A Future for the Children’s Past
Eine Zukunft für die Vergangenheit der Kinder
Un avenir pour le passé des enfants
Un futuro per il passato dei bambini

Workshop 3
October 21, 2025, 13:15–16:00H

Maria Kouvari, Construction Heritage and Preservation, ETH Zurich; In collaboration with: Damian Zimmermann, Executive Board member at Pestalozzi Children’s Village and Dr. phil. Anna Katharina Schmid, President FICE International. 

Keywords:
children, care, underrepresented heritage groups, Pestalozzi Children’s Village, child-rights perspective

Workshop description:
Childhood studies emerged in the 1970s, propelled by postmodern and feminist approaches to theory and practice. Children have been one of the last groups to attract the attention of historians, following in the steps of previously marginalized histories of women, the working classes, and ethnic minorities.¹ Children are not considered to be a minority group. However, if the same criteria are applied to them as to other minority groups—such as prejudice, discrimination, and disempowerment—children could, in fact, be perceived as a minority, a notion which can be understood not only in demographic but also moral terms.²

In response to the call of this conference—commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1975 European Heritage Year—this workshop discusses children as an underrepresented heritage group. The discussion will revolve around built environments of children, with a special focus on environments of institutional care, which occupy a unique place in Swiss public and scholarly discourse. Despite growing advocacy for the inclusion of children in heritage processes—encouraged notably by UNESCO—children’s voices, experiences, memories, and emotions remain marginalized in processes of heritage making.⁴ Architectural objects designed for children are often documented and inventoried according to criteria of style, design, and authorship, while many other objects and sites appropriated, experienced, and valued by children themselves are rarely acknowledged as heritage.

The workshop is structured into three parts: input presentations, group discussions, and a concluding session. It will engage with theories and concepts on children and heritage, focused case studies, and childhood in the present and its relevance for heritage processes. Key questions to be discussed include: How have children’s experiences informed formal heritage processes? How do we understand the perspectives of children in the past? What is the relationship between the adult voice and the memory of childhood? Which histories are privileged in heritage processes? What are contemporary concerns about the well-being of children, and how do these shape our understanding of the past?

Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of architects, historians, heritage professionals, social pedagogues, child psychologists, and child-rights advocates, the objective of the workshop is: to promote a child-rights perspective in heritage discourse and practice; to forge interdisciplinary collaborations; and to advocate for a more dynamic, inclusive, and polyvocal understanding of heritage. Based in Switzerland, FICE International and the Pestalozzi Children’s Village Foundation have been leading organizations in the field of child welfare. Founded in the aftermath of the Second World War, FICE International became the first organization established under the auspices of UNESCO.

The outcome of the workshop will be a working position paper, which outlines principles for child-inclusive heritage theory and practice, while addressing conceptual and methodological challenges to promote the heritage of children and—by extension—that of other underrepresented groups. This focus on children aligns with contemporary concerns about the well-being of children in view of armed conflict, migration, displacement, and separation, as well as broader debates on care, vulnerability, humanitarianism, and empowerment.

1. A fundamental study in this direction (which has largely inspired this workshop) is: Kate Darian-Smith, and Carla Pascoe, Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage (London: Routledge, 2013).

2. Yvonne Vissing, “Are Children a Minority Group?,” Children’s Human Rights in the USA. Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice, Center for Childhood & Youth Studies (Springer, 2023), 271–285; For children as a minority group see also: Allison James, Chris Jenks, and Alan Prout, Theorizing Childhood (Cambridge: Polity, 2007).

3. Bill Logan, “Patrimonito Leads the Way. UNESCO, Cultural Heritage, Children and Youth,” Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage (London: Routledge, 2013), 21–39.

You can register for the workshop via the link that will be sent conference participants by email.