Industrial and Technique Museums

This paper analyses how the evolution of the railway sector and the changes brought by the railways are perceived and represented in the People’s Republic of China. In doing so, we focus on four railway collections (three of them belonging to the same museum) and three temporary exhibitions, among other materials. That lets us build an interpretation giving prominence to material culture and to the symbolic use of objects and images, allowing us to pursue the meanings of railway heritage and history in China. Furthermore, this analysis compares the information available in Chinese and English in the museums, exhibitions, and some media (in this last case we include Spanish too).  In terms of methodology, we combine tools from archaeology, museums studies, applied linguistics and cross-cultural communication. We think this approach is innovative and also appropriate to perceive the messages created by the Chinese museum sector and sent both to national and to international audiences – ie, how China uses railway heritage and history to represent itself domestically and to the rest of the world.

En el contexto de la educación integral y permanente los museos son considerados como una institución educativa y por ello se esfuerzan en ofrecer programas y actividades con una intención didáctica. Aunque es habitual referirse a estas acciones como educación patrimonial, tenemos que señalar que educación y patrimonio es un binomio que no siempre se conjuga como educación patrimonial. Analizamos el caso concreto de los museos industriales y proponemos estrategias y contenidos para construir programas de educación patrimonial aprovechando los valores específicos de universalidad, memoria social e interdisciplinariedad de este conjunto patrimonial. Finalmente proponemos una plantilla para la evaluación cualitativa de las actividades realizadas con grupos escolares. Abstract In the context of the integral and permanent education, the museums are regarded as an educational institution, strive to offer programs and activities with an educational intention. Although usually it refer to these actions as heritage education, we have to point out that education and heritage is a binomial that isn´t always conjugated as heritage education. We analyze the case of the industrial museums and propose strategies and content to build programs of heritage education taking advantage of them values specific of universality, social memory e interdisciplinary of this cultural heritage. Finally, we propose a template for the qualitative assessment of the activities developed with scholars groups.

This paper analyses the conservation of the industrial heritage in the current society and the place that the memory of working class occupies in these kina of interventions. Museums of Industry are the best examples of conservation of this type of cultural heritage that have given a major attention to the preservation of the values of the culture of the production. We focused two examples of this situation in this paper: the Museum of the Energy of Ponferrada (León); and the Technological Park of Andorra (Teruel); they both present a common aim, although they use different ways of museography the industrial heritage.

La Revolució Industrial va marcar l'inici d'una nova era en la qual s'imposà una nova forma de treballar i de viure. Una de les característiques més importants d'aquesta nova era fou que el canvi s'instaurà com un dels valors de la societat. Per primera vegada a la història la gent, quan moria, deixava un món diferent del que hi havia al seu naixement. Apareixien noves màquines, nous centres productius, nous paisatges i, sobretot, unes noves formes de viure i de treballar. A mesura que la industrialització s'expandí, arraconà l'antiga societat de base agrícola que s'havia iniciat amb l'adveniment del neolític.