UNESCO World Heritage Volunteers - Parks and Gardens of Classical Weimar

The project be will be very intensive and will consist of two parts – a practical working part and a study part. The practical working part will last six hours per day and take place in the first half of the days. In the afternoons and evenings study and educational activities will be organised. Continuing the World Heritage Volunteers projects having taken place since 2012 at the World Heritage site Classical Weimar the project will support the revitalisation of abandoned parts of Belvedere Park. The volunteers will – based on historical plans and in intensive cooperation with the site management – uncover and restore historical paths which had been disappeared some decades ago. A part of the group will – alternating from day to day – carry out different gardening and preservation works in other parks belonging to the World Heritage site in mixed groups of international volunteers and local workers, in the same time enabling the participants to get to know the diversity of the World Heritage site Classical Weimar. In these parks are many sloping areas where it is only possible to deal with manual work. The volunteers will support the works as cutting grass, cleaning paths, etc. The study part will give the theoretical background for the project. Depending on the interests of the volunteers there will be lections and guided tours about Classical Weimar mostly organised by Classic Foundation Weimar, the main project partner. The study part will also bring the project and the World Heritage Volunteers programme in general into a wider public. It will include meetings with the press and presentations held by the participants about World Heritage sites of their home countries. In their spare time the volunteers will have the possibility to visit museums and exhibitions – for the duration of the project they will have free entrance to all museums managed by Classic Foundation Weimar. The best way to be mobile in a town like Weimar with a lot of gardens and parks is to discover it by bike. Therefore the participants will have during their stay bicycles for their disposal, which they also have to use to reach the different working places. Depending on the interests of the volunteers an excursion to another historical complex will be organised on the weekend – to Gotha Residence Castle with its park, which is one of the biggest parks in Germany and includes the eldest English garden outside Great Britain.