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The MaCLands programme
The MaCLands concept:
MaCLands is a European university training truly original and unique worldwide thanks to both its global approach and its methodology applied to current international development issues, as well as to sustainable management of territories for and through heritage or cultural landscape.
Jean Monnet is believed to have said that if he should launch into building the Europe Union, he would do it through culture. The increased level of interest for territorial development, for heritage or cultural landscape – an all-encompassing international concept - proves him right. Indeed, whereas for two centuries, heritage has been linked to nations and their history, today, heritage - cultural landscape in all its meanings – is entering a new era by increasingly looking outwards. European heritage – which by no means is limited to a collection of national properties, an album of remarkable and listed sites, a body of know-how - has paradoxical characteristics (unity and plurality, memory and creative present, identity and cultural “melting-pot”…) which, whilst making it unique, also makes it attractive to Europeans and even more for non-Europeans who can find it it ground for reflexion and answers to their own heritage questioning.
Cultural landscape (and its management) not only reveals the past and the evolution of a country, the relationships between men and environment, but it also provides economic, ecological and social opportunities which help mankind live together more harmoniously. Inadequate development, lack of knowledge (e.g. overlooking the link between culture and environment), combined with unfortunate short-term decision making, have damaged, even destroyed, our cultural landscape.
The three MaCLands universities
MaCLands provides this alternative training, first and unique to this day, thanks to three perfectly complementary universities.
Saint-Etienne Jean Monnet, a young thirty-year old university; Naples Federico II, oldest university in Europe and Stuttgart University, with technology expertise.
Our subject matter – “To know the cultural landscape in order to better manage, develop and promote territories” – will benefit from these three university temporalities (past, present and future). Saint-Etienne, Naples and Stuttgart thus represent three stages of the heritage awareness.
Time marries itself well with space, and naturally, each university is symbolic of three aspects of the European cultural landscape (climate, landscapes, men, religions and traditions, literature, etc.). Namely, Mediterranean Europe with Naples, “Mitteleuropa” with Stuttgart, and Saint-Etienne representing the link between northern and southern Europe, frontier land with mixed influences from both North and South.
The MaCLands themes
The three universities work within three complementary axes, on tangible and intangible cultural properties, “non-building” heritage which mark and shape the territory, within identical underlying rules and similar methods, which constitutes our common recurrent theme.
Saint-Etienne develops all the heritage fundamentals and focuses on conservation and preventive and curative restoration, in conjunction with the Ecole nationale supérieure des Mines of Saint Etienne (for the materials). Naples provides all the conceptual and field methods and techniques, as well as heritage analysis and management (in conjunction with the “live” laboratory of the Amalfi Coast). Finally, Stuttgart provides the keys to communication and valorisation. Students trained in these three universities will then be able to work everywhere in Europe, and indeed worldwide.
Consequently, we would like our students to be able to speak at least two foreign languages correctly, and a third one with enough ease so that they are able to intervene anywhere in the world, after having been exposed to as many “cultural situation” as possible. We are committed to providing our students with a solid and intensive training so they are brought up to the required level.
MaCLands, a much awaited and necessary training, obvious and essential to the sustainable practice of the management, valorisation and conservation of cultural landscapes and heritage, works in a scientific spirit nowadays too often forgotten in favour of “culturally-looking” marketing.
Lastly, it is a proven experience worth offering and sharing with third countries who, concerned with scientific authenticity in the approach and management of cultural landscapes, are expecting a Masters course which combines in-depth thinking at university level with experience on the field. This will help prepare for professional life around projects based on a global and human landscape. MaCLands trains in a pragmatic way operational practitioners and researchers who are able to intervene whenever heritage and culture are part of the development, the evolution and, in some cases, the survival of territories and their inhabitants.
