TEHIC-Handbook_of_best_practices

2. An overview of the concept of heritage interpretation and its evolution. TEHIC Towards a European Heritage Interpretation Curriculum 8 An overview of the concept of heritage interpretation and its evolution By Isabel Fernández Domínguez Heritage Interpretation can contribute to building a better World. The principle of healing. Ted Cable 1 Global Alliance for Heritage Interpretation 2021 Origins of the discipline of heritage interpretation Heritage Interpretation (HI) emerged at the end of the 19 th century at the same time as the declaration of the first protected natural areas in the USA and various conserva - tionist and pedagogical innovation movements, which promoted learning in contact with nature. (Fernández 2022, 63). T wo key authors at the onset of heritage interpretation were undoubtedly John Muir and Enos Mills. It is to Muir, a naturalist, scientist, writer, and populariser, that the transcendent meaning we give to the verb to interpret in the discipline is attributed. (1871): “listening, observing, understanding and learning the secrets of the wild, appro- priating the deepest meaning of life.” (Brunelli 2019, 16). Mills, with a storyteller’s profile, worked as a guide, developing his own method which he taught to other nature guides at the “Trail School”. He is the author of this excerpt, which could well be applied to today’s interpretive guided tours: “The nature guide is at his best when he analyses facts in such a way that they appeal to imagination and reason, puts flesh and blood on cold data, turns inanimate objects into life stories. He deals with principles instead of isolated information, he provides biogra- phies instead of classifications. People are visiting for recreation and need relaxation, intellectual insights, not boring and sterile data, nor rules and manuals. What the guide tells is basically nature literature rather than an encyclopaedia of natural history.” (Brunelli 2019, 30). 1 Any quotation from foreign authors is a translation from the Spanish version. As the original texts are not available, we offer here our English translation, which may not exactly match the original wording.