LeaPS: Learning from the Past to create a Sustainable society

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Access to information and data is a key requirement for achieving sustainable development. Cultural heritage - both tangible and intangible - connects us to the past and provides invaluable insights into our identities and evolution. It can play an important role in economic growth, poverty reduction and sustainable development. The importance of heritage tourism for the African economy has been well recognised by the World Tourism Organization and Unesco, and it is believed that appropriate knowledge of cultural heritage can promote ethnic and heritage tourism and thereby contribute to the economic development of African countries. Traditional medical knowledge, which is hidden in the collective heritage of a particular indigenous people or local community, has social, cultural and scientific value and is important for many indigenous peoples and local communities in Africa (WIPO: http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/tk/en/documents/pdf/background_briefs-e-n6-web.pdf). Finding, recording and imparting indigenous and traditional medical knowledge, which is often hidden in cultural heritage content, through education and training can boost the health and wellbeing of people in Sub-Saharan Africa. The key objective of the LeaPS project is to promote access to and use of digital cultural heritage content for classroom education which will enable people to promote tourism and tackle health and wellbeing issues by learning about traditional and indigenous medicine and healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa. It will undertake a series of creative and innovative fieldwork and engagement activities with key stakeholders in the partner countries to understand the key challenges at both demand and supply side of cultural heritage content for school education in Sub-Saharan Africa, and assess its potential impact on different sectors in particular tourism, and indigenous and traditional medicine and wellbeing of people. In order to achieve this, it will:1. Explore how innovative digital learning and training materials can be developed by bringing together cultural heritage content and service providers, educators and policymakers; and 2. Engage with key stakeholders to understand the potential benefits and impacts that will arise from delivery of cultural heritage education in schools in Sub-Saharan Africa. The project will address the following inter-related research questions:1. Use of cultural heritage content in education: Can the cultural heritage content that has already been digitised be accessed and used for classroom education in Sub-Saharan Africa? What are the policies of government/education departments, academic institutions and others in this context, and what changes are needed?2. Teachers' training: What kind of training is required for teachers to be able to use digital cultural heritage content in classrooms? Whether the Unesco Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Framework (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/image`````s/0022/002246/224655e.pdf) or the training materials developed in Europe based on the Europeana collections [8] can be adapted to suit the training needs of teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa in the context of this project? 3. Beneficiaries and impact: What are the potential benefits of using cultural heritage content in education in Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular: a. tourism departments/industries who can benefit from having trained human resources in the use of cultural heritage content, for example, for creating specific applications based on cultural heritage content for attracting heritage- and eco-tourism; b. government departments, businesses/industries and public bodies concerned with health and wellbeing challenges that can be addressed through an understanding of indigenous and traditional medicine and health practices that may be hidden in cultural heritage content. In the long term the project will have a significant impact on people and society in Sub-Saharan Africa.