In 2010 the first Dutch cultural cooperative was founded in the province of Gelderland: ‘Erfgoed Gelderland’ (‘Heritage Gelderland’). The cooperative has two founding fathers: ‘Gelders Erfgoed’, the institution that supports the provincial heritage organizations, and ‘Gelders Archief’, the provincial archives. This year all provincial heritage organizations, including 120 museums, will be invited to join the cooperative as members.
Most of the future members are small organizations with a limited professional staff. The cooperative can do part of their operational management, for instance ICT. Most of the future members – about 300 – already contributed content to the provincial heritage website www.mijngelderland.nl . The cooperative will help them with the further extension, utilization and marketing of this website.
The initiators expect that the cooperative will achieve:
- a more efficiënt and cheaper preservation of the provincial heritage
- availability of this heritage to a wider audience
- more coherence between the heritage institutions and between their collections
Marc Wingens, The Netherlands
Director of Stichting Gelders Erfgoed
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Bio
Marc Wingens (1964) studied History at Utrecht University. He defended his PhD thesis on Cultural History at Erasmus University(Rotterdam). Marc Wingens is director of Stichting Gelders Erfgoed (Guelders Heritage Institute) in Zutphen (Netherlands).