By Randy T. Nobleza, Ph.D.
Manila, Philippines – Philippine heritage advocates came together to strengthen the capacity of local site managers and rights holders of inscribed World Heritage properties at the Metropolitan theater through November 19 and 20.
The main objective of the gathering is to facilitate synergies and partnerships that would help the local site managers and rights holder to be better advocates and custodians of their own heritage places. Various themes and threats of Pamanang Pook included cultural heritage as public information for public good, tangible and intangible heritage management synergies, community development and grassroots heritage, ecclesiastical heritage convergence, traditional management of ecosystems and the nature/ built environments and climate action and disaster resilience in cultural heritage among others.
During the first day, there were three plenary sessions about climate resilience in a cultural landscape, intangible cultural heritage and sustainable development with public/ private interest over built/ movable heritage. Then during the second day, there were four breakout sessions: integration of cultural heritage with comprehensive land use plans, on climate action and disaster resilience in the context of cultural heritage governance, on ecclesiastic heritage convergences and on building community capacity for collaborative local heritage management and enforcement.
Sir Marlon Martin discussed on rice terraces alongside Dr. Emil Charles Robles who imparted about the Sohoton caves and natural bridge, to cap off the first session, sir Nestor Horfillo shared the multidisciplinary study on intangible cultural heritage. The next plenary session dwelled on Malabuyoc church belfry by Fr. Brian Brigoli and traditional salt/ coastal heritage in Cavite by Prof. Kristine Kate Lim. The last round of plenary is about the shared mandates of National Commission for Culture and the Arts, National Museum and National Historical Commission of the Philippines.
Meanwhile, the breakout sessions were led by Ar. Donna Tabangin on national cultural heritage and CLUPs, Sir Martin with Prof. Lim about climate action and disaster resilience, then Fr. Milan Ted Torralba with Fr. Brigoli facilitated the ecclesiastical heritage convergences and lastly, Sir Ned with Vanessa Nicolas handled building community capacity for collaborative heritage management and enforcement.
The couple of days were packed and meaningful, Pamanang Pook capped off with a sharing from reactions across sectors of local government, line agencies, academe and civil society who led with the pledge of commitment for heritage managers to support other advocates to become champions in conserving and protecting cultural sites. ###