Heritage Matters: Culture and Development in the Pacific

太平洋地区的博物馆有潜力在其国家的可持续发展中发挥重要作用。它们与保护物质和非物质遗产有关，并有能力交流关于环境的习惯知识以及资源管理、工作、价值和社会关系的当地方法。但它们也是公民社会的机构，能够支持教育和社区凝聚力。在太平洋，遗产不仅仅是过去的做法，而是在当前经济和环境挑战的背景下，关于身份的谈判和对地点的依恋。虽然遗产和博物馆的通用模式不一定适合太平洋环境，但博物馆可以构成参与和伙伴关系的空间，在其中突出当地的价值观和成就。文化机构已经成为代表和庆祝文化的机构，它们有能力成为评估和探索地方对未来的方法，包括未来与非政府组织和捐助国的接触的地方。这一试点项目将侧重于太平洋地区的两个博物馆：霍尼亚拉的所罗门群岛国家博物馆和塔拉瓦的基里巴斯文化中心。该项目将致力于示范文化遗产开发项目的伙伴关系，而不是捐助者主导的方法，并将编写一份报告和期刊文章，概述每个博物馆的具体需求和目标，可通过未来更大的项目加以解决。该项目的比较导向旨在引起人们对太平洋环境的异质性的关注，从而提出评估成功方法是否可以移植的方法。该项目将有助于展示并测试基于这两个博物馆的公共和社区参与计划，这些计划具有社会目的、有效和可持续。该项目还将通过提供土著实习机会，以及通过项目工作人员、博物馆工作人员、咨询专家和当地人之间的跨文化知识交流，为发展基里巴斯和所罗门群岛的专业能力作出具体贡献。该项目将产生针对人类学、发展研究、文化政策研究、博物馆和遗产研究以及太平洋研究的学术和实践者群体的期刊文章，并将为每个博物馆、其利益攸关方和相关组织编写报告，为今后的工作奠定基础。

Museums in the Pacific region have the potential to play a vital role in the sustainable development of their nations. They are associated with the preservation of tangible and intangible heritage, and have the capacity to communicate customary knowledge of the environment, and local approaches to resource management, work, value and social relations. But they are also institutions of civil society, able to support education and community cohesion. Heritage, in the Pacific, is not exclusively past practice, but the negotiation of identity and the attachment to place in the context of the economic and environmental challenges of the present. While universal models of heritage and of museums are not necessarily appropriate to Pacific settings, museums can constitute spaces of engagement and partnership, in which local values and accomplishments are foregrounded. Already institutions in which culture is represented and celebrated, they have the capacity to become places in which local approaches to the future, including prospective engagement with NGOs and donor nations, are assessed and explored. This pilot project will focus on two museums within the Pacific: the Solomon Islands National Museum in Honiara, and the Kiribati Cultural Centre in Tarawa. The project will aim to exemplify partnership, as opposed to donor-led, approaches to cultural heritage development projects, and will produce a report and journal articles, outlining the specific needs and goals of each museum, that could be addressed through larger, future projects. The project's comparative orientation aims to draw attention to the heterogeneity of Pacific settings, and hence suggest ways of assessing the extent to which successful approaches may or may not be transferable.The project will contribute to making displays and testing public and community engagement programs based in the two museums that are socially purposeful, effective and sustainable. The project will also make a concrete contribution to the development of professional capacity in Kiribati and the Solomon Islands, through the Indigenous internships offered, and through cross-cultural knowledge exchange between project staff, museum staff, consulted experts, and local people.The project will result in journal articles targeting scholarly and practitioner communities in anthropology, development studies, cultural policy studies, museum and heritage studies, and Pacific studies, and will generate reports for each of the museums, their stakeholders and for organisations with related interests, that will provide a basis for future work.