The Best in Heritage 2020 edition was a journey that lasted for 3 months and that took us all over the planet. The 42 interviews with laureates from the past year provid a diverse selection of material for all interested in best practices and innovations in the wide field of cultural heritage and public memory institutions. The series featured talks with prominent laureates from the past year, coming from art to civil rights museums, educational programmes to costume festivals, from national libraries to restored castles, conservation projects to archaeological digs, disrupted exhibitions to vital educational programmes, and covering a vast array of new trends with immersive recreations of historical events and places, interactive visits, wide-reaching social media campaigns and open access collections.

Click on the images below to watch the videos

Our IMAGINES & Core programme Juries had a very difficult task. Although all 42 participating projects are already winners, each being awarded in the past year, only 2 are proclaimed as the Best in Heritage "Project of Influence" of the year. 

The IMAGINES title of “Project of Influence 2020” went to the State Library of New South Wales for their project #NewSelfWales – presented by Paula Bray. The second place by number of votes was taken by the Fine Arts and Archaeology Museum Besançon for the LIVDEO project - presented by Ciprian Melian. Third by number of votes is ArchAIDE app project, - presented by Gabriele Gattiglia.

In the core programme the 2020 “Project of Influence” title goes to the Helsinki Central Library Oodi – presented by Harri Annala. Second by number of Jury votes is “Stewards of Cultural Heritage” project by the Archaeological Heritage Network – presented by Moritz Kinzel and Abdulhamid Dihna. And the third place by number of votes goes to the Queen Louise Adit Complex - presented by Magdalena Szczypkowska & Michalina Bieńkowska.

Talk with Paula Bray, DX Lab Leader at the State Library of NSW, upon receiving the Project of Infleunce title for IMAGINES 2020.. In 2018 the DX Lab asked people across the state to share their portraits on Instagram and via an in-gallery photo booth at the community-generated, immersive exhibition called #NewSelfWales. This award-winning, live data feed, utilising web technologies, resulted in over 7000 portraits taken in the selfie booths, 1000 portraits from Instagram and over 5000 from the Library’s collection collected over 200 years.

Talk with librarian Harri Annala and presentation of the Project of Influence trophy 2020. Helsinki Central Library Oodi is a new public building where reading, active learning, and experiencing cultural events come together in a new way. The creative architectural design and the services provided are innovative and varied. Each floor has its own character and has been designed with the needs and wishes of its users in mind. With over 3 million visits in its first year alone, Oodi has already cemented itself as the place to be and see in Helsinki.

Our hard-working interviewers did their best to deliver high-quality interviews with the representatives of featured award-winning achievements. For the IMAGINES, focusing on new technologies and multimedia, Adam Corsini from Layers of London and Sara Devine from the Brooklyn Museum in New York conducted the talks, and were joined by our last year IMAGINES "Project of Influence" representative Ivor Crotty from RT for the voting of the Jury. 

For the core programme the interviewers were Corey Timpson from coreytimpson.com, Carina Jaatinen from Finnish Science Center Heureka & ICOM Executive Board, Viv Golding, Honorary Associate Professor at the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, and Inkyung Chang, Director of the Iron Museum and Chairperson of ICOM Korea. As the last member of the Jury, Dr Monisha Ahmed from our TBIH2019 Project of Influence - The LAMO Centre in India, joined the voting process.

Messages from our partners and patrons, without whome the 2020 edition would not be possible. Peter Keller sends a message on behalf of our main partner - ICOM, while Sneška Queadvleig Mihailović represents our partenr for years - Europa Nostra. Further messages feature Ana hilje fronm the City of Dubrovnik, Julijana Antić Brautović from the Dubrovnik Museums, and by Frank Boot from the Meyvaert company - our sponsor since 2016. 

To all interested parties we freely offer the 2020 conference exhibition in printable files. It includes 18 C0 size posters featuring this year's participating laureates, with QR codes that lead to video presentations and further webpages. As you can see on the image above, it can be realised in ways suitable for specific spaces and needs. Write to us for more information.