Our mission is ‘to make the past, present’, but what does that actually mean? To us, it means that we want to help to advocate for the importance and value of Ireland’s archaeological, built, cultural, natural and intangible heritage. We want to make heritage accessible to people by helping them to discover the wonderful stories that can be found around almost every corner of the island, and we want to empower communities to be able to celebrate and protect their own local monuments and stories. This not only provides opportunities for education, but also for sustainable heritage tourism.

Making our heritage accessible by producing high quality, meaningful interpretation is vital to its long term survival. Freeman Tilden puts it best:

‘Through interpretation, understanding; through understanding, appreciation; through appreciation, protection’.

When it comes to community heritage we quite literally wrote the manual, when we worked with the Heritage Council to deliver the Adopt a Monument Manual: Guidance for Community Heritage Projects in 2017. Following its publication, we were delighted when the manual won an award from the Industrial Heritage Association of Ireland in 2018. The manual was designed to be useful and practical with accessible information and best-practice advice on how all stages of a community heritage project, including key aspects like group formation and management, funding, interpretation, research and conservation.

We always seek to help communities to see the holistic and multi-layered nature of heritage. The interconnectedness of archaeology, architecture and the physical remains, with the biodiversity and natural heritage, history, folklore and other forms of intangible heritage. Each of these layers can provide a new lens with which to examine a monument, while simultaneously providing opportunities for different people with different interests to find a way to get involved. We love collaborating with organisations and individuals – a good example of the benefits of collaboration include a wonderful ‘Urban Orienteering’ project we carried out in 2020 with Cork City Council, that involved a combination of architecture, heritage and art.

One of the most important skills that we bring to all our work with communities is empathy. The ability to listen and to understand a group’s priorities and goals, and then helping them to develop a clear strategy and plan for how that can be aligned with best practice. The mediation role is also vital, and again draws upon our empathy-focused approach, where we can help communities, local authorities and national bodies to work together towards a shared goal.

In summary, our chief values centre on empathy, integrity and empowerment. We want to help to foster and promote sustainable tourism that is both good for the visitors and good for the monuments and the communities that surround them.