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SoPHIA Newsletter 3: Cultural Heritage and Development

SoPHIA – Social Platform for Holistic Impact Heritage Assessment aims to promote collective reflection within the cultural and political sector in Europe, on the impact assessment and quality of interventions in European historical environment and cultural heritage at urban level, which would ensure a balanced approach to measuring their ‘success’ and contributions to our sustainable future. With the constant active participation of the social platform, SoPHIA´s work is organized around four main analytical dimensions – social, cultural, economic and environmental impact – which constitute perspectives to identify the most important challenges and opportunities linked to cultural heritage interventions in Europe.

SoPHIA´s Newsletters aims at sharing updates about editorials, news, interviews with key people and collaborations addressed in the project. In particular, the Newsletter 3 focuses on the link between Cultural Heritage and Development.

The first new of the Newsletter 3 is about the publication of the essay mapping Gaps and Shortcomings on CH impact assessment, which have been identified throughout the first deliverable of the literature review, and through collective reflection during the Athens’ Virtual Workshop process. Gaps and shortcomings point to an overall absence, or insufficient involvement of the public, recurrent in the different domains of the project. Among the Report findings there is clear evidence that public involvement is lacking almost everywhere in Europe, and the reasons why public participation is not always included in cultural investments decisions are several. The essay adopts a critical point of view to synthesize these findings towards the formulation of a holistic cultural heritage impact assessment.

The second new is about the literature review on the Impact of Cultural Heritage on Society. Within the SoPHIA project, the broad scope of the academic and policy literature available have been examined, indicating its relevance, complex character and delicacy. The review highlights that there are many limitations to the effectiveness of Social Impact Assessment and the management of social issues in projects, such as corruption, rent seeking, elite capture, speculation and opportunistic behaviour are difficult to manage. The social domain within the D1.1 Review of Research Literature, Policy Programmes and (good and bad) Practices can be found from pages 53 to 88.

After the literature review and consulations to stakeholders during the Athens Virtual Workshop in the summer 2020, SoPHIA designed a draft holistic impact assessment model that is being currently tested across Europe. The third new describes the 12 case studies of the project, which represent a variety of types of cultural heritage, comprising a landscape site, two museums, two programmes, three cultural districts, a place of remembrance, a historic city centre, an island and a monastery. The results will be presented at the Vienna Conference and further discussed with SoPHIA´s community of practice, fine-tuning the model and bridging thus the gap between the academic research and the professional practice on cultural heritage. To read about the 12 case studies please click here.

Website: https://sophiaplatform.eu/en
Suscription to SoPHIA´s Newsletter, please click here.

a capacity building workshop for Cultural Heritage Institutions which hold photographic collections at threat of decay

Saving Collective Visual History – online workshop by Photoconsortium

The opening event for the prestigious DIGITAL PAST 2021 conference, organized by the Royal Commission of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, was a 1-hour capacity building workshop by PHOTOCONSORTIUM to share experiences and lessons learnt for visual collections’ preservation, digitization and digital transformation.

Collections of analogue material that depict our collective visual history is deteriorating, with urgent need of saving for future generations. If we can’t save the analogue, we can’t digitize it. When digitized, what do we do with the original objects? Lack of funds, difficult planning and unclear post-digitization actions, without obvious benefit, make it challenging for archives to move into digital transformation.

Speakers from private companies and public bodies discussed the challenges and solutions encountered by public and private photographic archives to leverage digital technologies for preservation and enhancement of heritage photographs. This workshop was aimed at institutions dedicated to cultural heritage, and over 80 attendees joined the event also posing interesting questions.

View here the presentation.

DIGITAL PAST 2021 conference website: https://rcahmw.gov.uk/about-us/digital-past-conference/

Digitization is costly and time consuming, especially high-quality digitization using advanced techniques. Archives are forced by budget and time constraints to prioritize which objects to digitise, this does not always correspond to the deterioration rate of the original object. Many analogue materials that embed visual heritage (such as negatives, photographic prints and early motion pictures on film) is becoming illegible. The only way to preserve these images and sounds for future generations, is to digitize and transfer to accessible digital repositories.

Despite minor funding from national grants and, in part, with EU calls, digitization of our collective visual history falls on Cultural Heritage Institutions. In principle, it is acknowledged that CHIs have full responsibility of their collections, including how they make them accessible both for view and for reuse. Without external support achieving this is not an easy task.

Private companies and public bodies can have different approaches and policies when prioritising their collections, but there are many shared issues:

How to sustain the investment for digitization equipment and staff and administrative planning within the available budget
Choosing between in-house or outsourcing for the various phases of the process
Evaluating criteria meaningful curation of their collections, specifically when prioritising digitising
Implementing the best balance between available resources versus time constraints connected to the deterioration of fragile supports
Handling potentially dangerous supports such as nitrate negatives.
Once the content is digitized and available online, how to effectively plan access, reuse and disseminate.
Including community-driven needs for access/enjoyment and sustainable business models
Long-term preservation challenges connected to digitized collections.

Speakers from private companies and public bodies shared testimonies, expertise and knowledge driving a discussion to explore these crucial issues.

Speakers included:

John Balean, TopFoto
Erik Buelinckx, KIK-IRPA
David Iglésias Frank, Girona City Archive
Fred Truyen, KU Leuven
Chair: Antonella Fresa, Promoter srl

This event is organized as part of the Europeana DSI4 capacity building effort.

Challenges and new perspectives by world’s leading museum directors

The Future of the Museum. 28 Dialogues

As museums worldwide shuttered in 2020 because of the coronavirus, New York-based cultural strategist András Szántó conducted a series of interviews to a international group of museum directors to discuss the future of cultural Institutions : 28 dialogues face the historical limitations and unexploited potential of art museums. What emerges from the series of conversations is a composite portrait of a generation of museum leaders working to make institutions more open, democratic, inclusive, experimental and experiential, technologically savvy, culturally polyphonic, attuned to the needs of their visitors and communities, and concerned with addressing the defining issues of the societies around them. The book was published by Hatje Cantz on November 2020 and available worldwide on January 2021.

More information about the book here

Interview with the Author here

a new project led by the University of Pisa, to combine philology, archaeology, and AI-based research

AI helps with deciphering the Herculaneum papyri

The important papyri retrieved in Herculaneaum and preserved at the National Library in Naples contain basically all our knowledge about Greek philosophical schools. Diogenes Laërtius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers (3rd century AD) and Philodemus of Gadara’s Syntaxis (75-50 BC) in facts represents the earliest ‘history of philosophy’ to have reached us directly from antiquity. From this work that is exclusively preserved by the Herculaneum papyri we may derive a virtually systematic account of the history of Greek philosophical schools, but unfortunately the original manuscripts which transmit it are in a really poor state, very hard to decipher.

By relying on the most advanced technologies available today, the recently launched project “Greek Schools”, coordinated by the University of Pisa, aims to provide a new innovative critical edition of the whole treatise and its different sections, with extensive introductions and commentaries. By using AI and advanced X-ray and lighting techniques, the technology will help researchers identify written texts, colours, inks and other information that would be invisible to the human eye.

In particular the project will deliver:

New Greek text with palaeographic and philological apparatus, modern annotated translation, papyrological and philosophical introduction and commentary, by applying noninvasive techniques to both opisthograph and multi-layered papyri belonging to Philodemus’ Syntaxis in order to (a) read the text hidden on the verso, (b) detect, classify and replace overlapping layers, and (c) read the text concealed inside the latter;
combination of state-of-the-art methods with new, sounder philological approaches in order to produce a more reliable and substantially improved critical text of Philodemus’ treatise and its various sections through an innovative editorial system;
production of an open-access electronic edition of it through a pioneering open-source scholarly Web platform, engaging the scientific community in an on-going and on-line collaborative review of our critical edition.

The launch meeting was held online on 18th January 2021 (Italian language).

Project website: https://greekschools.eu/

Art / Culture / Economy to democratize society

How to foster placemaking as an inspiring European co-creation process?

Trans-making is a H2020 research and innovation project leaded by Relais Culture Europe Association (France). It aims to establish a multilateral network of research and innovation staff active in the fields of placemaking/place-based art activities as a space to create alternative narratives for social, economic and democratic renewal.
The objective of the project trans-making is to strengthen research capacities, through exchange of knowledge, expertise, skills and experiences between academic and non-academic partners from Europe and Third Countries in a shared research programme focusing on: Collecting, Documenting / Exploring, Experimenting / Performing / Designing.
Trough the work programme of Research and Innovation, the project’s Consortium, composed by academic and non-academics partners, aims to foster links between art and culture, economy, democracy and innovation at EU level and beyond. It promotes a better understanding and knowledge sharing between scientific community, stakeholders and policy-makers.
The final aim of trans-making is to establish a long term collaboration among the partners in order to have a scientific and innovative worldwide community devoted to the research, (including art-based research), innovation, education activity in the matters concerned by the project. Moreover, the proposed measures of the project will be conceived in order to have the widest possible impact of the society.
The project was supposed to end in December 2020, but due to COVID, its activity was extended for another year. It will end in December 2021, with a final event presenting the project’s results.
To stay up to date on the project’s progress visit: trans-making.eu

The latest outputs are available on the website!

UNCHARTED first policy brief and Report on WP2 case studies

The UNCHARTED project registered two relevant developments at the end of the first year: the phase of study and elaboration carried out by of work package 1, devoted to the analysis of the configuration of the values of culture, was concluded and the one of work package 2, which aims to identify the emergence of values of culture, has produced its first outputs.
The results of work package 1 investigation is documented in six deliverables (D1.1-D1.6) disseminated between the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021.
At the end of last January, work package 6 published the first policy brief, based on the results collected by wp1. The document, in addition to enhance the value of the contribution generated by the wp1 research, it represents the first policy brief of a series of three that the project aims to offer as guide to policy makers who have a stake in formulating or influencing policies about valuing culture in all its forms. The document highlights the tensions and conflicts that involve the plurality of values that co- exist in different cultural contexts and recommends policy makers to take into account the sources of these disagreements when develop European cultural policies at local, national and trans-national levels.
The policy brief also introduces the work carried out by work package 2. This latter is focused on the analysis of specific case studies expected to offer a better identification of the processes that bring to the emergence of values of culture. The analysis regards four fundamental arenas of cultural practice identified in the UNCHARTED project: cultural participation in live arts and culture, cultural participation through media, cultural production and heritage management, and cultural administration. These areas are the background of each specific case study conducted by the UNCHARTED Consortium. D2.1, the first deliverable of wp2, released at the end of January reports, to each of the four thematic areas, the criteria mobilized to select the case studies within each Research Plan.
The full text of D6.3 and D2.1 is available in the dissemination area of the UNCHARTED website.
Previous blog on WP1 deliverables here
More information available on the Research plan webpage

a general assembly was held in January to review the status of the project and plan its expected outcomes

PAGODE project moving towards accomplishments

Dress – KIK-IRPA collection

On 26 January the General Assembly of PAGODE project was called in an online meeting, to review the progress of the project and to plan the next activities for the remaining months. PAGODE is in facts going to end on 30 September 2021.

By that time, PAGODE will have achieved various ambitious objectives: completing digitization of a selection of Chinese heritage objects and photographs, to be published in Europeana; engaging users with a crowdsourcing campaign for metadata enrichment; and finally the preparation and launch of the PAGODE exhibition to be presented online as a virtual exhibition in Europeana, and to be complemented with additional features.

[Show as slideshow]

The meeting was open to partners and associate partners and included a presentation of the upcoming Europeana China thematic space, that will highlight in Europeana portal all the contents and editorials delivered by the PAGODE project.

Visit the website for more details and for downloading the presentations: https://photoconsortium.net/pagode/2021/01/22/general-assembly/

a side event of the exhibition at MART Museum in Rovereto: Caravaggio. The Contemporary

online conference “The Revolution of Caravaggio” by film director Paolo Benvenuti

The successful exhibition at MART museum in Rovereto, Caravaggio. The Contemporary, offers visitors the opportunity to admire the Burial of Saint Lucy in the flesh. This painting is the oldest Sicilian work by Michelangelo Merisi (AKA Caravaggio) and is currently on loan from its usual home in the church of Santa Lucia alla Badia in Syracuse. The seventeenth-century masterpiece is exhibited among a selection of contemporary works and photographs, encouraging new conversations and emphasising Caravaggio’s spiritual relevance. Caravaggio. The Contemporary exhibition is enriched by a programme of both physical and online events.

Next appointment is with an online conference by film director Paolo Benvenuti, about Caravaggio’s painting practice and the theory of the artist using a sort of a primitive dark room to create his artworks.

11th February h. 18.30

La rivoluzione di Caravaggio. Paolo Benvenuti

Event in Italian Language
Registration link: https://form.jotform.com/210274387670054 (max 100 participants).
Info: eventi@mart.tn.it

The exhibition is on display at MART until April 2021: http://www.mart.trento.it/

Save the date: 3-4 March 2021

International Workshop ‘Societal Impacts of Culture: A transitional Perspective’

MESOC is research and innovation action whose challenge is to develop new perspectives and improved methodologies for capturing the wider societal value of culture, including but also beyond its economic impact, to enhance the potential role of culture as element of public policy for social, cultural and political cohesion and inclusion. Leaded by a Consortium composed by 10 Partners from 7 European countries (Belgium, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain) the three years H2020 project adapts and further develops a method for “transition based” impact assessment derived from a previous UNESCO Chair publication, building a structural model of the Societal Dimension of Culture, as defined by one of the strategic objectives of the European Agenda.
As a first layer of experimentation during the project, the model is tested within 10 European city pilots: three partner cities (Athens, Cluj and Rijeka) and seven associated cities (Barcelona, Gent, Issy-Les-Moulineaux, Milan, Turku, Valencia and Warsaw). The final expected output of the project is a Free and Open Access, online service (named the MESOC Toolkit) that could be used by both researchers and practitioners (the latter including both policy makers and cultural operators from all over the EU) to measure the societal value and impacts of cultural policies and practices.
MESOC was selected under the same call of UNCHARTED (H2020-SC6-TRANSFORMATIONS-08-2019) and on the basis of the similarity of interests and goals, the two projects established a cooperation in the framework of their dissemination efforts, exchanging knowledge and experiences related to the respective field of research for mutual benefit.
In the framework of its investigation action, MESOC is promoting its first International Workshop ‘Societal Impacts of Culture: A transitional Perspective’. The meeting will take place on-line and will be the occasion to present the first outcomes of the project investigation, to discuss with experts and stakeholders the role of culture in urban change, as well as methodological and operational approaches relevant for social impact assessment and evaluation. The first day of the workshop, the 3rd of March, is open to the public and will be dedicated to an in-depth exploration of the different dimensions of transition enabled by cultural policies and activities within the three MESOC impact domains, such as Health and Wellbeing; Urban and Territorial Renovation; People’s Engagement and Participation. International guests will introduce key concepts and approaches and provide further inputs to the validation of MESOC conceptual and analytical approach. In addition, three thematic round-tables will provide the chance to debate with key experts both theoretical and methodological challenges related to MESOC framework and tools.

More information about the upcoming workshop here
Project’s website: http://mesoc-project.eu
Contact: info@mesoc-project.eu
#MESOC

When culture meets buildings heritage

The HeLLo project shares its results with the UNCHARTED network

UNCHARTED is pleased to announce the collaboration with HeLLo :Heritage energy Living Lab onsite. The project was concluded on September 2020 and was about energetic efficiency of historical buildings.
During its two-year activity it carried out studies and scientific researches on the way to preserve historical buildings though the use of new systems of hygrothermal measurements.
The overall mission was to spread awareness about the most common energy retrofit solutions and to increase knowledge of their application in historic buildings. HeLLo defined the following specific objectives:

To check the compatibility of energy retrofit technologies already certified and applied to new buildings on historic constructions;
To create a structured dissemination programme that opens the doors of the laboratory life beyond academic boundaries.

Results were being achieved through a twofold strategy. First, a true experimental laboratory in which energy retrofit technologies were tested and their real performances were quantified. Second, a project of dissemination laboratories that offers an experimental experience in order to make known the world of investigation by the practice of the living lab.
As the dissemination project was itself an integrated part of the research, the experience was addressed to different target groups, including the scientific community and professionals, public authorities, enterprises, educational institutes, schools and end users.
A rich and valuable asset of documental material among scientific papers, researches and practical demonstrations was produced by the HeLLo project and this cooperation aims to put the basis for its use and exploitation in benefit of the entire community of cultural heritage researchers.

List of open access papers on the results of the HeLLo research: