1099 8. Artificial mines - in some cases, making real underground workings available to visitors proves too expensive or too dangerous. In such cases, artificial mines imitating underground workings are created on the Surface or just below the surface. In comprehensive mining or technical museums, usually located in larger cities, we can also find such exhibition forms, albeit detached from the authentic mining site. 9. Educational parks reconstructing a piece of mine workings, small ore processing plants and smelters, craft workshops, and above all, the lives of miners and their families in “living open-air museums” or “living mining villages.” They combine entertainment with education, but are less based on original “historic” material. They are full of employees or volunteers dressed in period costumes and playing various roles, and feature cinemas, sound and light shows, outdoor trails, and educational centers. 10. Modern mining facilities with fully commercialized, separate sections of excavations for tourism, entertainment events, and catering. Of course, this varies greatly, from full access to post-mining spaces in the form of museum exhibitions or spaces intended for entertainment (salt mines are the leaders in this field), through the possibility of observing underground production (rare), to “viewpoints” (mostly at open-pit mines). Sometimes such places also run so-called interpretation centers, explaining technological processes, the further use of extracted raw materials, etc. We would like to draw particular attention to the latter form. On the one hand, it may have a purely utilitarian aspect, such as revenue diversification (of course, everything depends on the scale) or building good public relations in the perception of a specific company, but such places contribute to a more favorable perception of the mining industry as a whole. On the other hand, it facilitates a smooth transition from mining to tourism after the end of extraction. A perfect example of this is the „Wieliczka” Salt Mine described in the introduction. This approach makes it possible to start building a tourist brand for the future and, above all, to plan what can be preserved and made available in the future, what equipment and infrastructure to preserve so that it would not need to be reconstructed in the futurere. Historians and museum curators often make the mistake of not paying attention to current methods and means of production, focusing instead on the past. Attention should be paid not only to the historical past, but also to the present. Today, let's think about tomorrow, because today's “tomorrow” will become "yesterday” in a day. The equipment used today will be a historical artifact in 50 or 100 years! Mining is a “never-ending story”; modern lithium and rare earth metal mines will be historical monuments in 100 years. So let's document our “living heritage”, protect what still works, but also prepare to protect what has just started working in the mine. In some places—museums— there are already exhibits related to the exploitation of deposits in space - “Minig of Tomorrow.” This may be the domain of scientific technology museums, which have been developing rapidly recently, especially since, for now, modern technology focuses on the problems of space transport, without which the exploitation of these deposits is meaningless. Every mine is, in fact, a monument of technology and a museum of technology, and all of our mining activities today are the mining heritage of the future. The Cracow Saltworks Museum, as one of the oldest and largest mining museums in the world, has undertaken to consolidate the community involved in the protection and, above all, the tourist accessibility of mining facilities. By organizing the International Conference of Mining and Underground Museums (ICMUM) every three years, we have created a platform for the development of standards of conduct and the exchange of experiences for managers of tourist mines who are involved in the practical protection and accessibility of mining heritage, as well as academics who develop the theory and scientific framework for this protection. We will try to jointly create a Catalogue of Best Practices. This catalogue should focus on issues related to the protection and revitalization of mining excavations, the organization of above-ground and underground mining exhibitions, the organization of safe tourism in mines, ensuring proper education about the site and its promotion, and conducting research. It can be helpful and useful both to closed, historic sites that want to be made accessible and to those that want to smoothly transition from an “active” mining facility to a museum and tourist attraction. It should be a guide for initiatives to make mining sites accessible and preserve them, presenting the right model of operation in the most comprehensive and versatile way possible (including examples of projects that were not successful). It can assist in the process of evaluating
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