Core Program
Education and Training
WMF incorporates education and training into field projects to provide greater learning opportunities and resources for preservation students, scholars, practitioners, and craftspeople. These efforts complement our activities in institutional capacity-building and advocacy, and build upon our past successes in hands-on training and publishing in conservation. Our education and training program includes the following key areas:
Traditional Building Arts
Around the world, there is a growing need for craftspeople experienced in the preservation arts—disciplines that combine traditional methods with a knowledge of preservation philosophies and conservation science.
Beginning in 1993, we held a series of meetings to identify the crisis in traditional building arts in the United States. Those meetings resulted in several key initiatives, including the creation of the Preservation Arts and Technology curriculum at the Brooklyn High School of the Arts in New York City and international exchange programs for craftspeople.
We subsequently hosted numerous field schools and symposia designed to promote traditional building arts. Today, we continue to incorporate education and training into many projects, from the ancient city of Angkor in Cambodia to the 19th-century Mount Lebanon Shaker Village in New York.
University Engagement
Through cooperation with universities and other educational partners, we advance the study of conservation and help prepare professionals from a range of disciplines to engage in heritage issues. By building a network of educational institutions, creating centers of learning and collaboration, and facilitating the application of new research and emerging concepts in the field, we foster the development of future preservation practitioners and scholars.
Resource Development
WMF draws upon more than 40 years of international preservation work in order to share that accumulated knowledge and experience with the field at large. In the past year, we made many of our project reports, seminar proceedings, and past publications available on our website. Additional references—both from our archives and from our latest projects—are continually added to this online resource.
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