Free courses

A few courses make a good starting point: "What is cultural property?", "First steps with a suspect object", "Understanding provenance", "International conventions in ten minutes". Each lasts under three hours and requires no prerequisites.

They can be followed in sequence, as a twenty-hour introductory pathway.

Pathways group courses by profession: customs officer (five courses), gallery owner (six courses), collector (four courses), student (eight courses). Each pathway ends with a pathway certificate giving priority access to certification sessions.

Pathways are reviewed every year with the alumni networks.

Free courses are published under an open licence: teachers and trainers can reuse them, translate them and include them in their own programmes, crediting the source. Source files are provided to partner institutions.

Translations into other languages (Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Swahili) are made with university partners.

The courses are funded by the Protection Fund, foundations and individual donations. A crowdfunding scheme lets anyone fund a course: twelve euros cover one learner from a developing country for a year.

Usage and impact reports are published every year.

Free courses are a gateway. Learners who wish to go further can move on to certifying courses, webinars or certification programmes, with recognition of their prior pathway. The best can apply for a scholarship.

A guidance adviser answers questions about pathways.

The Academy's reception service answers practical questions Monday to Friday, in French, English and Spanish, and can direct each visitor to the programme, scholarship or free resource that fits their situation. A guidance counsellor also offers a thirty-minute individual meeting, by appointment, to build a realistic training pathway.

Trainees' feedback is valuable: each session gives rise to a questionnaire, and the most useful suggestions are examined each quarter by the teaching committee. Do not hesitate to write to report a difficulty, propose a subject or tell us what the training has changed in your practice.