By Tahna Weston
Antigua and Barbuda will be represented at World Heritage Young Professional Forum 2024 being held in New Delhi, India, in July.
“Encouraged” is how Desley Gardner, the Heritage Resources Supervisor at the National Park Authority, feels about her participation at the event.
Gardner has been selected to join 29 other young professionals at the forum being held under the theme “World Heritage in the 21st Century: Building Capacities and Exploring Opportunities for Youth”.
In order to be selected to be a part of this forum, Gardner had to submit her resume, answer a number of questions pertaining to her experience within the heritage management field, methods being deployed by the heritage site with which she is involved and from which others can learn while selling herself as a progressive heritage manager during her young tenure.
“It’s a great joy for me to have been selected because I know hundreds of persons from around the world would have been submitting their own personal CVs, so, to be selected amongst the other 29 young professionals, it’s really exciting for me because now Antigua can be on the global stage once again,” Gardner told Observer media.
Deemed to be a flagship activity of the World Heritage Education Programme, the forum brings together young people and heritage experts from around the world seeking to foster learning and intercultural dialogue.
Gardner said the event has to do with UNESCO’s World Heritage List, which celebrates global patronage and heritage and on an annual basis host a forum for young professionals who are in the heritage management field.
Antigua and Barbuda has a UNESCO World Heritage site — the Antigua Naval Dockyard — which is within the Nelson’s Dockyard National Park and is managed by the National Parks Authority.
Gardner said the participants will undergo training and will be exposed to other methods used by world heritage sites across the world, and it’s usually within the host country for each annual world heritage convention.
“This convention is normally held annually since 1972 where the different site managers come together; they share their methods of heritage management as well as nominate new world heritage sites.
“So, in 2016 that was when Antigua nominated its first world heritage site in Istanbul, Turkey and it was fantastic; we got our inscription [and] it was successfully received and so we became the holder of a world heritage site and now I am getting the opportunity to be trained amongst other young professionals within the field, so that we’ll understand the different methods people are introducing, especially in the age of climate change,” she said.
Gardner said she is excited about sharing successful models which have been used here in Antigua which are being recognized by others internationally.
The heritage resources supervisor said taking part in this forum would greatly assist her in her work endeavours, as learning from other individuals will give Antigua and Barbuda a leg-up into the heritage management arena which could expose the country to new and unknown chartered waters, allowing us to think outside of the box.
The training programme runs from July 14 to 23 and, according to Gardner, on July 22 the young professionals would be making a presentation which is a collection of the training into a declaration as to how more young people can be engaged through heritage management.
She said a speech would be prepared to be presented at the 46th annual World Heritage Convention.
Gardner also manages heritage and studies material culture and research into heritage using archeology and archives documentation.
The young professional said she has always been interested in history, especially of Antigua and Barbuda, as she wanted to know where we came from, if we had Amerindians living here and what enslavement was like.
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