The LDE Centre is now the ICCROM’s National Focal Point in the Netherlands for Our Collections Matter
Since its inception, Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities (LDE) Centre for Global Heritage and Development has been one of the founding global partners of ICCROM’s project Our Collections Matter (OCM). Our Collections Matter was first launched in 2020 aligned with the UN 2030 Agenda, to accelerate, increase and amplify activities that support sustainable development through the use, development and conservation of heritage collections. Recently, ICCROM has designated LDE Centre for Global Heritage and Development as their OCM’s national focal point in the Netherlands to advance their longstanding partnership. Following their shared interest in protecting heritage collections for sustainable development, LDE and ICCROM’s OCM will work together to encourage the Dutch collection-based institutions, museums, libraries, archives, universities, local communities, religious communities, seed banks or biobanks, online-only collections, and other relevant heritage stakeholders to meet their targeted SDGs in the short and long terms.
The national focal point designation is the OCM’s newest development and is planned to start officially in 2024. This initiative will help ICCROM amplify their reach and impact through growing the number of participant organisations and improving the methodology and quality of data gathering. ICCROM started a few OCM Field Projects on an ad hoc basis in 2021 and started with the mentored field tests in 2022. For collections-based institutions interested in contributing to a sustainable future but unsure where to start, ICCROM and its partners developed their online accessible OCM Toolkit. This collective approach is founded on the balanced investment in the 5Ps principles: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership, to help different institutions play their fullest part and advocate for their collections and collection-based work’s sustainable development.
At LDE, we are committed to supporting ICCROM’s efforts in helping our partners prepare their teams with tailored training and toolkit to conserve and use their collections sustainably, as well as, to raise awareness amongst their audience and local communities to implement their SDG plans by 2030. If you would like to join our efforts or wish to learn more about our ICCROM-LDE OCM endeavours, please get in touch with the LDE’s representatives at OCM, the Affiliated Researchers Kaiyi Zhu (K.Zhu-1@tudelft.nl) and Mohamad Meqdad (meqdad@eshcc.eur.nl) who will take the lead in collaborating with Dutch partners to turn their sustainability aspirations and commitments into actions.
Our goal is to demonstrate that heritage stakeholders and communities can contribute significantly and measurably to sustainable development. With our partners’ help, we plan to release a global report showcasing the OCM’s projects and sharing our experiences and knowledge with the international heritage sector and beyond in 2026. Hence, LDE is eager to collaborate with all activities that pertain to the SDGs and the UN 2023 Agenda. Enabling sustainability through collections and conservation is the goal that the LDE Centre aims to share with all our Dutch partners and seeks to achieve with the support of ICCROM.