Kosovo Tourist Guides Association GUIDEKS members on the 22nd & 23rd February 2021 have attended “Dark Tourism” webinar, organised by FEG under the RePAST EU project delivered by FEG accredited trainer Mary Kemp Clarke.
It is the first time for the Kosovo tourist guides to be certified and deal with this sensitive topic.
The European Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (FEG) in collaboration with Clio Muse Tours have organized and hostied 30 educational webinars on ‘Dark Tourism’ guided tours. Supported by the EU-funded project RePAST these webinars, that took place from mid-January to the end of March 2021, were addressed to certified tourist guides in Cyprus, Germany, Poland, Greece, Bosnia, Kosovo, Ireland, and Spain.
RePAST aims at investigating how European societies deal with their troubled pasts today through the analysis of conflict discourses rooted in those pasts, with a view on the impact of those discourses on European integration. It also studies comparatively these eight cases of countries whose troubled pasts sit squarely on legacies that still endanger European integration today.
As a partner of RePAST, Clio Muse Tours has created eight digital tours, one for each of the countries included in the project. These tours came to life after developing a research methodology, evaluation of numerous written and oral history sources, journals, articles, and books from university libraries and archives as well as government reports and legal documents.
As part of FEG’s life-long training the Clio Muse tours, along with RePAST’s main outcomes and other educational material will be used during the online webinars to introduce cultural tourism professionals to the etiquette of dark tourism tours.
The goal is to provide qualified tourist guides with the skillset to offer meaningful and impactful on-site experiences of high quality. With an increase in the popularity of dark tourism, we believe these webinars will become a valuable tool in the further development of qualified tourist guides operating in these countries that will help them highlight unseen aspects of these countries’ cultural heritage.
Relevant Links:
EUROPEAN FEDERATION OF TOURIST GUIDE ASSOCIATIONS: https://www.feg-touristguides.com
Dark tourism online self-guided tours: https://cliomusetours.com/tour_interest/dark-tourism/
Clio Muse RePAST Tours: the Project, the Challenges, the Outcome: https://cliomusetours.com/clio-muse-repast-tours-the-project-the-challenges-the-outcome/
RePAST official webpage: https://www.repast.eu/