Capacity Building and Community Participation in Cultural Landscape Management at Borobudur World Heritage Site

Ars Management collaborated with UNESCO Office Jakarta in the program “Capacity Building and Community Participation in the Management of Cultural Landscape at the Borobudur World Heritage Site”. The aim of this program is to raise awareness of the local community about the relationship between Borobudur Temple World Heritage Site Area and the surrounding villages’ traditions so as to attract their interest in preserving the World Heritage Site. Through the identified relationships, the program also intends to promote local livelihoods by attracting visitors to visit the villages.

In this activity, there are 3 work programs managed by ARS Management, namely:

1. Finalizing the Mapping of the Creative Industry Potentials and Cultural Heritage of the Borobudur Area Book.
2. Virtual Workshop “Interpretation of Borobudur Temple and Its Correlation with the Potentials of Villages in the Borobudur Area”.
3. Workshop on Making Virtual Tour Packages for the Villages’ Young Tour Guides in the Borobudur Temple Area via Online Media.

In finalizing the Mapping of the Creative Industry Potentials and Cultural Heritage of the Borobudur Area Book, ARS Management’s task is to confirm and reupdate the written content that was made in 2018 to suit the current conditions of each village, 20 villages in total, located in Borobudur sub-district. This consultation is divided into two activities, namely online consultation via Zoom with 20 village governments in the Borobudur area and face-to-face consultation. The first online consultations took place between October – November 2020. From this process, there were various notes from each village. These notes were then processed and rewritten to complement the previous writing. After the addition enough, Ars Management team conducted final consultations with village government officials directly (face to face) by visiting each village. This consultation took place on 18-21 January 2021.

The second activity is a Virtual Workshop “Interpretation of Borobudur Temple and Its Correlation with the Potential of Villages in the Borobudur Area” in collaboration with the Borobudur Conservation Office (BKB). This workshop aims to strengthen the story of each village in the Borobudur area as a tourist village that has a history of its association with Borobudur Temple. The potentials in the villages were explored, identified, analyzed, then matched with the reliefs in the temple to become a story. The workshop took place on Thursday, 28 January 2021, from 8:30 to 11:00 Western Indonesian Time at the Citraweb Cultural Center and live streamed through the BKB Youtube account. The workshop was attended by 78 people consisting of representatives of villages in Borobudur District, young tour guides, and tourism entrepreneurs.

The entire series of activities ran smoothly and the outputs obtained are in accordance with the objectives of the event. In this activity, ARS Management was tasked with managing the entire event process; namely managing the attendance of the participants, proposing and presenting speakers, making technical preparations (making activity schedules, making invitations, planning the event, determining the location of the event, overseeing the event, and closing the event), and various other management technical activities to support the smooth running of the entire activities.