Digital meets Culture

A multistakeholders conference was organized in Palermo in July 2022 to discuss synergies and strategies of collaboration for the promotion of islamic heritage in Sicily

INCULTUM first institutional animation meeting in Sicily

The INCULTUM project is an international initiative which landed in Sicily by implementing a Pilot project for tourism promotion in the area of Trapani, coordinated by GAL ELIMOS, Local Action Group.

The Pilot is innested in a larger initiative called “Siqilyya ğannat ˀal arḍ- Sicily is Garden Paradise on Earth”, an itinerary to enhance the cultural, material and intangible heritage of Islamic Sicily, concerning the territory of 12 municipalities of the north-western coast of Sicily, from the Gulf of Castellammare to the Stagnone of Marsala, Egadi and Pantelleria islands included. That was the territory of the first arrival of Islam in Sicily (around the ‘600 there were the first incursions in Cossyra – the current Pantelleria, to arrive at a real “entry into force” in 827 at Capo Granitola) which generated the blossoming of a cultural stratification, collaboration and peaceful fruitfulness that is also an example in everyday life today.

In this light, GAL ELIMOS already signed a protocol of collaboration with the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity that implements actions for promotion, including an upcoming conference to be organized in collaboration with the Islamic Communities of Sicily, for the “revitalization” and the enhancement of the important and ancient Islamic roots of the island tradition.

In this strand of work, the ELIMOS Local Action Group organized in July 2022 a multistakeholders meeting in Palermo, at the Regional County Seat, to describe the work done so far in the area of Trapani, and to discuss with university experts and policy makers about strategies and actions for sustainable development of the Region. The event, in Italian language, was streamed live and available on the ELIMOS LAG facebook page, reaching out to over 15.000 contacts with a total of nearly 7.000 visualizations.

photo courtesy of GAL ELIMOS

The discussion was organized into two main “sections”:
the first one, including a number of institutional authorities, provided the main bases of the general framework related to the INCULTUM project, the methodological principles and action on which it is based and its contextualization in the Community landscape, national and local. The INCULTUM Pilot acts as a demo of a wider initiative, based on an innovative method of enhancing the cultural heritage and identity considered “minor”, while instead they are more representative of an intense traditional imprint that is safeguarded in each local territory, to be strategically leveraged for the realization of a more general growth planning, to negotiated with all the local actors, for the development of the “rural” community.

photo courtesy of GAL ELIMOS

The second session, unfolding various valuable contributions by distinguished representatives of the world of Culture and the University, highlighted the reasons for the main “anchorages” of the specific action of valorisation selected by the ELIMOS LAG in the INCULTUM Pilot, which is also close to other similar actions in the international project, especially the pilots carried out by the partners of Spain and Portugal of the INCULTUM network. By condensing projects, contacts, existing relations already carried out and under way and others in progress, the efforts prelude to further and more future developments which, in turn, will determine a wider result of dissemination and collaboration at several levels.

screenshot from conference recording

The conclusion of the works was entrusted to Dr. Liborio Furco, President of the ELIMOS LAG organiser and promoter of the initiative, who provided a systemic and sociological reconstruction of the fundamental motivations of INCULTUM Pilot, enriched with the considerations made by experts and scholars who have contributed to the meeting and who eventually commented that “The friendship between different cultures and civilizations does not mean homologation, but the enhancement of diversity: history tellsa bout a role that, for centuries, Sicily has played as a mediator of this enhancement of differences; a historical tradition that highlights the natural predisposition of our stratified and multifaceted culture. The hope is that this vocation can move on and generate arenas of common territorial public policies of the Mediterranean.”

Read the full report of the meeting (Italian language): PDF, 430 kb

View the recording on ELIMOS Facebook page.

Learn more about INCULTUM Pilot in Sicily

Cisneros and Canadian guitarist Caroline Plante discussed the complex Spanish artform and explored the role of women in Flamenco.

Rosa Cisneros from C-DaRE and WEAVE partner is part of “The Conversation” BBC podcast

text by Rosa Cisneros, Coventry University.

The BBC Podcast “The Conversation” invites two women from different parts of the world, united by a common passion, experience or expertise to tell Kim Chakanetsa their stories. In early September Rosa Cisneros was a guest on the podcast and helped produce “The Women of Flamenco”. Cisneros sat down with Canadian female guitarist Caroline Plante and both explored and discussed the complex Spanish artform and explored the role of women in Flamenco. The two talk about their experiences of growing up with Flamenco and also how flamenco is a form of activism.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct37mc

The new free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)

How to develop and implement effective digital strategies in cultural heritage institutions

How can cultural heritage institutions keep up with the latest digital technologies and trends? How can they organise and develop a digital workflow to enhance audience engagement and participation?

The new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) “Developing Digital Transition Strategies for Cultural Heritage Institutions” aims to answer these and other questions in order to support cultural heritage professionals in developing digital strategies.

The course will start on September 26, 2022 and is organized by the inDICEs project, which has received funding from the European Union for 2020-2022 under the Horizon 2020 programme.

MOOC course addresses cultural heritage professionals, policy makers, students, and anybody with an interest in discovering how to address the challenges of digital transformation. Experts from various fields will teach how to design, evaluate and improve digital transformation strategies, as well as, provide insights and tools to assess the impact that cultural heritage institutions can have thanks to new technologies.

‘Developing digital transition strategies for cultural heritage institutions’ will cover six modules:

Digital Transformation & Self-Assessment: introductory module partly focused on the concept and importance of digital transformation.
Digital trends and Culture 3.0: the main transitions of the web, the different domains and types of impact of digital cultural participation, as well as trend watching practices are focal points.
Empowering IPR for the commons : how cultural heritage institutions can make reuse of digital content clear from a legal perspective.
Strategic skills, collaboration & organisation growth: how participation in networks can increase organisational capacity and help to optimise the impact of cultural heritage institutions.
Impact assessment: good practices, tools and methodologies to assess whether a strategy is working or needs to be refined or redirected.
Approaching technological innovation.

More information at https://www.edx.org/course/developing-digital-transition-strategies-for-cultural-heritage-institutions

A theatrical event series to engage visitors is also an occasion to organize focus groups to discuss about sustainable tourism development of local territories

Storytelling for supporting tourism in the village of San Pellegrino in Alpe (Tuscany)

The Tuscan Pilot of the INCULTUM project, coordinated by the University of Pisa and set in the beautiful landscape of the Garfagnana in Tuscany, aims at developing innovative and community-involving tourism appraoches to support territorial promotion. In this effort, last summer 2022 a series of theatrical performances was launched, that aim to relive the memory of this community and its territory through a storytelling approach, realized in collaboration with the local Ethnographic Museum. This is a play is entitled “Un prete, due Santi, un confine e 4000 pezzi unici” (a priest, two saints, a border and 4000 unique pieces) by actress Elisabetta Salvatori, telling the stories of old traditions in this heritage territory. The scope of this action is to reconnect the touristic offer of the location, that is mostly appreciated for the landscape and the possibilities of sports and trekking, with the peculiar aspects of the cultural and historic heritage of the community, that is well documented in the Ethnographic Museum.

On the occasion of the final event of the series on 28 August 2022, a institutional meeting took place at the Ethnographic Museum, involving local organizations to learn about INCULTUM project and progress. Led by prof. Enrica Lemmi and her colleagues Fosca Giannotti and Dino Pedreschi, the meeting engaged various stakeholders as represented by: the major of the town of Castiglione di Garfagnana Mr. Daniele Gaspari; the vicepresident of the Natural Park of Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, also representing the Union of Garfagnana Towns Ms. Raffaella Mariani; and the presisdent of the Museums System of the Province of Lucca Mr. Alessandro Colombini.

Discover the INCULTUM Pilot set in Garfagnana: https://incultum.eu/pilots/5-garfagnana/

The film will be presented and discussed at the Wall of Fame Film Festival in October 2022

Lifestrings screendance, an important contribution in the WEAVE project, is a semi-finalist at film festival

text by Rosa Cisneros, Coventry University.

LifeStrings is a screendance film that investigates climate justice, violins and motherhood using a contemporary flamenco dance vocabulary. The film is a semi-finalist and part of the Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies Wall of Fame Film Festival. WEAVE partner Rosa Cisneros (Coventry University) will be discussing the piece October 1^st 2022 from 3:00BST.

More info here: http://cmc-centre.com/cmcs-wall-of-fame-film-festival/

LifeStrings is an important contribution to the WEAVE project as it is referenced in Europeana Romani Re-presentation editorial piece, and also a part of the Gypsy Maker 5 programme. The piece is currently touring Wales and being exhibited throughout the country.

Cisneros is very excited to be part of the CMCS Wall of Fame Festival to discuss the process of making the work and to reflect on its role within the CEF EU-funded WEAVE project.

Thanks to TWA Digitisation Grant, more heritage archives are being protected this year, opening up opportunities for accessibility and reach.

TWA Digitisation Grant 2022 – Winners Announced!

>>> Press release

Having announced the successful applicants at the ARA Conference on 1st September, we have pleasure confirming this year’s lucky winners!

After some key changes to the TWA Digitisation Grant, as a result of COVID-19, we are pleased to see even more heritage archives being protected this year, opening up opportunities for accessibility and reach.

The standards have always been high, and the quality astounding, presenting our judges with some very tough decisions indeed!

If you missed the Winners Announcement at the ARA then you can watch a recording and find out more about the successful organisations, and their exciting new projects, in our blog: https://blog.townswebarchiving.com/2022/09/twa-digitisation-grant-winners-announcement

As a brief overview, we were thrilled to put our hands together for the following organisations:

Brass Bands England – Digitisation of sheet music papers

This project seeks to preserve brass band heritage, making this important archive accessible online as a great source of inspiration for present and future bands.

Cinenova – Digitisation of film stills, slides, negatives, transparencies, and various paper records

This project aims to make valuable content relating to feminist film and video accessible online, protecting delicate material against deterioration and loss.

The Vintage Sports-Car Club – Digitisation of handbooks, leaflets, engineering books, drawings, photos, and more!

The digitisation of this archive will result in online accessibility, inspiring current and future engineers, and has a clear agenda for social impact.

Wiener Holocaust Library – Photographs relating to the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad and Jewish Relief Unit

Digitisation will protect and safeguard albums and loose photographs, with inscriptions, to be accessed online and through events and workshops.

Please join us in congratulating this year’s winners and in thanking our judges for the time they invest year-on-year to support the grant and the heritage industry.

Website: townswebarchiving.com

after the summer break, work restarts full steam for INCULTUM project partners

INCULTUM meeting about policies, innovation and training

On the 5th September 2022, in an online meeting coordinated by partner Bibracte, the INCULTUM partners met to discuss the ongoing work in the area of policy recommendations and innovation.

After a brief opening introduction by Antonella Fresa (Promoter), the group initiated a roundtable discussion for the development of the Policy Brief deliverable, that was presented in its context, targets, objectives, methodology by responsible partner Bibracte, Vincent Guichard, general manager, and Matei Gheorghiu, sociologist and researcher. Various questions and suggestions came from the partners and offered good reflections to inform the document development.

This work on policy recommendation links to other areas of research of INCULTUM, and especially on the use of European Structural and Investment Funds, which will be the subject of specific guidelines developed by partner SDU. The access and use of Structural funds also has a relevance for planning the exploitation of the project’s results, particularly by the INCULTUM Pilots, some of which are already using structural funds for their innovation activities. Such expertise can also be leveraged in the project, not only in terms of training, but also in the direction of possible replications and re-use of good practices.

This aspect brought the meeting to discuss the importance of innovation and the innovation manager role in the consortium, that is a task conducted by the Coordinator José Maria Martin Civantos (University of Granada), and the upgrading and extension of the project’s Training Portal published by partner Promoter with collaboration of the University of Pisa, who is responsible for the training task.

September 7-11, 2022, Linz

Ars Electronica Festival 2022: Welcome to Planet B

From 7 to 11 September 2022, the Ars Electronica Festival for art, technology and society will be held in Linz.

The first edition of the Ars Electronica Festival was launched in 1979 to take the emergence of the digital revolution as an opportunity to examine the potential future and to focus these questions on the link between art, technology and society.

Since then, every year, the Festival has offered cultural and scientific meetings focused on a specific theme that is discussed in public and together with people from all walks of life, since one of Ars Electronica’s distinctive objectives is to leave conventional conference rooms and artistic spaces and stage an internationally unique festival of art, technology and society.

The 2022 topic addresses the need to change our life on this planet to prevent ecological disaster. The title is “Welcome to planet B“, where “Planet B” means a different, indispensable, new action, it is a chance for a new and fair coexistence of humans on this planet.

The event will explore how art, technology and creativity can help overcome crises and design a positive future and worth living for ourselves and all those who come after us.

The rich program of the event includes concerts, exciting performances and lots of art, technology and new inspirations; there will be conferences to promote stimulating discussions and workshops where you can exchange experiences, ideas and draw mutual inspiration.

The detailed program of the event is available on the festival web page at https://ars.electronica.art/planetb/en/program/
The festival catalogue can be downloaded at https://ars.electronica.art/planetb/en/download/

Tracing history through (virtual) heritage sites

WEAVE blogpost: Exploring Slovenia’s castles in 3D

img: Koper – Pretorska palača, sejna soba, by Arctur, CC-BY-SA via Europeana

Let’s zoom in on some of Slovenia’s heritage sites, with a beginner’s guide to picturesque castles and evocative ruins illustrated by 3D models and digitised cultural heritage, in a great blog published by the WEAVE project editorial team in Europeana 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.

Dr Adrian Richard Marsh and Imogen Bright Moon are invited to contribute to the editorial on Romani Re-presentation that will be published in late September.

WEAVE Team presents guest authors for editorials about Roma culture and heritage

text by Rosa Cisneros, Coventry University.

The EU-Funded WEAVE project ends in September 2022 and has worked over the last 18 months to ensure that the team develop a framework to link the tangible and intangible heritage of cultural communities, while also safeguarding the rich and invaluable cultural heritage which they represent.

In particular, we aggregated nearly 8,000 new high-quality records to Europeana, and are now starting to showcase these collections in a set of engaging editorials and virtual exhibitions. For one of the editorial pieces we invited two guests, Dr Adrian Richard Marsh and Imogen Bright Moon to contribute to the editorial on Romani Re-presentation that will be published in late September. We are delighted to introduce our colleagues and to celebrate their accomplishments.

Imogen Bright Moon photographed by Alun Callender

Imogen Bright Moon

Imogen Bright Moon (b.1983) is a British Romani artist, creating contemporary works through her studio/site-based material practice, culminating in the exploration of large textile-based installations. Imogen’s practice has an intersectional focus on areas of artistic visibility/invisibility, including hidden ethnicity (GRT), neurodiversity (HFA), motherhood and maternal mental health, and object-centred narratives. All these areas impact and inform her artwork, whilst her practice is equally founded in material processes, material ethics and heritage craft processes; being textile works and constructions, Imogen’s works also have the socio-economic-political implications of domesticity, ‘women’s work’ and impermanence. In tandem with her studio practice, Imogen is also a researcher, writer and textile-crafts historian, with particular emphasis on cultural languages implicit in making methodologies and crafted objects.

Imogen is a 2022 recipient of Gypsy Maker 5 (Romani Cultural & Arts Company / Arts Council Wales).

Publications include:

The Selkie : Weaving & The Wild Feminine, Magpie Press, 2018
Woven & Worn, Canopy Press, 2019
Wagtail; The Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology, Butchers Dog Press 2021
Black Tent / Black Sarah, forthcoming Autumn 2022

Blog; www.brightmoon.co

Gypsy Maker 5; www.blacktentblacksarah.com

IG @imogen.bright.moon

dr. Adrian Marsh

Adrian Richard Marsh

Dr Adrian R. Marsh is of U.K. Romany-Traveller origins, a Researcher in Romani Studies and an expert consultant in Romani and Traveller early years education, working with Romani, Gypsy and Traveller communities and NGO’s (such as the Romani Cultural & Arts Company) in the UK, Sweden, Turkey, Egypt, and across Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

He gained a PhD in Romani Studies from the University of Greenwich, London (2008), an MA in South East European and Turkish area studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1998) and was awarded a BA first-class honours degree in East European history at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London (1996), where he won the Andrew Ferguson Memorial Prize for his dissertation on royal women and power, in the Ottoman Empire (1996).

Marsh has taught Romani Studies at universities in London, Malmö, Lund, Stockholm, Cairo, Istanbul and Lyon and has held an Economic and Social Research Council fellowship as Researcher in Romani Studies at University of Greenwich, London (2007-2008).

He recently designed and managed a large portfolio of Romani and Traveller early childhood development projects, implemented by the Open Society Foundations (London) as part of its Early Childhood Programme and set up the Romani Early Years Network [www.reyn.eu] for educators (2012), where he remains a consultant.

He is currently living in Istanbul, where he leads the International Romani Studies Network, an NGO he established there, in 2002. Marsh has published numerous articles on Romani identity (2003; 2005; 2006), history (2008) and religiosity (2012), edited collections from international conferences on Romani studies organized by him in Istanbul_ (2003; 2005) such as Gypsies and the Problem of Identities: Contextual, Constructed and Contested (2006) and contributed to various conference proceedings (including the GLS Annual Meeting and Conference), peer-reviewed journals on education for Romani and Traveller children, as well as co-authoring the entry for ‘Roma’ in the _Encyclopedia of GlobalHuman Migration (2013).

Some of his writing for the RomArchive can be accessed here: LINK

And his online course for the ERIAC Barvalipe Online Roma University can be viewed here: LINK