Heritage Education–Louisiana was created as a congressional pilot for a national model that would help teachers use archaeological sites, historic buildings, landscapes, and other local cultural resources in the classroom. Working across education and preservation, the program combined workshops, mini-grants, publications, web resources, and curriculum development. Although federal funding eventually disappeared, the project demonstrated a durable idea: cultural stewardship becomes stronger when heritage is embedded in how young people learn rather than treated as a specialized subject encountered later.
Tag Archives: Heritage Education
Posts about heritage education as a field of practice, including teaching, stewardship, interpretation, and learning connected to cultural heritage.
Carla Bruni provides levity, and rich preservation content for broad audiences
Carla is a historic preservationist who is author of two blogs. She's also a good friend and supporter of Voices of the Past. We're going to talk about her latest blog, BuildingRevival.com, which explores ways to make historic preservation more accessible to the public. I know of few people who articulate the challenges and opportunities in that arena more effectively.
The Earth Pyramid: Giving the world a chance to become a part of history
The Earth Pyramid project imagined a new monument containing contributions from governments, Indigenous peoples, and children around the world, sealed for a thousand years for future generations. Steve Ward describes an ambitious mixture of ancient building traditions, contemporary engineering, global participation, education, and social media. The project raises an unusually literal question about cultural transmission: what would our generation deliberately choose to preserve and communicate to people living a millennium from now?
Who will advocate for the next generation of heritage professionals? A cautionary tale for university preservation programs
Losing a historic structure is a sad thing. Losing generations of folks to expertly protect cultural heritage is much, much worse. This past week, Louisiana's Board of Supervisors for higher education rubber-stamped a proposal from Northwestern State University of Louisiana to eliminate the university's bachelor's and master's degrees in heritage resources just as these groundbreaking interdisciplinary programs were hitting their strides. The Master of Arts in Heritage Resources (MAHR) was on track triple its number of graduates in the next year.
Learning the relevance in heritage values
A new heritage intern begins with the assumption that preservation belongs mainly to experts and specialists, then gradually recognizes it in storytelling, family memories, personal objects, and the everyday desire to understand why things matter. Encounters with folklorists and other practitioners shift heritage from something distant and technical into something immediately human. The piece offers a useful outsider’s discovery: preservation becomes meaningful when it keeps the past relevant rather than merely keeping old things.
Voices of the Past Video Netcast: Featuring Dave Moyer, teenage new media producer and historic preservation activist
Teenage preservation advocate Dave Moyer demonstrates how digital tools could give young people a public role in historic preservation long before institutions routinely talked about youth digital engagement. The conversation brings together preservation advocacy, entrepreneurship, media production, and generational change. Its lasting value lies in showing that emerging platforms did not merely help institutions reach younger audiences; they also gave younger practitioners tools to lead and speak for themselves.
Are destroyed heritage resources still relevant? It’s a matter of interpretation
After fire destroyed the Kate Chopin House in rural Louisiana, heritage students faced an unusual interpretive challenge: how do you help visitors value a place when much of the physical structure is gone? Their response used the remaining landscape, ruins, history, architecture, and literary associations to create interpretive stations across the site. The project argues that loss does not necessarily end a place’s cultural meaning; interpretation can help communities understand what remains and why absence itself matters.
KSU Digital Ethnography Project – An Analysis of How Students Learn Today
Responding to Michael Wesch’s influential digital-ethnography work at Kansas State University, Dylan Staley examines the mismatch between traditional classroom structures and the media environments students were actually inhabiting. The post asks whether learning can become more participatory, collaborative, and community-driven rather than remaining confined to instructor-led systems. In that context, Voices of the Past itself is presented as an experiment in education created by ordinary participants rather than a formal classroom.