FINAL EVENT: PAST | PRESENT
PAST | PRESENT
WeAre#EuropeForCulture: partnerships across Europe
to realize 10 events (plus a final one in Belgium) we leveraged on a network of partners and colleagues from across the entire continent
WeAre#EuropeForCulture is about engaging local communities with cultural heritage, to connect people and histories at local and European level. According to the European Commission guidelines, the project principally addressed teenagers, adults and ageing people, with a particular view in engaging, at each location, communities which are considered hard-to-reach, marginalized or minority.
The idea of the project was to hold co-creation events in 10 European countries plus a final one in Belgium, so that a vast and varied population could be addressed. To achieve all this, the project leveraged on the network of members of Photoconsortium Association: these are trusted colleagues from prestigious institutions, museums and archives, all well established on the territory and with a long-standing partnership with Photoconsortium for the realization of photographic heritage exhibitions and user engagement activities. The strength of this partnership with Photoconsortium members mainly lies in a deep knowledge and understanding of the local context and sensitivities, next to the expertise in engaging local communities without any language or cultural barrier, as the local organizations are of course native from the country.
The Photoconsortium partners who enthusiastically jumped on board, and without whom the project could not exist, are all relevant cultural institutions in their countries:
OSZK, Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, the National Library in Hungary
the NALIS Foundation, National Academic Library and Information System in Bulgaria
Museovirasto, the Finnish Heritage Agency in Finland
the Walery Rzewuski Museum of History of Photography, in Poland
the Museum of Graphics of Pisa, in Italy
the University of Basel, in Switzerland
Lietuvos dailės muziejus, the Lithuanian Art Museum in Lithuania
Ajuntament de Girona / CRDI, the Centre for Image Research and Diffusion of Girona, in Catalonia
the Digital Heritage Research Lab at the Cyprus University of Technology in Cyprus
and in the Netherlands a series of events was organized in collaboration with the Baking Lab and the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.
Under the motto "It's our history too!", the work of the project's and partners' facilitators and the storytelling approach of each exhibition was specifically tailored to engaging the target community identified at each location, in their native language as well as in English, keeping in mind the connections between local history and European history and between individual stories and the bigger picture. The use of co-creation techniques enabled a deeper participation of the target communities in a participative and inclusive approach joining museum and exhibition professionals and citizens.
Also, the closing phase of the project, realized by KU Leuven, comprises a workshop and exhibition in Leuven and a final event and exhibition in Brussels at the House of European History, this latter to be held in February 2020.
About WeAre#EuropeForCulture: https://www.photoconsortium.net/europeforculture/
More about Photoconsortium and its network: https://www.photoconsortium.net
WeAre#EuropeForCulture: the QANDR tool
WeAre#EuropeForCulture is about engaging communities with cultural heritage, helped by the use of digital technologies. To deliver 10 exhibitions of local cultural heritage in 10 European cities plus an additional one in Leuven as part of the final stages of the project, a programme of co-creation sessions allowed people participate in the exhibition set up with their photographs, stories, opinions and other user-generated content. Students, children, artists, craftsmen, elderly people, fisherme...
The technology and methodology behind WeAre#EuropeForCulture
WeAre#EuropeForCulture wanted people and citizens of any age and background to meet cultural heritage and interact with it, under the motto "it's your history too". It is a stubborn misunderstanding that communities or individuals who do not routinely engage with cultural activities have little or no interest in cultural values or do not value their heritage, as lack of interaction can have a myriad causes. Nowadays, digital applications play a more and more important role in helping c...
BLUE SKIES, RED PANIC - photo exhibition
Through the images from some of the most important european photographic archives, this exhibition showcase the era of the 1950s of a nascent Europe, balacing between east and west, freedom and repression, terror and euphoria. The Pisa display is the first of a series, as the exhibition is coinceived to be travelling across Europe.
Blue skies, red panic - a photographic exhibition about the 1950s
Much like scents, flavours and music, photographs are powerful triggers of memory. So what better medium to recall a past as recent and as visually recognizable as early postwar Europe…? For about a year, the consortium involved in the EU-funded project 'Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope' has been diving into collections of libraries, archives and commercial agencies across Europe, to trace the tracks of the fifties in photography. Visit the exhibition: https://www.photoconsortium.net/exhibitions/...
until 20th January, an online survey gathers information on practices in this field, which will converge in a publicly accessible study to be released in September 2021
CitizenHeritage Survey on citizen science in the cultural heritage sector
a desktop research and a survey are currently in preparation, to feed reflections and best practice examples for citizen engagement with cultural heritage
Reviewing existing initiatives and projects about citizen participation in cultural heritage
enabling better collaboration between Universities and Cultural Heritage Institutions to test participative approaches engaging citizens
CitizenHeritage, citizen science and participation in cultural heritage
Photoconsortium, International Consortium for Photographic Heritage Via della Bonifica 69, 56037 Peccioli, Pisa, Italy
info@photoconsortium.net
Project website: https://www.photoconsortium.net/europeforculture/
Content coordination:
Networking and exhibition coordination:
Technical coordination: