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Participatory interpretive frameworks:
Increase community involvement in
interpreting heritage sites
by Jon Kohl
Note: This article has been published in Interpretation Journal, published by AIH.
Abstract
Interpretive planners with development experience and facilitation skills can guide communities through
the creation of meanings held and displayed in interpretive frameworks, which contribute to community
self-identity and self-worth. But rst interpreters must leave behind the conventional consultant-driven
approach. These participatory interpretive frameworks not only allow communities to design more
authentic heritage products, but also to more fully participate in development projects of all kinds. The
interpretation community has underestimated the role of interpretation in community development.
Interpretation as Community Development
Strategy
The difference between heritage and resources
are the meanings that a community ascribes.
Once a consensus emerges that a resource
indeed embodies signicant meanings, we call
that resource “heritage”, even though no such
consensus may exist on what those meanings are.
Though consensus may seem elusive, the prize
well merits the hunt. A community’s self-esteem,
self-identity, pride, and even market potential all
depend on meanings that people both inside and
outside the community assign to the place. Often
residents may perceive only a shadowy notion of
their site’s worth or its central story and have never
joined their thoughts with those of fellow members
in a facilitated, consensus-based conversation.
Most communities cannot boast the attractive
power of a Paris, and not just because they do not
share such outstanding heritage. Often they have
never even articulated a collective meaning. Thus
they suffer a confused self-identity and self-worth
that can inhibit development, especially in poor,
underdeveloped communities, leading to a lack of
self-condence and dependency on outsiders.
If indeed interpretation can be used by skilled
interpretive facilitator-planners to help people
forge collective meanings; meanings that help
them to more deeply understand and appreciate
their own community, then perhaps interpretation
could be not only a therapeutic tool, but a force
to promote development, especially in heritage
tourism.
Communities that cannot articulate their meanings,
or have been wooed into declaring marketing
slogans or have lost inherited meanings can fall
victim to uncontrolled tourism that threatens the
very heritage and value that attracted tourists in
the rst place.
To avoid the absence of making meaning or to
pull communities from a negative story that chains
them down, interpretation can meet the need, but
rst interpreters must cast down the traditional
consultant-driven approach. Instead, interpretive
planners need to become meaning facilitators
and one tool that can help is the participatory
interpretive framework.
Interpretive Frameworks Guard
Community Meanings
An interpretive framework holds local and
universal meanings, stories, attractions, and
symbols relevant to a community on a single page
so that people can view the entire framework.
Aside from the hierarchical, interrelated web of
interpretive messages themselves, the framework
may include brief descriptions of each message
offering evidence for perspectives revealed in
messages as well as how messages connect to
the local site. They may also include short lists of
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principal site attractions and stories that correspond
to different messages in the framework (see Figure
1). It is through attractions and stories as well as
interpretive products that visitors encounter and
experience messages.
While the bottom row may have messages that
directly refer to the interpreted site (see Figure 2),
the upper echelons display universalized messages
that express some truth applicable throughout
the world, for which the interpreted site proves
an outstanding illustration. Through making the
meaning universal we ascend the pyramid, local
stories enjoy a direct connection to revealed truths
relevant to people around the world, thus tying
local reality into greater arcs of consciousness and
importance, granting even the most forlorn place
its rightful place in the evolving universe.
Meaning must be Co-Created
For an interpretive framework to have any
chance of success, a wide and diverse slice of the
community must participate in its forging. If they
do not co-create, they will not own, and when the
interpreter leaves, the framework will fall into
Figure 2: The interpretive framework for El Cocuy National Park in Colombia illustrates how a framework
is built from the bottom up, from emerging messages produced in plenary, through local and universal
messages written by a small committee with the approval of the plenary.
Figure 1: Partial interpretive framework from
a university community (CATIE, in Costa Rica)
showing examples of descriptions, attractions, and
stories matched to messages.
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Figure 4: The coordinator for the historic center of
the World Heritage City of Evora, Portugal leads
individuals from throughout the city in creating
the city’s interpretive framework, drawing on
thousands of years of history (Photo: by Jon Kohl).
disuse. If key community perspectives are left out,
people who represent those perspectives may not
support the framework. Co-owning is not enough
though, a community must be accompanied in its
learning to use, practice, know, and create a new
habit to integrate it into daily work. There must be
enough awareness of its utility and even leadership
to try out the initiative.
Interpretive Frameworks Arise through
Participation
The methodology described here comes from the
PUP Global Heritage Consortium’s Interpretive
Framework module, part of its Public Use Planning
Process (www.pupconsortium.net). The one-day
workshop consists of two principal exercises.
Historical Scan. While site history may be
well documented in books, when a community
reconstructs it collectively its members come
to understand its evolution and its eras in a new
collective light, out of which arise stories that will
later populate the framework as well as possible
theme ideas that feed into the afternoon session
(see Figure 3). While this step is not essential to
an interpretive framework, its absence lessens the
group’s ability to develop a collective ow and
work together which will be well served in the
upcoming exercise.
Creation of emerging messages through consensus.
The steps follow the Consensus Workshop Method,
a participatory tool along with the “Historical
Scan” within the Technology of Participation,
developed by the Institute for Cultural Affairs.
Essentially the facilitator asks participants to
brainstorm signicant attributes about the site
which participants then group, name, and analyze
into short thematic phrases, called “emerging
messages” (see Figure 4). Later the facilitator
works with a small committee of participants
to convert emerging messages into interpretive
messages and then to ll out the hierarchy of 4–7
messages, local to universal.
Interpretive Planners Require New Skills
Carrying out an interpretive framework in a
community development context requires a new
job description for conventional interpretive
planning consultants. Such workers need training
in participatory process facilitation, experience
Figure 3: Residents of Union Island, the most southern island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, used the
historical scan technique to identify stories, eras, and themes in their island’s history. This participatory
tool is the rst of three principal steps in developing a community interpretive framework (Photo by Jon
Kohl).
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Author
Jon Kohl is coordinating facilitator of the PUP Global Heritage Consortium, a global network of
organizations and individuals that support the introduction of emerging paradigms about planning and
management into the heritage management eld in order to reverse the tendency for plans to end on shelves
unimplemented (www.pupconsortium.net). This process includes participatory interpretive planning. He
has also worked as an interpretive planner, interpretive trainer, writer, blogger, exhibition researcher,
university professor, and zoo educator. Jon has published widely on interpretation and currently maintains
a blog on international heritage interpretation that highlights tools, examples, and ideas from around
the world of interpretation. The blog can be found atwww.facebook.com/heritageinterpretation. He
currently lives in Manhattan, Kansas where his wife, Marisol Mayorga, pursues her PhD in environmental
interpretation under the supervison of Dr. Ted Cable.
in community development, a deep sensitivity to
internal issues of both individual and collective
minds, such as concerns, motivations, values, and
consciousness. Anyone who works in development
should also be emotionally mature, have an ego in
check, and be willing to accompany communities
during extended periods. Of course they also have
to be expert interpreters, especially capable of
helping others make connections between local
stories and universal meanings and then help them
capture these meanings in well-crafted messages.