In 1995 when Michael D. Higgins as Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht set up the Heritage Council, the concept of heritage was still generally broken up into disciplines such as archaeology and wildlife, and there was no such role as the local authority heritage officer.
A quarter of a century later, and the Heritage Council has developed a track record of collaborating with a wide range of individuals and organisations – particularly local authorities and community groups. The Council funds local authority heritage officers to ensure that there is a heritage resource in almost every county.
Another key initiative of the Heritage Council is National Heritage Week. As a population, we care deeply about heritage in Ireland. Usually about 400,000 of us take part in a heritage activity or event during National Heritage Week. As big face-to-face events were not possible this year, the Heritage Council asked people to take on a heritage project instead.
Heritage – in all its forms – helps us to connect with our past, build resilience and enhance our health and wellbeing
This new project dimension of this year’s National Heritage Week provided an opportunity for people to connect and reconnect with community and family – by phone, letters, emails or in other socially-distanced ways, and particularly across generations.
Heritage – in all its forms – helps us to connect with our past, build resilience and enhance our health and wellbeing. This year, perhaps more than any other year, National Heritage Week offers a moment for community engagement and social cohesion.
We were delighted and even overwhelmed by the engagement with 2020's National Heritage Week where over 854 groups and individuals created and uploaded projects on all aspects of Ireland's heritage: these can still be viewed at heritageweek.ie.
This year’s theme was ‘Heritage and Education: Learning from our Heritage’, and three broad sub-themes were identified to stimulate project ideas: heritage on your doorstep, relearning skills from our heritage and the heritage of education.
In addition to developing new research, heritage groups were asked to consider revisiting heritage projects started in previous years. In this instance, National Heritage Week acts as a showcase of research on many heritage sites and heritage community activities.
During lockdown, many people around the country – in both rural and urban environments – developed a greater appreciation for their immediate surroundings. The restrictions caused us to reconnect with, and reconsider what can be found in our immediate locality, from noticing birds and birdsong, and changing patterns among plants and wildlife as spring became summer, to local built heritage and monuments.
Others have returned to traditional skills, be that baking, growing fruit and vegetables or handcrafts, like knitting, smithing and preserving food.
Our rediscovery of our heritage has been reflected in politics too, and we are delighted to welcome the appointment of Malcolm Noonan TD as the Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform. He was very supportive of the approach to National Heritage Week taken this year.
National Heritage Week, and particularly this year’s theme of ‘Heritage and Education: Learning from our Heritage’, was an opportunity to build on this renewed interest, by exchanging skills and knowledge in a community; exploring something new or diving deeper into the story behind something they may have recently discovered; or working as a family to renew a skill.
We are also delighted to announce winners of the Heritage Week Awards, as well a new Heritage Hero, Christy Cunniffe, whom you can read about in this print and digital publication.
I would like to thank most sincerely all those individuals and organisations who, due to their enthusiasm and expertise in many facets of our rich heritage, decided to put together and submit a project for National Heritage Week, to share with our wider national community.
I would also like to thank the Heritage Week partners, OPW, Irish Landmark Trust, Fáilte Ireland, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland for their support and help in making sure that National Heritage Week could take place this year.
Happy reading!
Michael Parsons, Chairman of the Heritage Council