Antonio Barone, Director and Sara Ferrari, Executive Secretary of the Phoenicians’ Route attended yesterday the preparatory meeting for the 2022 Training Academy of Cultural Routes Certified by the Council of Europe, which will take place in Fontainebleau, France, in May 2022, organised by the Impressionisms Routes, in collaboration with the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe Programme. Thirty-seven of the 45 certified routes attended the meeting, organised in the framework of the French Presidency of the European Union, through the French Ministry of Culture, which has made the enhancement of European cultural heritage one of its Presidency priorities.
The Training Academy will focus on three key priorities, the content of which were defined at the meeting and which will revolve around a common theme, the development of “Cultural Tourism”.
The objective of this next Training Academy of the Council of Europe’s Cultural Routes will be to achieve concrete results in terms of setting objectives and implementing the future management of the Council of Europe’s certified routes:
– Drawing up a list of concrete actions to be carried out in the coming years to make our routes more visible and operational.
– Creating a “road map” explaining how these actions will be implemented and developed in a practical way. In particular, the idea or proposal to create an International Federation of European Cultural Routes to support the European Institute of Cultural Routes in Luxembourg.
The three priorities to be developed within the general framework will be:
– to enhance the Brand: better organised, better structured, better financed and more solidarity-based routes, in order to enhance the fundamental assets of the Council of Europe’s Cultural Routes with a view to a harmonious development of sustainable cultural tourism.
– improve the positioning of the Certified Routes so that they become operational routes at the heart of the territories, and analyse how to reinforce the visibility and knowledge of the Cultural Routes. All of this with the aim of creating cultural tourism closer to the territories, and to respond to the impact of the 2020-2022 health crisis.
– enhance the value of the Network at all levels: the insertion of the Council of Europe’s Cultural Routes in the international, national and local world to ensure that the Certified Cultural Routes approach is recognised and appreciated by international institutions: the EU and its various components, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Council, the major international networks: UNESCO, the WTO, the ETC, the ETOA, etc.
