Departments > Training and Research

Context:
After 15 years of intense training activities and technical assistance within the framework of the Prevention in African Museums (PREMA) programme, whose principal objective was "to establish a network of African professionals capable of ensuring the conservation of the collections of museums of sub-Saharan Africa and to deal with the training of their colleagues", ICCROM encouraged the creation of two new regional institutions to ensure the continuity of the training and to support the promotion of African cultural heritage:
- the Ecole du Patrimoine Africain (School of African Heritage) - EPA in Porto-Novo, Benin, for French, Portuguese and Spanish-speaking African countries;
- the Programme for Museum Development in Africa - PMDA in Mombassa, Kenya, for English-speaking African countries.
The aim of the "Generation 2" project is to reinforce the assets of PREMA and to establish a second generation of trainers able to teach in the fundamental fields of the conservation and management of African cultural heritage. Since its launching in 2001 by ICCROM, and in order to support the efforts to develop EPA and PMDA, Génération 2 led to the main following achievements:

• development of a handbook and CD-Rom on how to produce a course;
• promotion of an interactive teaching method;
• production and revision of teaching materials in 8 fundamental fields of conservation.

This workshop lies within the framework of the last activities of the "Generation 2" project.

Place: EPA, Porto-Novo - Benin

Dates: February 16 - 27 2004

Organiser: School of African Heritage

Aims:
- to form a second generation of African trainers to the design and the animation of courses in the field of conservation, management and mediation of cultural heritage;
- to diffuse recent teaching techniques and the specific didactic materials designed during the Generation 2 Project;
- to reinforce the network of trainers able to support EPA, PMDA and other African institutions in their training programmes.

Participants:
13 African professionals working in the field of cultural heritage, coming from 8 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea Conakry, Mali, Niger, Senegal.

Awaited results:
- qualified, autonomous heritage professionals capable of working alone or within a group of trainers;
- heritage professionals capable of adopting alternative solutions according to their target audience and the context in which they will have to teach;
- heritage professionals capable of using and adapting available teaching resources in any given teaching situation; of creating new teaching materials;
- a team of qualified and operational trainers for African training institutions.

Financing: Getty Grant Program.