Heritage Interpretation: Objectives, Planning, and Presentation Spaces

Objectives of Heritage Interpretation

Objectives describe what the visitor is expected to learn, feel, or do as a result of the program or activity offered. Evaluation is crucial. The strength and content of the message can produce a series of changes in the behavior and attitudes of the visitor. Miranda Morales suggests that there are three types of interpretive objectives:

• For knowledge: A simple message designed to transmit knowledge through meaningful and functional learning that visitors can understand and transmit.
• For emotions: It is important that visitors feel comfortable.
• For behavior: Normal behavior is that the visitor feels respect for heritage, signs, etc.

Interpretive Planning

Miró highlights these key relationships:

• The relationship between heritage and identity
• The relationship between heritage and economics
• The relationship between heritage and society

Heritage interpretation is a complex act that needs to be analyzed to answer a series of questions: What do we interpret? Who makes the interpretation? Who is the audience? What are the goals of interpretation?

Spaces for the Presentation of Heritage

Museums

Museums are specialized cultural spaces that bring together a set of movable cultural property on one or more topics in order to preserve, study, and disseminate them. The museum should have an annual program of action that includes dissemination activities, temporary exhibitions, etc. There are different strategies:

• The classical permanent exhibition (3D)
• The cumulative sample of objects without any type of discourse
• Scenography exhibition

There are several types of exhibitions: permanent, temporary, and traveling. Auxiliary presentation tools include tour guides, catalogs, workshops, guided tours, and audiovisual resources.

Heritage In Situ

These are sites like castles, churches, factories, immovable assets, or economic environments (Roman roads, etc.). Types of presentations include:

• Basic level
• Complementation through a permanent exhibition
• Musealization

Interpretation Centers

Interpretation centers are often the backbone of this methodological and heritage management approach that we call interpretation. They tend to use different means for the visitor to understand a certain natural park, historic center, territory, etc., based on an interpretive discourse. They are not intended for the collection, preservation, and study of original objects. These centers enable a better understanding of the natural and cultural values by providing visitors with the necessary information about the possibilities of using them.