Abstract
Kuldīga’s old town preserves its built environment thanks to the continuous restoration of its historic buildings. Such commission has required the application of a specific knowledge experientially transferred among generations. Ensuring the existence and transmission of this expertise to new apprentices, major participation of local citizens by diversifying the preservation activities and finding stable economic sources presents difficulties. The on-site observation of the city's built heritage, the access to inventories and the review of the main activities implemented by the Restoration Centre have been key to understanding these deficiencies and rethinking the development of Kuldīga through its creative potential. An important finding is that the expertise derived from a repeated reproduction of artisanal techniques on the field of restoration, can be a unifying factor in the development of Kuldīga, and that the flexible nature of the experiential creative practices allows for greater experimentation towards unexplored areas. In the light of the current actions successfully undertaken by the UNESCO Creative Cities Network’s participant members, the eventual incorporation of Kuldīga to this network may enable collaboration and visibility at the international level, and linking its craft expertise to areas such as creative tourism, innovation through research and first-hand education activities.
Keywords
Heritage; Restoration; Experiential Knowledge; Kuldīga; UNESCO Creative Cities
DOI
https://10.21606/eksig2019.113
Citation
Fernández, P.,and Rovnenko, K.(2019) Sharing Heritage Restoration Expertise: The Unesco Creative Cities Network as Opportunity of Creative Development for Kuldīga, Latvia, in Nithikul Nimkulrat, Kristi Kuusk, Julia Valle Noronha, Camilla Groth and Oscar Tomico (eds.), Knowing Together – experiential knowledge and collaboration, 23–24 September 2019, Tallinn, Estonia. https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2019.113
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Sharing Heritage Restoration Expertise: The Unesco Creative Cities Network as Opportunity of Creative Development for Kuldīga, Latvia
Kuldīga’s old town preserves its built environment thanks to the continuous restoration of its historic buildings. Such commission has required the application of a specific knowledge experientially transferred among generations. Ensuring the existence and transmission of this expertise to new apprentices, major participation of local citizens by diversifying the preservation activities and finding stable economic sources presents difficulties. The on-site observation of the city's built heritage, the access to inventories and the review of the main activities implemented by the Restoration Centre have been key to understanding these deficiencies and rethinking the development of Kuldīga through its creative potential. An important finding is that the expertise derived from a repeated reproduction of artisanal techniques on the field of restoration, can be a unifying factor in the development of Kuldīga, and that the flexible nature of the experiential creative practices allows for greater experimentation towards unexplored areas. In the light of the current actions successfully undertaken by the UNESCO Creative Cities Network’s participant members, the eventual incorporation of Kuldīga to this network may enable collaboration and visibility at the international level, and linking its craft expertise to areas such as creative tourism, innovation through research and first-hand education activities.