Europa Nostra welcomes the Swedish Local Heritage Federation

The Swedish Local Heritage Federation joined Europa Nostra’s network of Member Organisations in February 2015. The Federation, created in 1916 and based in Stockholm, serves a nationwide heritage movement, consisting of 26 affiliated regional organisations and some 2,000 local heritage societies, with a total membership of approximately 450,000 individuals.

 

Preserving, sharing and developing local cultural heritage is the main mission of the Federation. To this end, the local societies maintain 1,400 heritage centres, most of them open-air museums, hosting collections of buildings and artifacts as well as extensive archives. Activities tend to be quite diverse, reflecting local needs and interests, but with a strong focus on the preservation and promotion of traditional, rural forms of culture – e.g. folk music and dance, crafts, architecture and festivals – and are often undertaken in collaboration with schools and local museums. Many heritage centres also run guest houses and cafés, thus playing an important role in local tourism.

The Federation also actively lobbies and negotiates with various stakeholders, especially concerning environmental issues. At the national level, it often works as a consultation body for various governmental committees. Documenting and preserving 20th-century industrial heritage, while promoting inclusive community building, have also become important tasks.

A quarterly journal and a series of handbooks and study guides are published by the Federation. In addition, it maintains an extensive web portal, hosting more than 1,200 individual websites, and a growing digital archive, which currently contains more than one million photographs and other documents and is available to the public.

As the Federation prepares for its centennial year, three activities are particularly important: promoting the implementation of the European Landscape Convention (‘The Florence Convention’); launching the campaign ‘Meeting Places’, which will present narratives of place, space and human interaction, in collaboration with Nordiska Museet, Sweden’s largest museum of cultural history; and raising stronger public awareness of the Federation, its history and relevance for contemporary society.

In Sweden, Europa Nostra has 25 member and associate organisations. Europa Nostra wants to strongly engage and further enlarge its network of members, associates, benefactors, partners and supports in Sweden and all over Europe. Together we can save and promote our shared cultural heritage. JOIN US