this, it was pretty interesting that, again, just given my location in Hong Kong, cultural restoration to me, my first instinctive reaction is - 'oh, cultural revolution,' which, of course, is not really what you're talking about at all.
But, cultural restoration is, what we interpret it as is more of a preservation of heritage, which is, of course, both tangible and intangible; and, I know, much along the Abraham Path project deals with both the tangible and the intangible.
For us it's more of keeping cultural heritage and cultural traditions alive and then with the physical preservation and restoration of the tangible parts - the buildings, of course, is what we deal with. But, of course there are other aspects as well, all the artifacts that could be associated with a person and a people's heritage, which is their - what makes them, them - it's their unique identity. So, it's a huge topic, actually." Jamie Donahoe
[Listen To This Quote]
[So, Mark, there seems to be a theme coming out of this that tourism may play a very important part in cultural restoration. Is that something you're finding out with the project that you have engaged in here?]
"Yeah, I completely agree with that. Part of what we experience is that the pressures towards urbanization and the flight from the countryside really puts a larger pressure on these countries as a whole, but most of these cultural sites that we're working on are very rural. But, for one reason or another, the infrastructure out in the rural areas - either economic or physical infrastructure - has fallen apart and there's pressure to move to the cities; and with the moves to the cities, people start to lose both the physical heritage that's out there but also the rituals and other things that have gone along with the culture for centuries.
So, by preserving these areas, we find that it ends up being a much larger project than just rebuilding a building or restoring a building; but it ends up being a complete development project and we have to think about sustainability issues and things like that. But, the locals start to move back and coalesce around these traditional communities that were out there and the tourists are part of that regeneration of those areas. And its been fascinating.
Our work in Mongolia was just incredible from a point where we saw less than a hundred Mongolians visit our site in our first couple summers there, and by the end we were getting thousands and thousands of Mongolians coming back for rituals and ceremonies and things like that, and it just kind of happened naturally. We weren't advertising that this was going on; we weren't advertising that these temples were being restored. But with that impact we had to start, or with that change, we had to start thinking about the impact, both of the tourists as well as locals finding their ways back to these traditional areas." Mark Hintzke
[Listen To This Quote]
[And, Joshua, I have to ask you about this, because there is this integrated nature of what we're talking about with cultural restoration and you've got to be experiencing that with something like the Abraham Path, where you're talking about 4,000 miles of terrain that you're dealing with. That crosses cultures, it crosses boundaries, it crosses nations; and that's got to be not only exciting but also, in some ways, quite intimidating?]
"Well - - well, for sure, it's exciting and, in fact, it's one of the primary reasons why we're doing this project - that if you create a route like this that you find that there's lots of opportunities for people to work together in a way that builds up their identity, in many ways, and all the other things that the folks (Jamie, Judith, and Mark) on the call have talked about. And in the realm of negotiation, we often talked about confidence-building measures, or measures in which people start working together and some of these things get broken down.
It's an interesting, actually, an interesting quote from a professor that you reminded me of - - he was a professor named Joseph Campbell - - and somebody asked him many years ago, about twenty years ago, what might make the world a better place and he said, 'tourism.' And then he elaborated and said, 'Go out and meet somebody new, learn a new language, another mythology and religion. If enough people just did that, we might see the beginning of the end of the demonization of other peoples around the world.' And I think that's part of what we're trying to accomplish here as well is that the more people interact the more they get to know each other.
A lot of places along the route, the people in the villages have never seen tourists, they've never meet people from different backgrounds and belief systems. And, we've already been astonished by how these connections get built very quickly when people roll up their sleeves together there's a real comradery that gets built. One of the things that we also talk a lot about, we have a little mantra which is: 'Less talk, more walk,' and that when you get people walking together there's sort of a natural conversation that begins to emerge as well as natural happenings where people find themselves in situations where they need to rely on each other. And, all of those things taken together will help to, from a people-to-people diplomatic kind of realm that is sorely lacking in lots of places in the world, and in the Middle East in particular." Dr. Joshua Weiss
[Listen To This Quote]
Guest Bios
Judith Broeker, of Heritage Conservation Network
|
|
|
WEEKLY WEBCAST
Tuesdays 10am ET/7am PT |
Judith is one of the founders of Heritage Conservation Network (HCN). She has a Master's degree in History with an emphasis in Historic Preservation. Her experience ranges from work at a non-profit organization directed to save the historic built environment; research in a major university archive; work with the US National Park Service on National Register and HABS/HAER documentation projects; to working as a preservation specialist on materials conservation.
Judith has specialized training in adobe conservation and lime plaster technology, as well as masonry and wood conservation. She held hands-on workshops in 1998 and 1999 as a pilot project for the current HCN workshops. As HCN’s program director, she coordinates the workshops, working with the community groups, technical experts and volunteers who make it all possible.
[Return To The Top]
Jamie Donahoe, of Heritage Conservation Network
Jamie is one of the founders of Heritage Conservation Network (HCN), a non-profit organization dedicated to saving the world's architectural heritage. She has a Masters degree in Preservation Studies from Boston University and has worked with heritage conservation projects and programs on the local, national and international levels.
Jamie has lived and worked overseas since 1996 and currently resides in Hong Kong. Realizing that her interest in 19th century domestic American architecture was not particularly useful in this phase of her life, she decided to go global and founded HCN in 2001 with a colleague from her days in Boulder, Colorado, where the organization is based. At HCN, she works primarily to publicize and promote the group’s hands-on building conservation workshops.
[Return To The Top]
Mark Hintzke, of Cultural Restoration Tourism Project
Mark is the founder and Managing Director of the San Francisco, non-profit, Cultural Restoration Tourism Project (CRTP). CRTP utilizes volunteer tourism to help communities around the world restore cultural artifacts and promote responsible tourism.
CRTP has been operating since 1998. Their work there has made great strides in helping small communities in Nepal and Mongolia restore Buddhist temples and develop a sustainable community.
Mark is currently implementing a project in Nepal where the Maoist insurgency received the label of “terrorist movement” by the US government. Nepal is one of only 26 countries in the world on the State Department’s “Travel Warnings” list.
Mark is a restoration specialist and is owner/operator of a San Francisco General Contracting firm specializing in historic residence and wooden ship restoration and renovation. He has over 25 years experience in the construction industry, including working in the historic restoration field since 1987 and in non-profit management since in 1992.
Mr. Hintzke holds a Masters Degree in Environmental Studies and a BS in Construction Administration from the University of Wisconsin. His study interests included international development issues, Buddhist environmental ethics and endangered cultures.
[Return To The Top]
Joshua Weiss, of The Abraham Path
Dr. Joshua N. Weiss is a negotiation expert and currently the Associate Director of the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University and the Managing Director of the Abraham Path Initiative. He received his Ph.D. from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) at George Mason University in 2002. Dr. Weiss has spoken and published on Negotiation, Mediation, and systemic approaches to dealing with conflict. In his current capacity he conducts research, consults with many different types of organizations, delivers negotiation and mediation trainings and courses, and engages in negotiation and mediation at the organizational, interstate, and international levels.
Dr. Weiss also publishes a weekly podcast on negotiation called the Negotiation Tip of the Week (see www.negotiationtip.com). The podcast was ranked as high as # 3 in Itunes business top 25 podcasts and was in the top 25 for over a year with over 100,000 downloads per month.
[Return To The Top] |