Digital meets Culture

16 September 2022, Girona

WEAVE – Widen European Access to cultural communities Via Europeana is a 2-years project funded by the CEF Programme of the EU.

Member of the UNCHARTED community since 2021, it supports Europeana about widen European access to intangible cultural heritage and the heritage of minority cultural communities.

Last 16 September its final conference “Weaving digital culture: tangible and intangible heritage, cultural communities and the digital transformation” took place in Girona to explore the connections between tangible and intangible heritage, cultural communities and the process of digital transformation of cultural heritage organisations.

Antonella Fresa, director at Promoter and technical coordinator of UNCHARTED, attended the event as speaker with the presentation “Cultural values, identities, participation and local communities” during which she presented the UNCHARTED project.

Conference details, full video of the event and presentations are available at https://weave-culture.eu/conference/

discover today the beautiful virtual exhibition published by WEAVE team in Europeana

The Renaissance of Romani Re-presentation

img. (cropped): Back To The Future! Safe European Home 1938, Damian Le Bas, Kai Dikhas Foundation / ERIAC, In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted.

This exhibition, jointly curated by WEAVE Editorial Team with invaluable contribution by guest author Dr Adrian R Marsh and an afterword by Imogen Bright Moon, follows a discovery path from misrepresentation to renaissance of Romani arts and heritage, also exploring the histories of Roma communities and opening a window to their contemporary artistic expressions.

View the exhibition on Europeana HERE >>>

Read the Europeana post about the Roma representation in the cultural heritage sector HERE >>>

This blog is part of WEAVE – Widen European Access to cultural communities Via Europeana: a project funded by the European Commission under the Connecting Europe Facilities (CEF) aimed at developing a framework to link the tangible and intangible heritage of cultural communities.

'Strength, balance, courage and good judgement' is the motto of the human towers or 'castells' typical of Catalonia, Spain.

WEAVE blogpost: Castellers, Catalonia’s human towers

Diada castellera de la festa major de la Mercè a Barcelona. Actuació de les colles convidades a la plaça de Sant Jaume. Els Castellers de Vilafranca carregant un 3 de 9 amb folre. S’observa l’enxaneta fent l’aleta.

img: Festa de la Mercè a Barcelona di Duran Fígols, Oriol – CRDI / Girona City Council – CC BY-NC-ND.

Castells are human constructions, six to ten people high, that can occasionally be spotted in cities and town squares in Catalonia. Having originated at the end of the 18th century in the Camp de Tarragona area, they have spread all across the region – and beyond.

Read the blog published by the WEAVE project editorial team in Europeana to discover this extraordinary practice that serves as a prime example of intangible cultural heritage.
HERE

Also, you can learn more about this practice and its meaning in the Catalan community from the vivid voices of Castells’ teams in this documentary, realized by CRDI in the context of WEAVE project:

28-30 September 2022, hybrid conference

Europeana 2022: Making digital culture count

From 28 to 30 September the annual Europeana conference will take place in a hybrid format: online and on-site at the KB, National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague.

It will be a three-day event to learn, explore and deepen various aspects of digital cultural heritage:

Wednesday 28 September, Making digital culture count: perspectives and provocations on the data space for digital cultural heritage: to explore the data space in practice.
Thursday 29 September, Making digital culture count – stories, culture and society: how storytelling, cultural and digital heritage come together to connect institutions with the public and with trends and issues of today.
Friday 30 September, Making digital culture count – technology matters: how technology paves the way for digital inclusion and the preservation of cultural heritage.

In the afternoon there will be presentations, workshops and activities: the over 30 sessions of Europena 2022 have been co-created with cultural heritage professionals who responded to the call for proposals. There will be two hybrid sessions which participants can join both on-site and online, and online only talks on a diverse range of topics.

The full programme of Europeana 2022 is available at https://pro.europeana.eu/page/conference#

Pisa (Italy), 23 September - 10 October 2022

The 80s in 80 shots – photographic exhibition

On Friday 23 September at the Museo della Grafica of Palazzo Lanfranchi in Pisa, the exhibition “The 80s in 80 shots” will be inaugurated, and will be on display until 10 October 2022.

This is a collection of 20 photographic prints made by the artist and sinologist Andrea Cavazzuti, combined with 60 digitized photographs (from original diapositives) found in the albums of families emigrated from China to Italy in the 1980s.

From the concept developed by association EOE, the exhibition is organized under the patronage of the Municipality of Pisa and of the Confucius Institute, and supported by association Imago and ACSI.

Download the invitation (PDF)

Venerdì 23 Settembre nel Museo della Grafica di Palazzo Lanfranchi si inaugura la mostra “Gli anni ’80 in 80 scatti”, una raccolta di 20 stampe fotografiche realizzate dall’artista e sinologo Andrea Cavazzuti, oltre a 60 fotografie digitalizzate (diapositive) rintracciate negli album delle famiglie emigrate dalla Cina in Italia negli anni ’80.

Nata da un’idea dell’associazione EOE (EstOvestEst), la mostra è patrocinata dal Comune di Pisa e dall’Istituto Confucio di Pisa, partner principale di EOE, con il supporto anche di IMAGO e ACSI.

L’esposizione sarà aperta al pubblico da venerdì 23 settembre a lunedì 10 ottobre 2022, visitabile tutti i giorni dalle ore 10:00 alle ore 19:00 escluso il lunedì.

In occasione della mostra, venerdì 30 Settembre è previsto un dibattito per raccontare la Cina di quegli anni e il modo in cui iniziavano ad affacciarsi al contesto italiano le prime famiglie cinesi, il loro processo di integrazione e le prime relazioni. Oltre all’artista Andrea Cavazzuti, all’incontro parteciperanno Barbara Pasquale, documentarista e video editor; Carlo Laurenti, scrittore e traduttore; Zhi An, professore e scrittore collegato direttamente dalla Cina via streaming.

SULLA MOSTRA

La raffinata ricerca di Andrea Cavazzuti che si presenta con stampe in bianco e nero di fotografie realizzate in quegli anni, contrasta con le foto proposte in video, riprese dagli album di famiglia, foto a colori che mantengono il sapore delle stampe comuni che ognuno di noi conserva tra i propri ricordi, e costituiscono uno spunto di riflessione su un periodo della nostra storia recente che, se ben vista con sguardi molto diversi, sottolinea una lontananza che oggi appare quasi dimenticata. Così spiega il suo rapporto con la Cina il fotografo Andrea Cavazzuti in un’intervista di Olivo Barbieri “…allenato com’ero a cercare oltre gli stereotipi anche in patria, fotografavo una Cina non vista e, quel che è peggio, nemmeno immaginata, quindi invisibile. Le cose già viste soddisfano, consolano, hanno a che fare con la memoria, mentre il non visto è secco, scostante, refrattario, a volte antipatico. La Cina mi si presentava come uno straordinario bazar di oggetti, scene e comportamenti non omologati tra i nostri cliché culturali. Per me era irresistibile: gli oggetti in vista, la totale mancanza di privacy, le attività umane messe in scena su un palcoscenico sempre aperto, il paradiso del fotografo”. E conclude “Non è possibile immaginare cosa sarà la Cina domani senza considerare cosa sia stata fino a ieri. E’ l’ultima frontiera di espansione della civiltà globale per come l’abbiamo conosciuta fino ad oggi. È l’ultimo e definitivo confronto di civiltà. Dopo la Cina, saremo al bivio. Mi illudo e spero, con questa mia scelta di vita, di aver dato a me stesso e ai miei figli almeno la possibilità, una volta giunti al bivio, di saper leggere i segnali stradali”.

CENNI BIOGRAFICI SU ANDREA CAVAZZUTI

Andrea Cavazzuti (Milano, 1959) è artista, fotografo, video e film maker e sinologo. Laureato in lingua e letteratura cinese presso Ca’ Foscari di Venezia. Nei primi anni ottanta si reca in Cina a Nanchino nel 1981 e poi a Shanghai nel 1982 per studiare per due anni alla Fudan University, esperienza che stabilì il suo legame indissolubile con la Cina. Inizia a fotografare negli anni settanta. Negli anni novanta si dedica a video e film. Il suo lavoro tratta diversi aspetti dell’arte e della società. Ha realizzato e partecipato a numerose produzioni, sia televisive che cinematografiche, poi distribuite da RAI, ARTÈ, SRF, ABC e Sky TV, nonché proiettate in cinema e istituzioni culturali internazionali. Il suo lavoro è stato esposto in Musei quali, Triennale di Milano, Italia; Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, Cina; Museo Marco, Vigo, Spagna; Working People’s Cultural Palace, Pechino e Changjiang Museum, Taiyuan, Cina; MAXXI, Roma, Italia; Carnegie Hall, New York, Stati Uniti; Museo Ferroviario di Pietrarsa, Napoli, Italia.

the project creates a collection of environmental portrait photographs, combined with testimonies of personal experiences by the subjects

‘We Carry It With Us’: The impact of childhood bullying on adult life

by Jeremy Abrahams, Rosa Cisneros and Terezia Rostas

Jeremy Abrahams is a Sheffield-based photographer whose work is predominantly environmental portraiture and documentary, and focusses on positive representations of migration and related issues. Since becoming a professional photographer in 2014 he has had five solo exhibitions. His work has been supported by Arts Council England. His images have been published in the The Guardian, The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post and others. Currently he is working on producing “We Carry It With Us”, a collection of environmental portrait photographs combined with handwritten text on the prints telling an element of the subjects’ story in their own words. The project has photographed several individuals from various socio-economic backgrounds and stories. Jeremy has travelled across the UK to sit and learn more about the individuals he is photographing and collaboratively produce the final image.

When I asked Jeremy about the project he explained the ambitious aims and said he set out to do the following:

to visualise the positive and negative impacts of childhood bullying on adult life;
to document the singularity of each bullying experience and the commonalities in the experiences of people from similar and different backgrounds;
to create collaborative portraits that are negotiated by subject and photographer;
to integrate the subject’s story into the image by composing images with the space for the personally handwritten text in mind, enabling the text and the image to form one cohesive artwork;

“The project stems from personal experience of anti-semitic bullying during my school years. Having developed the concept through a programme of mentoring I then reviewed research in other fields.”

Jeremy has underpinned his creative project with academically sound data that was carried out by Ellen Walser deLara, an American academic in social sciences. Her research into childhood bullying on adult life found that the impact of bullying often persisted into adult life and manifested itself in a number of ways. Through her interviews with 800 people she identified that there is a lack of self-esteem, emotional problems, difficulties trusting others, substance misuse, people pleasing tendencies, as well as positive and unexpected outcomes. More on the research can be read in her book “Bullying Scars”. Through deLara’s work 47% of the participants reported positive impacts of childhood bullying highlighting that there was a commitment to ensure that others are not treated the same way, a desire to achieve to demonstrate their self-worth and a sense of empathy for others.

Jeremy says:

“The project is not shying away from difficult situations and asks individuals to face, discuss and explore ideas to represent that challenging experience. However, the final body of work will represent many people who turn their trauma into activism, so that an exhibition is an uplifting experience. An exhibition would also have scope for further public engagement. Bullying is a universal experience; most people have either been bullied, been a bully or observed it. All the visitors to an exhibition will have a personal response. Therefore, the exhibition should give them an opportunity to share their response. This could be done by creating a dummy book of the exhibition images, but without the subject’s text. Visitors could then write on the image themselves, so the dummy book would become part of the artwork.”

Moving forward to 2022, Jeremy invited Roma educational consultant and qualified teacher, Terezia Rostas, a Romanian Gabor Roma now living and working in Sheffield, UK to participate. The two collaborated and produced a photo that represents a sort of “turning point” for Terezia where she stood up to a teacher that bullied her.

When interviewed, Terezia said that she was incredibly excited and humbled by the experience and said that the project was a great example of challenging hate crime and bullying which leads to social change and a better world.

“Being part of the childhood bullying project led by Jeremy brought to light my entire childhood, meaning and purpose in life. It was an unfortunate experience of bullying, however this made me challenge myself and people like my teacher from primary school to prove that they are wrong.

There is nothing more powerful than to be you, in all senses. Not allowing the society’s rules, prejudice and stereotypes to change you, to be what you truly are with your whole cultural richness, beliefs, heritage and love for a culture in which you have been raised. Always be proud of this privilege and uniqueness.

I have no words to express how amazing what Jeremy is doing through this project is and how he is going to share it with the world.
Can you imagine, that thousands of people will be seeing, reading, feeling the same maybe and learn from these experiences, only through a photo with a short text exposed in various museums or virtually.” – Terezia Rostas

Rostas has used the image in a number of different educational environments, such as her work at Sheffield Park Academy, the EU-Funded Erasmus+ Project, RTransform, and also exhibited it at the Welcoming Cultures event at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield. This image has been a stimulus to explore bullying from a number of different perspectives. Roma activist, Terezia has engaged many young Roma girls to discuss their educational barriers and how they might turn those into academic success.

To find out more and see thee other images, visit his website:

https://www.jeremyabrahams.co.uk/wecarryitwithus

Contact Jeremy Abrahams info@jeremyabrahams.co.uk

If you would like to participate in the project Jeremy would love to hear from you.

the concluding event of this project, focused on local communities and identity, was held on 16 September 2022 in Girona

INCULTUM at WEAVE Final Conference

WEAVE – Widen European Access to cultural communities Via Europeana is a Europeana project funded by the CEF Programme of the EU and is part of the INCULTUM network. Focus of the project is on enhancing European access to intangible cultural heritage and the heritage of minority and local cultural communities.

In Girona on 16 September 2022 was organized the final conference “Weaving digital culture: tangible and intangible heritage, cultural communities and the digital transformation”. The overarching theme of the conference was exploring connections between tangible and intangible heritage, cultural communities and the process of digital transformation of cultural heritage organisations.

Antonella Fresa, director at Promoter and leader for dissemination in INCULTUM, participated in the event with a wide keynote speech, entitled “Cultural values, identities, participation and local communities”, where she also presented the INCULTUM project and its work to engage communities with their territories and local heritage. This is in facts an example of communities having a active role and a stake with their territorial and heritage promotion, which will have a positive impact on social ties and local ideentity.

Conference details, full video of the event and presentations are available at https://weave-culture.eu/conference/

fostered by INCULTUM coordinator the University of Granada, the agreement has formalised the recognition by public institutions of the importance of traditional and historical irrigation in Cáñar

INCULTUM Pilot: collaboration agreements established in Altiplano de Granada

text and images courtesy of Elena Correa Jiménez (University of Granada).

On 6 September, the first signing took place of the first collaboration agreements between Cáñar Irrigation Communities and Cáñar Town Councils that the INCULTUM Pilot coordinated by the University of Granada is carrying out.

The agreement has formalised the recognition by public institutions of the importance of traditional and historical irrigation in the municipality, not only for providing drinking or irrigation water to those living in the municipality and in other municipalities downstream, but also for its environmental, cultural or economic functions: aquifer recharge, generation of biodiversity, climate regulation, generation of cultural landscapes… (all these issues are summarised in Arguments in defence of traditional and historical irrigation system).

These agreements are the way to ensure a positive impact for irrigation communities through the recognition of the ecosystem services they provide. It is a possibility to diversify the supply and economic activity of farmers and livestock farmers through multifunctionality. The recognition of this multifunctionality and of the ecosystem services is fundamental, and is the main contribution.

The proposal for the trails is a consequence of this recognition, as they are areas of high cultural, environmental and landscape value. The fee-for-service agreements are a tool to contribute to the maintenance of the historical irrigation systems and, in particular, of the paths associated with the irrigation ditches.

Learn more about INCULTUM Pilot 1 – Altiplano de Granada

INVENT Report on the diverse notions of culture

What does culture mean to Europeans?

The new report of INVENT aims to answer this question by gathering data and analysis to trace the multiplicity of understandings of culture within and across Europe.

The report consists of 3 main parts.

It begins with a brief discussion on the different conceptions of culture, the current “cultural abundance” and on how the manifold societal megatrends in Europe and the western world since the latter part of the 20th century have affected both the cultural environment in which we live, and the conceptual “baggage” associated with the term culture.

Then, two empirical parts follows based on wide-ranging and nationally representative survey datasets collected by INVENT in 2021 in its nine countries: Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK.

The results show that the classical distinction between the notions of narrow (“culture as arts”) and broad (“culture as ways of life”) culture continues to persist in a relevant way, but, at the same time, they show that the distinction does not fully capturehow people in Europe today understand the concept.

The report can be downloaded at https://inventculture.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/INVENT-REPORT-WhatdoesculturemeantoEuropeans.pdf

More information about INVENT, sister project of UNCHARTED, selected and funded under the same call TR-08-2019 “The social value of culture and the impact of cultural policies in Europe” of Horizon 2020, are available at https://inventculture.eu/.

keynotes and presentations, a digital exhibition and a workshop about photogrammetry composed the final event of the EU funded project dedicated to highlight tangible and intangible heritage of local communities

WEAVE final conference, recordings and presentations available

Hosted by CRDI in Girona at Centre Cultural La Mercè, the WEAVE project organized on 16th September 2022 its final conference, which explored the connections between tangible and intangible heritage, cultural communities and the process of digital transformation of cultural heritage organisations. The day was preceded by the plenary meeting of WEAVE consortium, held at the premises of Arxiu Municipal on 15th September.

[Show as slideshow]

CONFERENCE AGENDA with presentations

Joan Boadas (CRDI Director), George Ioannidis (IN2/WEAVE coordinator): Welcome messages

Jolan Wuyts (Collection Editor at Europeana): ‘Unheard voices: learning to tell more diverse stories in the cultural heritage sector’ – PDF

Antonella Fresa (Director at Promoter): Cultural values, identities, participation and local communities – PDF

Fred Truyen: Connecting communities and tangible-intangible heritage and capacity building – PDF

Matevž Straus: Creation and reuse of 3D models of monuments and tangible cultural heritage – PDF

Presenting the WEAVE toolbox:

George Ioannidis: WEAVEx – PDF
Matevž Straus: 3D assets manager – PDF
Nuno Correia: MotionNotes – PDF
Orfeas Menis-Mastromichalakis: Metadata Enrichment tools – PDF

Valentina Bachi and WEAVE content providers: Presenting the heritage collections digitized and published by WEAVE in Europeana – PDF

John Balean: Process and Discovery: using legacy taxonomy structures for locating intangible heritage imagery – PDF

Sofie Taes: Europeana editorials and virtual exhibition – PDF

Marc Hernandez, David Iglésias: The use of photogrammetry for 3D digitisation of a daguerreotype collection – PDF (coming soon)

The whole conference was recorded:

After the talks, for the participants in Girona a networking lunch and a digital exhibition gave the floor to all participants to engage in a lively discussion following the inspiration drawn from the programme.

To conclude the event, an interesting workshop about photogrammetry digitization took place to illustrate modern techniques to create accurad te and high quality 3D models of cultural heritage objects, with a particular focus on heritage photography.