Cultural Heritage and the City - week1

[Pied_Piper]

Futurelearn sweet Futurelearn.

Suddenly, I've decided to go om my armchair education with Futurelearn. Their policy has changed a bit but fortunately there's a possibility to take courses free of charge.

So, here you are - Cultural Heritage and the City - the course provided by the European University Institute (EUI)

I paid attention to the course because it shows how cities today create and brand their own cultural heritage. And this issue is quite interesting to me coz I already noticed this tendency and I really enjoy what it brings into the city life.

This is why I got interested in St.Petersburg. That is what I'm now looking for here.

More?

To begin with it's necessary to mention tangible heritage (which is well-known to everybody) like old buildings and archeological sites, then natural heritage (parks, mountains, rivers) follows. But we will speak mostly about intangible heritage - festivals, traditions, dances, music, street culture. Intangible heritage is also about communication and relationship.

Another interesting classification is about official and unofficial heritage.The latter is what can create people of the city themselves, something what isn't recognized and catalogued by any kind of authorities #democraization_of_heritage_creation
Btw the term 'unofficial' doesn't express any judgement of value or quality.

Heritage is a part of culture. But it oriented as a rule towards the past. Though nowadays we speakof a phenomenon of #living_heritage

Now my answers/suppositions to questiions which I've come across within the first week of the course:

1. Give 5 words that come to your mind on the notion of culture -
Mine are the following: HUMAN, CREATION, COMMUNITY, NATIONAL, ART. To my mind these are both the most universal (for different cultures) and the most essential elements. I was surprised that I tended to choose something which is quite abstract but nevertheless they don't seem to me obscure or ambiguous.

2. What is the attitude of the authorities of your country towards contemporary heritage? Do they focus on the past or on the present?
In fact, it's not easy to give a certain point of view. The official authorities as a rule focus on the past. But due to international influence we get some tendencies and events which unusual for us (used to be unusual) and all this, more or less, are promoted by government (this or that way). To my mind, contemporary heritage is still unofficial in Russia and mostly promoted rather by individuals than by some authorities. Especially, when we are speaking of some events that used to consider related to subcultures (which btw I appeciate the most).

@темы: учение мое, лингвофетишизм, полезное, Futurelearn, armchair education, Я пришел к тебе учиться… я буду учиться до последнего вздоха, язык: английский