16th General Assembly and International Scientific Symposium
Quebec, Canada, September 29 – October 4, 2008
Word of welcome from the President of the Organizing Committee
I wish to welcome you to the CD-ROM produced for the ICOMOS 16th General Assembly and 2008 Scientific Symposium. We are pleased to offer this tool, which gives you access to the more than two hundred and fifty (250) articles written by specialists from all fields of study. Artists, researchers, teachers, professionals, men and women from here and elsewhere, have all given much thought to the relationship between heritage and sprit of place and have put these thoughts in writing.
Wherein lies the spirit of place? This is the central question that was put forward for our meeting of specialists and to which two hundred and fifty of them chose to respond.
The topic was the subject of both a Symposium and a Forum for researchers, students and professionals under the age of 35 who are involved in cultural heritage preservation. Everyone, however, sought to find answers to the same question: what is spirit of place? And in certain cases, what is spirit and what is place? Everyone sought to better understand the dangers that threaten to dispel spirit of place. Everyone examined ways to ensure that spirit of place is safeguarded and that the exceptional objects and places it inhabits - which we call heritage – can be transmitted to future generations.
We are therefore proud to present, for your simple pleasure or to indulge your curiosity, these two thousand five hundred (2,500) pages of articles, which are the culmination of a great deal of thought on a subject that is at once complex and yet so very stimulating! An excellent search tool allows you explore the database and easily find what you are looking for.
Before I conclude, I need to thank warmly the members of the Coordinating Committees of the Scientific Programs of both the Forum and the Symposium who worked hard at getting and putting together this set of papers.
For the Symposium, I wish to express my thanks in particular to the coordinator, Laurier Turgeon, Ph.D., who serves as the Director of the Institut du patrimoine culturel (IPAC) at the Université Laval in Québec, Canada; Buguslaw Szmygin, Ph.D., who is a member of the ICOMOS Executive Committee and teaches at the Lublin Technological University in Lublin, Poland; Andrew Hall who is also a member of the ICOMOS Executive Committee, Chair of its International Committee on Intangible Heritage and Heritage Director at the Northern Cape Provincial Department of Sports, Arts and Culture in South Africa; finally, Neil Silberman who chairs the ICOMOS International Committee on Interpretation and Presentation and who served as the Director of the Ename Centre for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation in Belgium from 2004 to 2007.
For the Forum, I want to thank the coordinator, Célia Forget, Ph.D., who is a young researcher at the Institut du patrimoine culturel (IPAC) at the Université Laval in Québec, Canada; Martine Freedman, who is a PH.D. candidate and a researcher at the Centre interuniversitaire d’études sur les lettres, les arts et les traditions (CELAT) at the Université Laval; François Dufaux, Ph.D., who teaches at the Faculté d’aménagement, d’architecture et des arts visuels at the Université Laval; Tania Martin, Ph.D., who holds the Canada Research Chair on the Built Religious Heritage at the Université Laval; Richard Desnoilles who is a Ph.D. candidate at the Université de Bordeaux 3 as well as at the Université Laval; finally, Claire Loussouam who is a Ph.D. candidate at Goldsmith University in London, Great Britain.
Again, my most sincere thanks to both these wonderful teams.
I hope you will enjoy reading these articles and that they will lead to interesting discoveries!
Michel Bonnette
President
Organizing Committee
Québec ICOMOS 2008, Canada
FORUM international
des jeunes chercheurs et professionnels en patrimoine culturel
The unifying power of a shared desire and the strength of a team - here are two expressions that aptly sum up the adventure that was set in motion by the creation of the International Forum of Young Researchers and Professionals in Cultural Heritage. It was the firm desire to give the future generation in the field of heritage the chance to be heard that paved the way for the first ICOMOS event of its kind. Held just prior to the ICOMOS 2008 Scientific Symposium, the overall objective of the project was to bring together, in an international context, not only young researchers but also young professionals who work in areas related to heritage – be it architecture, urban planning, geography, ethnology, archaeology, history, arts and literature, etc.
The idea behind the Forum was to enable these young people to gain up-to-the-minute knowledge and expertise on the subject, to discover new horizons and to share with others their passion for material and immaterial culture by giving them the opportunity to meet and discuss with colleagues involved in similar fields. It was an occasion to examine the concept of spirit of place in relation to the construction of memory, and the frailty, protection and transmission of heritage. This is how knowledge is passed on and how ideas are born, both here and elsewhere.
All those who helped organize and host the Forum are happy to let you share in their joy by offering this CD-ROM containing, among other things, all the articles that were written for the Forum and which, for the most part, were presented during the event.
I join with Michel Bonnette, President of the ICOMOS 16th General Assembly's Organizing Committee, in thanking everyone who helped organize this Forum and contributed to its success. A special thank you to the members of the Forum's Scientific Committee Célia Forget, Martine Freedman, François Dufaux, Tanio Martin, Richard Desnoilles and Claire Loussouam for their unfailing support.
Marie-Josée Deschênes, Architect, M. Sc. Arch.,
Coordinator