In a bid to safeguard Namibia’s Heritage, a consortium of institutes has partnered under the Phoenix Heritage project to aid the management and conservation of heritage sites in Namibia through workshop training sessions.
The consortium consists of the University of Namibia, Cardiff University, the National Heritage Council and Welsh Heritage.
Through this project, the Phoenix Heritage offered heritage managers from the National Heritage Council, National Museum, Museums Association of Namibia, and UNAM virtual training on how to improve the collection and storage of heritage information.
The workshop held in August was centralised around the revised Namibian Heritage Information Resources System (NAHIRS), which is a tool put in place to preserve historical information by ensuring continuity and uniformity.
The revised information system will improve the management and conservation of heritage sites in Namibia and around the world, said Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography, History and Environmental Studies, Dr Gwasira Goodman.
He further pointed out that: “The Phoenix Heritage revamped NAHIRS as the result of co-refining the existing UK best practices in heritage inventorying – this transformation will increase opportunities for public engagement in heritage issues and mainstream community participation in gathering and storing information about national heritage sites”, said Gwasira.
Following the first successful workshop in August, the phoenix heritage team will continue with more of such workshops, however this time using the Twyfelfontein World Heritage site as a pilot location in subsequent training sessions.
“Using the Twyfelfontein heritage site, will for the first time in the history of site management in Namibia, enable local communities to contribute directly to the national database, thereby enriching the information about the sites,” added Dr Gwasira.
These workshop activities will help realise the objective of the project; to support and develop heritage strategies and tools that will be useful for research and management of Namibian heritage.
In addition, training on how to use NAHIRS will be incorporated into the transformed heritage curriculum at the University of Namibia to strengthen developing skills and competence required to conserve the heritage sector. The Phoenix Heritage will also provide internship opportunities to UNAM heritage students to guarantee ready-for-work students upon graduation.
The Namibia Heritage Resources Information System project was generously funded by Global Challenges Research Fund (Cardiff University).
