Improving the communication of our Outstanding Universal Value focus of online workshop

Each World Heritage site has an Outstanding Universal Value, for which it received the World Heritage title. The Oustanding Universal Value, or OUV, thus stands at the core of each site. Yet, its concept, which includes the site's selection criteria, integrity and management, is not always easy to explain. To create new material to support the communication of the OUV to visitors, residents and others, the Trilateral Wadden Sea Cooperation now held an interdisciplinary workhop with experts from the tourism sector and environmental education. The around 20 workshop participants are members of the Networking Group Sustainable Tourism and the International Wadden Sea School (IWSS). IWSS Coordinator Anja Szczesinski of WWF Germany led the event.

The aim of the workshop was to concretise ideas for helpful tools and products to communicate the OUV to different target groups in a co-creation process - among them a game, a simple visualisation and handy fact sheets for the educators. At the end of the event the participants gave a prioritisation to the overall 17 material ideas to prepare them for the next step, which is to explore on which level and by whom the various ideas can be realised. Some of them that can be applied in all three Wadden Sea countres will become products on a trilateral level in the framework of the IWSS work plan for 2021 and 2022.

Pillars of the Outstanding Universal Value