Venice: Exploring Cultural Heritage and Sustainability for Primary and Secondary Educators (Start Dates 2024: Dec 01)

The history of Venice is long and storied. Its world class cultural accomplishments span centuries and while worth celebrating, they draw more visitors than it can sustain.

Our journey will start by defining cultural heritage and sustainability and continue on to look at some of the best art, architecture, and accomplishments of the city from Renaissance to Rococo to gain a better understanding of its importance to the world.

We will then move on and identify some of the main interconnected issues the city is facing like Acqua Alta, or high water, that floods the city due to a host of reasons including climate change; and this in turn damages historic buildings threatening the rich cultural heritage, and requires continuous maintenance and preservation to prevent further deterioration. We will also look at over tourism which puts a strain on the city’s infrastructure and leads to pollution, and environmental degradation; and consequently this in turn has affected the local population resulting in an aging demographic putting pressure on the city’s social services having long-term implications for its economic and cultural vitality.

We will then draw upon what is happening in Venice and some of the solutions it has managed to propose and implement, and then look more locally to the participants own local or regional issues in order model change that to have a positive impact locally.