10/08/2026
In recent years, a number innovative training initiatives have focused on historic cemeteries as laboratories for learning. On Tuesday, October 20 at 7PM ET, HPEF will be hosting a free one-hour webinar to explore how burial space can provide invaluable opportunities to expand access and resources within preservation education.
The Bridge to Craft Careers Program, a program pioneered by World Monuments Fund, has offered the opportunity for interested students to explore and learn skills in historic masonry, metalwork and plasterwork within historic cemetery landscapes. This unique partnership offers exposure to immense architectural resources for students, and provides much needed support in the care and conservation of significant cultural heritage at multiple sites throughout the United States.
Burial sites also provide tangible links for living communities to understand and care for their ancestors through memory work. The Center for Cultural Landscapes at University of Virginia recently led a cemetery workshop with support from HPEF and Out(sider) Preservation Initiative to empower living community leaders with practical and ethical guides to interpret historic African American cemeteries. As a recent participant, Bernadette Whitsett-Hammond commented in a documentary about the workshop, these cemeteries are "not just a burial ground, but a biography of a community."
HPEF has invited the following panel of experts and educators to discuss and share their work and we hope you will join us for the conversation. Please visit www.hpef.us to register.
Background Images: B2CC, St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, 2026. Credit: Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans.
