Education 'on the move': Exploring the heritage-tourism nexus
Chairs: Chiara Rabbiosi (University of Padua) & Alessia Mariotti (University of Bologna)
Tourism is considered one of the eminent facets of mobility. The international spread of tourism worldwide and its intersection with the realm of cultural policy has the potential to turn the heritage-tourism nexus into a significant tool of education 'on the move'. While heritage education is already established and is at the core of the policies of international organisations such as UNESCO or ICOMOS, or even of national ones, an idea of 'tourism education' is far less explored and supported. On the contrary, there is a desperate need to raise awareness among a large arena of actors (including tourists, professionals, institutions, etc.) on how their practices impact on global environmental, societal and political challenges. To answer this gap, in this session we are interested in analysing and questioning:
o the learning potential of tourist practices, in particular as they engage with cultural heritage and with geographical education 'on the move';
o the challenges that mobility poses to educational experiences that use tourism as a tool to discover, interact with, and co-create cultural heritage;
o the downscaling of a variety of programmes from the international to the local level, from the universal principles of charts and declarations to their implementation in places' ordinary life;
o spatial ideologies underpinning policies, practices and representations of heritage and tourism education.
We particularly invite papers that consider the entanglements of these levels through a mobility approach. Proposals may consider schools' and educational tourism (How does mobility critically engage with geographical and heritage education? Which (mobile) networks do schools' and educational tourism entail? Which frictions arise?); or critically reflect upon non formal education methodologies, such as for instance those emerging from the Faro Convention (Which are the educational methods proposed by international charters or transnational programmes and how do they call into questions issues of mobility?); think spatially to the political ideals that are mobilised through programmes or initiatives sustaining the heritage-tourism educational nexus (such as, for instance, cultural Europeanisation or nationalism); or connect the topics proposed with changes in consumption habits and/or working conditions in their space-time dimensions.