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The Best in Heritage remains dedicated to delivering an annual, global overview of best practices, focusing on the criteria of professional excellence, public value, and innovation. The goal is to offer insights into the most prominent award-winning achievements and share these further, with both the professional and civil-society communities concerned with heritage.

Although celebrating the 20th anniversary in 2021, the conference will again take form only as an online video-series of interviews, with a wide range of representatives of museum, heritage and conservation projects that were awarded in 2020. 

In the IMAGINES section, which is focused on new technologies and multimedia, various accomplishments will be covered, including a sign language video guide, different open-access solutions, a digital collections’ platform, an audio-description tool, infinity projection, a virtual museum-building video game, on-site installation for museums, 3D video-mapping, and AR, VR and XR projects. 

Among the 28 laureates from the core programme diverse achievements will be presented, ranging from secret surveillance, biodiversity, the colonial past, museum activism, lifestyle, paper printing and art, but also family and children support programmes, a youth engaging initiative, cross-border intangible heritage networks, archaeological excavation sites, and conservation, preservation and rehabilitation projects.

In the special "Spotlight" episode, Professor Dan Hicks from the Oxford University talks to our Director Professor Tomislav Šola.

For information on all featured laureates click here.

The interviewers this year, which serve as members of the jury as well, are coming from different areas of expertise – for IMAGINES they are: Alexey Tikhonov, IT Projects Director at the State Russian Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSPHOTO in St Petersburg, and Brad Dunn, Web & Digital Engagement Director at the Field Museum in Chicago. 

For the core programme they are Marta Lourenço from University of Lisbon and Chair of ICOM-UMAC, Bruno Brulon Soares from Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro and Chair of ICOM-ICOFOM, Vinod Kumar from Architectural studio dd Architects in Kerala, India, and Beth Redmond-Jones, Vice President of Exhibitions & Facilities at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.

TBIH2021 IMAGINES Keynote address by Paula Bray, DX Lab Leader at the State Library of NSW in Sydney. Their project #NewSelfWales won the TBIH2020 IMAGINES "Project of Influence" recognition.

Core Programme Keynote Address by Harri Annala, Librarian at the Helsinki Central Library Oodi. It was awarded with The Best in Heritage 2020 "Project of Influence" recognition.

Michael Epstein from the Walking Cinema talks about the Museum of the Hidden City Mobile App, which won the MUSE Mobile App Award in 2020. This combination audiowalk and AR experience is a museum-without-walls exploration of San Francisco's housing history.  The project uses spoken word poetry, an original soundtrack, and guided narration to walk audiences through the site of the largest urban renewal project of its time.  As the only San Francisco "museum" to remain open during COVID , the project has been called "an engaging, novel way to learn about the city, all while keeping your distance from others. And the stories it tells — about racism, affordable housing, and the evolution of neighborhoods— feel profoundly relevant.”

Susanne van Straaten presents the Naturalis Biodiversity Center (in Leiden, The Netherlands), which won the BankGiro Loterij Museumprijs in 2020, and was recently crowned with the European Museum of the Year Award 2021. Naturalis Biodiversity Center is the Dutch national institute for biodiversity. It has one of the largest natural history collections around the globe. Through all the knowledge and data that it provides, its scientists study life on Earth. Their studies contribute to solutions for major, global issues involving climate, food supply, living environment, medicine and biodiversity preservation. In this recently opened museum, young and old are able to discover the amazing world of nature. In the brand-new exhibition halls you will learn everything about the Netherlands in the Ice Age and the immense forces of our planet. You will also discover the most surprising ways in which plants and animals seduce each other and take a walk among dinosaurs, including the famous T. rex Trix.