Sahar Khalil

The AEHSEA Virtual Museum Blended Docent Training Program (The African-Egyptian Heritage Sustainable & Economic Activities)

Sahar Khalil – Helwan University, Egypt

With Ahmed Soliman – Helwan University, Egypt

Abstract:

This paper asserts the need for an online training program targeting undergraduate art education and diverse art students from all background colleges. The program, set to run for three months during the summer with 6 hours of training per week, aims to create rigorous application and evaluation assessments to award a professional training certificate in the AEHSEA Virtual Museum Blended Docent Training Program. It emphasizes the ethical grading of arts and crafts related to the African Egyptian heritage and addresses the decline in environmental determinism within anthropology. Additionally, the paper confronts the challenges in implementing the UNESCO 1970 Convention and emphasizes the necessity to strengthen synergies between the UNESCO 2015 Museums Recommendation and other legal instruments to safeguard arts and crafts as part of the African Egyptian heritage. This paper introduces an online training program for undergraduate art education and diverse art students from all background colleges for a time limit of three months of summer training, 6 hours weekly (2 theoretical + 4 practical). It includes the development of application and evaluation assessments to verify a professional training certificate for participants in AEHSEA Virtual Museum Blended Docent Training Program. The program focuses on educating volunteers about African heritage and the core art craftsmanship ecology, particularly the African-Egyptian Heritage Subsistence & Economic Activities. That includes the concept of ethically grading arts and crafts that form part of the African Egyptian heritage. These artifacts were taken without consent, bought, or exchanged with fair value. Instead, they were appropriated into European ownership and exported to foreign countries, where they were admired for their decorative value. These shifts have led to a decline in the significance of environmental determinism within anthropology. Steward’s theory defines culture core as features closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements (Steward 1955:37). By the 1960s and 1970s, cultural ecology and environmental determinism lost favour within anthropology.