CHARTER’s Recommendations: A roadmap for a thriving cultural heritage sector

CHARTER’s Recommendations: A roadmap for a thriving cultural heritage sector

CHARTER, the European Cultural Heritage Skills Alliance funded by Erasmus+, has released its twelve recommendations to strengthen the heritage sector by addressing skills gaps, promoting lifelong learning and fostering professional mobility. CHARTER's Skills Strategy lays out twelve concrete recommendations to strengthen the heritage sector by addressing key gaps in education, training and labour market needs. These targeted actions aim to ensure sustainability, inclusivity and innovation while positioning cultural heritage as a driver of social, economic and environmental progress.

Establish skills strategies for the heritage sector for a systemic change: Encourage coordinated skills strategies at the EU, national, and regional levels to align education and labour market demands, ensuring heritage’s role in achieving societal and environmental goals.

  1. Counteract the loss of heritage skills: Combat the loss of traditional heritage skills caused by disrupted generational transfers, shrinking markets, and precarious employment. Emphasise their relevance for addressing modern challenges like sustainability and climate resilience.
  2. Complement core heritage skills with transversal skills to foster inter- and trans-disciplinarity: Equip heritage professionals with communication, digital, entrepreneurial, and ethical skills alongside core competencies in preservation and governance to navigate evolving challenges and interdisciplinary roles.
  3. Offer future-focused education and training: CHARTER identifies eight pathways for adapting or developing curricula: community engagement, sustainability in built heritage, heritage crafts, new heritage conservation, digital heritage, participatory leadership, heritage policy design, and international relations. These pathways address current and future sector demands.
  4. Promote a Lifelong Learning area for the heritage sector: Encourage continuing education (CET) to upskill and reskill professionals in areas like digital content creation, conservation, and management, ensuring flexibility to adapt to emerging needs such as AI and digital outreach.
  5. Foster the recognition of non-formal and informal prior learning: Expand recognition of skills gained through non-formal and informal methods, such as on-the-job training and traditional crafts, using tools like micro-credentials and validation processes to improve mobility and career access.
  6. Ensure work-based learning for professional development and early-career progression: Enhance access to internships and traineeships by improving coordination, offering fair remuneration, and ensuring better integration into education programs to bridge gaps between training and the workplace.
  7. Strengthen quality assurance in heritage education and training: Standardise quality assurance in vocational (VET) and continuing education (CET) to ensure consistent standards across the EU, particularly for work-based learning, which is vital for heritage professionals. 
  8. Strive towards a viable, diverse heritage workforce: Address workforce precarity by improving job stability, promoting gender equality, and increasing representation of disadvantaged groups to foster diversity and resilience in the heritage sector.
  9. Foster professional recognition and facilitate mobility: Harmonise standards and improve recognition of qualifications to support the mobility of heritage professionals across the EU, addressing gaps in tools like ESCO and improving alignment with national frameworks.
  10. Develop and use robust socio-economic indicators for evidence-based policies: Improve data collection and monitoring using updated methodologies and taxonomies to ensure reliable statistics that reflect the sector’s dimensions and inform effective policymaking.
  11. Develop intersectoral cross-pollination of heritage knowledge: Recognise and enhance heritage’s intersection with other sectors like tourism, sustainability, and urban planning, while improving procurement standards to include heritage-related activities and attract skilled professionals.

To explore these recommendations in greater depth, along with detailed insights into the sector's challenges, proposed solutions and the broader impact of the CHARTER initiative, you can read the full recommendations document. Each recommendation is supported by specific implementation actions, clearly categorised by the relevant stakeholders. Additionally, the document provides detailed sections tailored for recommendations involving the European Union, Member States and Regional Authorities, Education and Training providers and Heritage institutions and employers, ensuring a comprehensive and actionable roadmap for the sector.

Dive into the full version to understand how CHARTER is shaping a forward-thinking and sustainable future for the heritage ecosystem.

About CHARTER

CHARTER brings together and represents the whole range of the European cultural heritage sector. The 47 project partners strive to make cultural heritage's value apparent and create a resilient and responsive sector.

ERRIN and six of its members pioneered this first sectoral skills blueprint project under Erasmus+ that included regions from the start and took a solid regional focus when investigating the skills demands and supply in the sector. You can read the full report about the six regional case studies conducted by ERRIN's members here.