Amund Sinding-Larsen receives 2020 Gazzola Prize medal
After being virtually awarded the Gazzola Prize in 2020, Amund Sinding-Larsen was finally handed the prestigious medal on May 6, in a ceremony organised by ICOMOS and hosted in his honour by the Permanent Delegation of the Kingdom of Norway to UNESCO.
Amund Sinding-Larsen is considered a leading figure within the field of rights-based approaches in cultural heritage and the integration of human dignity into heritage practices.
Amund Sinding-Larsen is a Norwegian architect and scholar, with a degree in architecture from Bristol University (UK) and a doctorate from NTNU University (Trondheim, Norway). He worked as an advisor for the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage and the Norwegian Directorate for Development Cooperation (1981-1996), as well as for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture between 1993 and 2001. Since the 1980s, he has also been a consultant for UNESCO and its Advisory Bodies, including ICCROM, IUCN and ICOMOS where he had an illustrious and fruitful career working in over 30 countries and contributing to more than a dozen of publications.
While working on local community development projects in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, he developed a deep understanding of the need for cultural heritage activities to consider and respect the long-ignored rights of religious and cultural minorities, indigenous peoples and custodians of heritage places.
In 2007, Amund Sinding-Larsen introduced these concepts to ICOMOS with the launch of the “Our Common Dignity” initiative. This initiative which brought together ICOMOS, ICCROM and IUCN under the coordination of ICOMOS Norway, focused on the need to integrate human rights into cultural heritage practice and led to the creation of the OCD-RBA WG in 2011.
Amund Sinding-Larsen was the ICOMOS Focal Point for Heritage and Human Rights for 5 years between 2011 and 2016. Thanks to his work, rights-based approaches to cultural heritage continue to grow in importance internationally, and many unheard voices are now being welcomed by the global heritage community.
For his outstanding contribution to cultural heritage, Amund Sinding-Larsen was given the title of ICOMOS Norway Honorary Member in 2011 and was awarded the Gazzola Prize during the 20th ICOMOS General Assembly in 2020, which was held online due to the COVID pandemic. 4 years later, ICOMOS was delighted to celebrate him with friends and colleagues and to hand him his long overdue award.