TEHIC-Handbook_of_best_practices

3. Outlook for heritage interpretation in Europe and future prospects. TEHIC Towards a European Heritage Interpretation Curriculum 36 According to the website of the University of Pau, these master’s degrees are taught by university lecturers and professionals: historians, legal historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, sociologists, museographers... but not even a single pro- fessional in heritage interpretation. What the profession is all about. I n contrast to the training panorama of heritage interpretation in Europe, which has been quite easy to describe, the professional panorama is more complex. Broadly speaking in the practice of the profession in Europe, we can observe the same twofold path that we have seen when talking about training: on the one hand, we have the world of strategic heritage planning and, on the other hand, we have the world of operative interpretation, albeit from a professional point of view, the borderline between both worlds is quite blurred. Steve Slack, in his book Interpreting Heritage 11 explains that people working on herit- age interpretation projects come from a wide variety of backgrounds: from learning and education, public engagement and programming, research and writing, design and crea- tivity, assessment and consultancy, curatorship and libraries, history and science, broadcasting and publishing, management and accounting, foundations and volunteer- ing, and anyone else who wants to bring their skills to interpretive work. In fact, Steve Slack himself confessed that he thinks he has never met many interpreters who have had the same professional track throughout their career. This variety of backgrounds does not mean that there is no need to learn a "common theoretical corpus" on heritage interpretation. But what is this "common corpus"? And is there really a set of principles, concepts and tools used to develop effective and mean - ingful ways of conveying information about cultural and natural heritage to diverse audiences? Should this "corpus" include ideas such as the importance of the message, interpretation as a means to connect visitors with heritage, customer service and inter- pretation planning, among other considerations? Should it also be focused on understanding the visitor experience and developing techniques and skills to present in- formation in a clear and persuasive manner? There is no doubt that in order to engage in heritage interpretation, professional guid- ance is essential to effectively convey the importance and significance of cultural and natural heritage. Heritage interpretation, which, in Tilden's words, began as an art, has 1 Slack, Steve (2021): “Interpreting Heritage. A Guide to Planning and Practice. Ed. Routledge, New York 2021.