The City of Tacloban, together with the Department of Tourism and Department of Education Region 8, partners with the University of Santo Tomas Graduate School-Center for Conservation of Cultural Property and Environment (USTGS-CCCPET) to conduct the long-awaited Cultural Mapping Project, which will document the natural and cultural heritage of the city.
What is special about this mapping project is that the documentation is geared towards the rediscovering and rebuilding of the city’s culture and identity post-Typhoon Yolanda. The super typhoon caused massive destruction to the city’s landscape in 2013, and many of the city’s built heritage were damaged or lost. But since then, many commemorative monuments as well as intangible representations of collective grief and recovery have been produced by the citizens, which could be considered as part of the city’s intangible heritage.
Concretely, the mapping data will be used to develop the proposed City Museum, which is envisioned to be housed in the Provincial Capitol building.
The project began on November 30, 2017 with an orientation of stakeholders, including representatives from the City Government, DOT Region 8, University of the Philippines-Visayas and other academic institutions, the different Barangays, and DepEd.
CCCPET Director Eric Zerrudo, MCH is training more than 200 mappers representing the city’s 138 barangays. The project is ongoing and is set to finish by the third quarter of the 2018.
