The UK National Commission for UNESCO is running a conference on the potential for new technologies to create remote-access for visitors to World Heritage or other cultural or natural sites.  St Kilda World Heritage Site will be used as a case study throughout the Conference to look at the issues of providing remote access to sensitive sites. See also the Scottish Ten website, which is a five-year digital project to scan and create digital models of the 5 Scottish World Heritage Sites, and 5 international sites in order to better conserve and manage them.

ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) has decided that the theme for International World Heritage Day 2010 is the Heritage of Agriculture. Whilst Liverpool’s World Heritage Site has no significant agricultural heritage, its role as the supreme example of an international seaport has resulted in an outstanding heritage in the storage and transportation of agricultural produce. Liverpool City Council has therefore organised five free guided tours of different areas of the World Heritage Site on 17^th and 18^th April 2010, looking at the agricultural exchanges, headquarters of insurance companies, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the Triangular Trade across the Atlantic and the merchants’ activities around Duke Street. The tours will be led by qualified tour guides.

For further information and for details on how to book, view the Liverpool International World Heritage Day 2010 leaflet and/or visit www.liverpoolworldheritage.com

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 11th Cambridge Heritage conference seeks to examine the Olympics as a global and a local phenomenon affecting heritage by addressing two themes:  (1) the Olympics as heritage and (2) the impact of the Olympics on cultural heritage. Every four years the Olympics goes beyond just being a sporting event, offering a local and a global stage where countries can promote and showcase themselves to the world.  Cultural heritage is intimately entangled in the games, both in terms of the Olympics as historic, but also in how the event impacts the cultural heritage of the host country.

The 11th Cambridge Heritage Seminar is using the Olympic games as a forum for thinking about how one event can impact and transform local and global cultural heritage.  It will be divided into two sessions.  The first session will explore how the games are themselves heritage, and the second will examine the ‘heritage-impact’ of the games in the nations that host them.  The conference particularly welcomes theoretical contributions and case studies from Athens, Beijing and London.

Some indicative themes and questions of the type we intend to address are:

• The symbolism and performance behind the Olympic games.  
• How does one sporting event manifest as both global and local heritage? 
• How has the Olympics become a commodified event?  How does Olympic tourism impact cultural heritage?
• How do the games affect and transform the existing built environment of a city?
• How does new built architecture become cultural heritage in its own right?

Please send 500-word paper abstract or poster proposals to Shadia Taha at st446@cam.ac.uk. Proposals should be sent as PDF or Word documents and should include full contact information and a brief CV. Deadline for proposals is February 28th 2010.   General Information and Registration will be available soon at: http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/heritage-seminar