INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “HERITAGE OF WOODEN ARCHITECTURE AND NATIONAL CULTURE
POLICY”, 26-27 MAY 2010
RESOLUTION
The conference participants pointed out in their presentations that Lithuanian heritage of wooden
architecture was a valuable part of the cultural heritage of the Baltic Region, Europe and the world
of special relevance to the originality of Lithuanian traditional landscape. Unfortunately, the fragile
heritage of Lithuanian villages, cities, manors and towns is rapidly decaying and is being destroyed.
The conference participants are convinced that losses of wooden cultural heritage endanger the
identity of Lithuanian regions. For this reason the state should allocate much more funding to the
maintenance and management of wooden buildings, support traditional crafts that could foster
creation of new jobs and expand the practice of raising awareness on Lithuanian cultural heritage
through educating youth.
We, participants of the conference “Heritage of Wooden Architecture and National
Culture Policy", having regard to the fact that:
 Lithuanian environment and cultural heritage are crucial factors for the national security of
the Republic of Lithuania, essential components of State identity and national identity and
the most significant national asset;
 Lithuanian wooden cultural heritage is an overbearing component of the most valuable
traditional landscape of its regions, rural areas and cities and a resource of cultural tourism;
 the condition and protection of wooden cultural heritage has been deteriorating ominously
year by year, the wooden heritage of mansion estates and ethnographic villages has been in
an extremely poor condition, and the wooden heritage of civil buildings in cities and towns
has been decaying rapidly and is being destroyed despite existing effective legislation and
developed and approved protection programmes;
 the historically formed cultural heritage of villages has been still dominated by slate-covered
roofs of countryside buildings;
 not a single ethnographic village has been announced state- or municipality-protected;
 a new long-term programme of the survival of Lithuanian ethnographic regions has not been
developed and its annual funding has not been planned;
 conservation, restoration and adjustment works of wooden cultural heritage will require
considerably more human resources (local master craftsmen, qualified craftsmen,
apprentices, ancillary workers, etc.) and less financial investment (using local and traditional
construction materials, workpieces and products) compared with building new structures
and with buying and applying new and modern technologies;
 creation of jobs and attracting investment for the adjustment, sustainable use and display of
wooden heritage sites could become a factor that minimizes the economic decline and a
saving tool which fosters preservation of wooden cultural heritage.
Acknowledging the fact that protection of wooden cultural heritage in Lithuania is not defined
as the essential goal of planning urban and rural areas and stating that survival and preservation of
wooden cultural heritage is impossible without the traditional values cherished by the Nation, we
propose to the State Authorities of the Republic of Lithuania:
 With the view to preserving a very significant part of the cultural heritage of the Baltic
Region, Europe and the world, to define the general policy for protecting Lithuanian
wooden cultural heritage and its environment and for integrating it into the life of rural and
urban communities of the Republic of Lithuania;
 to make use of the legal opportunities for territorial protection and identify tools to preserve
wooden cultural heritage and ethnographic villages and to strengthen the identity of urban
cultural landscape;
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within the framework of the solutions of the general plan of the territory of the Republic of
Lithuania, to initiate development of a special plan for protecting and using the cultural
heritage of the territory of the Republic of Lithuania and of actions to implement it, and in
solutions provided in that document to associate survival and preservation of wooden
cultural heritage with revitalization and enshrining of the traditional values cherished by the
Nation;
to develop a long-term state programme for the preservation of Lithuanian wooden heritage
2011-2020 and its implementation actions with planned annual funding from state and
municipal budgets and from other legally received funds;
to legislate that preservation of wooden cultural heritage is approved as priority goal and
objective of the Republic of Lithuania when allocating support of the European Economic
Area and Norwegian financial mechanisms;
to detail the “Asbestos disposal programme” and its action plan for 2008-2013 approved
with Resolution No. 351 of 17.4.2008 of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania
directly associating it with preservation of wooden cultural heritage and ethnographic
villages and to supplement actions by including the responsible authorities – the Ministry of
Culture, the Department of Cultural Heritage and the State Service for Protected Areas,
which will control implementation of the detailed programme in the field of protection of
cultural heritage;
for the Ministry of Agriculture, within the framework of the project “Fostering
Reorientation of Workforce in Rural Areas from Agriculture to other Activities in
Lithuania”, to develop and implement a training programme for residents of ethnographic
villages, whereas for the Ministry of Social Security and Labour, to promote employment of
residents of ethnographic villages in managing wooden cultural heritage sites;
for ministries of Finance, Culture and Environment, to prepare, and for the Government of
the Republic of Lithuania, to legitimize a system of lending favourable to owners and users
of wooden cultural heritage sites, and of streamlined compensation for support maintenance
of those sites, and also separately for performed works of managing wooden cultural
heritage sites;
to support consistently rural and urban communities for purposes of preservation and
sustainable use of the heritage of wooden architecture and its environment;
to integrate protection of wooden cultural heritage into urban and rural area plans and into
their implementation actions, to protect the traditional character of the environment and to
avoid contrasting new structures in that environment;
for ministries of Culture and Environment, in co-operation with training and education
institutions, to draft, and for the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, to approve
regional architecture regulations for areas and sites, the methodology of managing wooden
cultural heritage, practical catalogues of management examples and a streamlined procedure
for permanent maintenance;
to encourage all Lithuanian municipalities and local neighbourhoods to support the
management of one wooden building per year and to post information about completed
works on the Internet;
for the ministries, within their competences, to detail legislation on national heritage
products by associating them directly with processes of preserving and revitalizing wooden
cultural heritage and ethnographic villages;
to draft lists of ethnographic villages that require the most urgent management with
calculations of costs needed for their preservation and revitalization;
to associate, in a purposeful way, development of rural tourism with preservation of wooden
cultural heritage of villages;
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to ensure inventory-taking of wooden mansion estates and ethnographic villages according
to their differentiated assessment and based on established criteria for that heritage
assessment;
to arrange detection of wooden cultural heritage sites, fixation of valuable exterior and
interior elements, integrated documentation (particularly of decaying buildings) and data
accumulation;
to develop an efficient fire protection system for wooden cultural heritage sites and to
encourage insurance companies to offer preferential terms to owners of wooden cultural
heritage;
to legislate financial liability for owners and operators who deliberately evade maintaining
or damage wooden cultural heritage sites;
to create an education and consulting website on values of wooden cultural heritage and on
adequate ways to manage buildings which is adjusted for site owners, municipal servants
and work performers.