With 10 participants from 9 OWHC member cities (Augsburg, Brugge, Budapest, Philadelphia, Quedlinburg, San Antonio, Stralsund, Vienna, Vilnius), a very inspiring and creative training course could be held from May 9-11 in Regensburg/Germany. The Regional Secretariat for Northwest Europe and North America was incredibly happy to finally welcome everyone for the first in-person meeting after 2.5 years in its homebase Regensburg.

Together with trainer Phil Stauffer from Berlin, the experts from our World Heritage cities were focusing on the “challenge” how to convince young people of the importance of heritage sites and their protection. Several methods from the Design Thinking toolbox were presented and tried out, and everyone agreed on the benefit of the newly learned skills.

Zabeth Teelucksingh from Philadelphia reports: “The regional secretariat training course was a hit. We reconnected, we shared stories and we thought about the future. Specifically how to connect a greater number of youth to World Heritage. Using Design Thinking we came up with many ideas and finally two concepts – a socially interactive game and treasure hunt through a City Hall and Granma’s Heritage Memory Box. Stay tuned!”