What is Share Your Heritage?

Share Your Heritage is an initiative of Partners in Tourism, a coalition of national cultural organizations and agencies. It includes planning workshops, workshop curriculum training materials and a publication of cultural heritage tourism success stories. The workshops and the training materials allow communities to use successful projects and experts in cultural heritage tourism to help address critical issues. Each workshop results in an action plan to be implemented locally.

What are the Share Your Heritage workshops?

The workshops bring approximately 30 invited community, regional and state leaders representing a variety of disciplines together to develop sustainable cultural heritage tourism strategies. Each local workshop is designed to address specific cultural heritage tourism issues, and the workshop participants are carefully selected. Workshop sessions include cross-discipline training, cultural heritage tourism instruction using expert national and local faculty, and interactive training and problem solving exercises.

What do the curriculum materials for the workshops include?

The Share Your Heritage initiative is developing how-to curriculum materials to supplement the National Trust for Historic Preservation's five principles and four steps for successful and sustainable cultural heritage tourism. The curriculum materials were field tested in four pilot workshops completed in 2002. The materials include best practices, interactive exercises and tips from experts in the field. They are designed to be used in workshop settings.

To complement these curriculum materials, Share Your Heritage compiled a series of case studies. These were selected from nominations by key leaders in all 50 states and reviewed by a multidisciplinary review panel, including representatives from the American Association of Museums, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The review panel looked for examples of successful partnership efforts with useful lessons and/or guidance for other emerging cultural heritage tourism projects or programs.

How did the review panel measure success?

In addition to reviewing how the program or project exemplifies the five principles and four steps of cultural heritage tourism, the review panel looked for innovative solutions as well as measurable economic and social impacts.

The five principles are:

1. Collaborate
2. Find the Fit Between the Community and Tourism
3. Make Sites and Programs Come Alive
4. Focus on Quality and Authenticity
5. Preserve and Protect Resources

1. Assess the Potential
2. Plan and Organize
3. Prepare, Protect and Manage
4. Market for Success

The resulting case studies have been published in two collections. Share Your Heritage: Cultural Heritage Tourism Success Stories was completed in fall 2001. The 80-page, four-color publication includes two dozen success stories. It comes with a complimentary copy of the companion 44-page publication, Stories Across America: Opportunities in Rural Tourism (while supplies last). To order, go to www.nthp.org or call (202) 588-6296. Cost: $25

Will there be additional Share Your Heritage workshops in 2005?

Thanks to funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the USDA Rural Development Office of Community Development, four Share Your Heritage workshops will be offered in 2005. The workshops will be coordinated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation on behalf of Partners in Tourism. (The application deadline to host local workshops has now passed.) Selected applicants will be notified in January 2005, and workshops will be held between April and September 2005.

Share Your Heritage is made possible by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the USDA Rural Development Office of Community Development.