Digital meets Culture

Publication by Culture Action Europe

Culture in the EU’s National Recovery and Resilience Plans

A new document was recently published by Culture Action Europe as part of the #CulturalDealEU campaign, which demands the full inclusion of culture in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the European Green Deal, calling on the EU Member States to devote at least 2% of their National Resilience and Recovery Plans (NRRPs) to culture.

In 2020 the European institutions adopted an stimulus package, called Next Generation EU (NGEU), to boost the recovery of the continent after the pandemic crisis and make European economies and societies more sustainable, resilient and better equipped for the green and digital transitions.

The core component of this envelope, called Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) is channeled to EU Member States between 2021 and 2026.

The report intends to present the state of play one year after the launch of this campaign; it aims to analyze the types of investments and reforms (if any) are contained in the NRRPs in direct support of the European cultural ecosystem affected harshly by the long crisis and subsequent containment measures.

The publication has been coordinated by Culture Action Europe which, in order to map investments and reforms relevant for culture included in the various NRRPs, mobilised its wide membership to get an overview of the different types of interventions, as well as the budget mobilised to this end.

Download the pubblication

Further Information:

A Cultural Deal for Europe, jointly developed by Culture Action Europe, the European Cultural Foundation, and Europa Nostra (representing the European Heritage Alliance) is a call from a wider European cultural community to acknowledge the pivotal role of culture in shaping the future of our lives and communities.

December 14, organized by UAL Social Design Institute

UNCHARTED at the “What’s the value in and of creative practice?” event

Today December 14, 2021 the event organized by UAL Social Design Institute takes place to discuss about the value of creative practice.

The mission of UAL Social Design Institute is to make a positive social and environmental difference. It intends to develop and use research insights to inform and change how designers and organisations design.

Starting from the fact that there is currently no agreed approach to evaluating creative practice, nor is there a generally accepted conceptual framework to support this, during the event a panel of speakers from different fields of creative practice and research will share their insights and explore the issue of value in relation to creative practice.

Among the speakers, we are pleased to announce that Paolo Ferri Professor at the University of Bologna and partner of UNCHARTED, will be present.

The participants from different fields of creative practice and research, will reflect on the issues from their own disciplinary perspectives, as well as explore and test the possibility of developing an inter and transdisciplinary point of view on the question of what is the value in and of creative practice.

The event will take place online on the zoom platform

More information on the Workshop.

Tourism as a driver of rural development and inclusion is at the basis of the awarding criteria of the United Nations World Tourism Organization

A small apennine town in Marche region awarded as best tourism village in Italy

The Best Tourism Villages by UNWTO United Nations World Tourism Organization initiative was launched to advance the role of tourism in safeguarding rural villages, along with their landscapes, natural and cultural diversity, and their local values and activities, including local gastronomy.

A total of 44 villages from 32 countries across the five world regions were granted the recognition in 2021. All of them stand out for their natural and cultural resources as well as for their innovative and transformative actions and commitment to the development of tourism in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The only awarded town in Italy is San Ginesio, a mountain village close to the Umbrian-Marche Apennines, which is among the 41 municipalities in the world that have been awarded “Best Tourism Villages”. “It is with particular pride – says the Minister of Tourism Massimo Garavaglia – that a small Italian municipality, moreover hit in the past by the earthquake, has been indicated by the Word Tourism Organization as the best tourist village”.

The best examples of villages embracing tourism to provide opportunity and drive sustainable development have been celebrated at the World Tourism Organization General Assembly in Madrid in December 2021.

“Tourism can be a driver of social cohesion and inclusion by promoting a fairer distribution of benefits throughout the territory and empowering local communities,” says UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili. “This initiative recognizes those villages committed to making tourism a strong driver of their development and wellbeing”.

More info:
https://www.sanginesioturismo.it/
https://www.unwto.org/news/unwto-announces-list-of-best-tourism-villages-2021

The NEFELI Online training was held from Nov 29 - Dec 3 and welcomed people from Hungary, Greece, Slovakia, the UK, Spain and Poland

WEAVE was a best practice example at the Erasmus+ NEFELI training

img. courtesy Rosa Cisneros

text and image by Rosa Cisneros.

The Erasmus+ NEFELI project offered a weeklong training of non-formal learning activities and methods that can support women from various parts of society. The team targeted women from grassroots communities, refugee and asylum seekers as well as researchers working with this group of women/girls.

The NEFELI Online training was held from Nov 29-Dec 3 and welcomed people from Hungary, Greece, Slovakia, the UK, Spain and Poland. The project team also honoured the UN’s 16 days of activism campaign of End Violence against Women through sharing the Grow and Glow film co created with women across the UK and Europe.

Objectives of the training included:

Expanding and developing the competencies of educators and participants of non-formal educational activities.
Share the different methodologies followed by each organisation.
Understand Critical Communicative Methodology, Freire’s theory and learn about the dialogic literary gatherings.
Share successful educational activities between the partner organisations.
Train the educators and the participants on different methodologies so that they are able to implement them in their contexts.
Promote the participation of grassroots women in non-formal educational activities.
Understand how to engage with digital tools like padlets or google docs

Rosa Cisneros (COVUNI) is involved in the NEFELI project and leads on the Communicative Methodology (CM) strand of the work. On the second day of the training Cisneros presented practical examples of CM and presented the WEAVE project, consortium and the LabDays being developed within the project. Europeana was also discussed and explored and the use of digital technologies in relation to minority communities was critically unpacked. The participants identified key questions that pertain to them and their contexts and used cultural heritage objects from Europeana to reflect on their environments.

involving communities in the restoration and reconstruction of cultivation terraces once delimited by drystone walls

Fieldwork for INCULTUM Pilot 1 on Altiplano de Granada

One of the Pilots of project INCULTUM is set in the stunning landscape of the Altiplano de Granada. It is a flat semi-arid area with poor soils and an extreme climate due to its altitude, continental influence and the presence of surrounding mountains. These characteristics have contributed to the creation of a unique landscape marked by impressive badlands where the historical relationship between humans and the environment has built balances based on a sustainable use of resources, particularly water and soils. This has allowed the creation of historical irrigation systems that form real oases of great beauty with numerous cultural and environmental values.

As part of the recovery efforts to promote the area, an initiative of fieldwork is organized in January 2022 to restore and reconstruct the cultivation terraces once delimited by drystone walls. The activity is coordinated by the MEMOLab at the University of Granada, the laboratory of biocultural archaeology, involving local communities and associations for the territory’s promotion.

Learn more about INCULTUM Pilot 1 >>>

What is your heritage-led innovation dream?

ILUCIDARE Innovation Handbook

After the ILUCIDARE Playground event on 2-3 December focusing on the relationship between heritage and innovation, citizen involvement and participatory governance of heritage for innovation in the territories, the ILUCIDARE project launched its Innovation Handbook for heritage.

The publication is based on solid research which included a review of what is already happening in Europe on the heritage and innovation front, analysis to identify the most suitable approach to analyze and activate innovation and 131 heritage-led innovation case studies.

ILUCIDARE designed an open tool to acquaint with what heritage and innovation actually have in common.
It offers an innovation roadmap for anyone with a new idea related to a heritage building, site or even local traditions and seeks to identify pathways to enable creative ideas in the cultural heritage sector to become high-impact innovations.
ILUCIDARE partners validated the handbook and aligning it with all experiences they bring to the project.

Anyone can contribute: a heritage entrepreneur, a major project management expert, or an innovation expert who is not familiar with heritage. The roadmap has been designed to be general, but useful for everyone.

What is your heritage-led innovation dream?
Take a look at this manual and try the roadmap: ILUCIDARE Innovation Handbook

Two UNESCO Chairs offer a joint Winter School 2022 taking place on 13 - 19 February 2022

2022 Winter School on Digital Cultural Tourism and Diplomacy

Indigenous cultural heritage is the legacy of tangible physical objects combining the intangible aspects of a group of society. Objects, artefacts, buildings, places and monuments aside, intangible cultural heritage, also known as “living heritage” or “living culture”, refers to living practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, and skills passed down from generation to generation. This heritage provides communities with a sense of identity and is continuously recreated in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history. It is called intangible because its existence and recognition mainly depend on human knowledge and will, which is immaterial, and is transmitted by imitation and living experience.

The 2022 Winter School of the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage, in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites, is dedicated to investigating how ICTs designed to enhance the tourism experience can help in preserving and transmitting living heritage and bring people to work and live closer together, while at the same time promoting forms of tourism (cultural, historic, religious, gastronomy, wine, etc.) that go beyond traditional “sun sea and sand”, and can verifiably serve as a vehicle of cultural diplomacy. Cyprus, with its richness of tangible and intangible heritage, will provide a suggestive background, as well as an ideal place for the event and offer an environment with various case studies.

For more information>>

exploring common patterns between different art forms to understand how cultural heritage plays a role in the sense of identity and belonging for different communities

Weaving, Dance and Coding teamed up with the WEAVE project

text and images: Rosa Cisneros, Coventry University.

As part of the UKRI Making Connections Funding scheme Rosa Cisneros, WEAVE partner (Coventry University) collaborates with musician and researcher Alex McLean and coder Lucy Chesman. The trio have teamed up for the Making Connections: Weaving, Dance and Coding project to offer a series of explorative workshops in Sheffield. Cisneros ran various workshops with Roma and families from ethnic backgrounds, to explore the tangible and intangible cultural heritage and the role digital technology plays in exploring this work. The WEAVE project was introduced at each workshop and the participants were asked to describe how cultural heritage plays a role in their understanding of identity and belonging.

The Making Connections project had two phases:

Phase 1: Run workshops with groups of young (11+) young people from diverse socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, bringing together Flamenco dancing (Rosa Cisneros), programming weaves on a loom (led by Dr Alex McLean), and live coding music (led by Lucy Cheesman). The researchers will work with participants to explore common patterns behind these forms, starting with the metrical structures of Flamenco dance, and exploring them in coding to make weaves and music based on traditional (yet improvised) Flamenco dance patterns. Flamenco is of Roma heritage, and the project will empower attendees to explore and share their own culture, developing their own approach to creative performance technology.

Phase 2: Offer those young people a paid opportunity to support the open drop-in family workshops we will be running as part of the Sheffield Festivals Showcase in September. These drop-in workshops will be open to all and will be designed for multi-generational involvement.

Their first event was early September and was part of the Sheffield Showcase festival. The workshop, Algomech drop-in family workshop – dance, music, weave will explore the ‘algorithmic’ arts of weaving, live-coded music and flamenco dancing. This hands-on workshop allowed people of all ages to get involved with creating their own patterns in music, dance and weaves.

A series of additional workshops took place throughout November 2021 and medium-length documentary will be released in early January 2022.

McLean is an interdisciplinary researcher, live coding musician and technologist, working as post-doctoral researcher as part of the five-year ERC funded PENELOPE project based at the Research Institute of the Deutsches Museum. His work connects contemporary live coding technologies with heritage technologies across textiles and music as “algorithmic pattern”. McLean is the director of AlgoMech Festival and Symposium.

Lucy Cheesman is a sound artist, musician, producer and organiser whose work can be placed within a number of different fields, often blurring the boundary between the visual, the audible and the digital. Lucy is a founder member of SONA (a network supporting women in Sheffield through experimental sound and digital practices) and the Yorkshire Sound Women Network.

The trio work across digital and heritage practices in different ways, and have a unique opportunity to connect different strands of research, working with the local youth to identify commonalities between dance, music, textiles and computer science. All involve discrete mathematics, in the form of culturally grounded patterns.

A comprehensive research to support innovation in the heritage sector

ILUCIDARE Innovation Handbook

As one outcome of the ILUCIDARE project, this publication offers an innovation roadmap for whomever has a new idea related to a heritage building, site or even local traditions, and tries to identify paths for enabling creative ideas in cultural heritage sector to become innovations that make an impact.

The handbook includes:

working definition for heritage led innovation including a review of what is already happening in the EU on the heritage and innovation front.
case studies about specificities of heritage led innovations
analysis to identify the most suitable approach to analyse and activate heritage-led innovation
innovation roadmap ready for use.

Access all resources: https://ilucidare.eu/resources/database/ilucidare-innovation-handbook

December 16-17, 2021, hybrid event broadcast from Rome

SoPHIA Final Conference: Social Platform for Holistic Heritage Impact Assessment

News from the UNCHARTED community!

The SoPHIA project (Social Platform for Holistic Impact Heritage Assessment ) is drawing to an end and has announced that its Final Conference, to discuss the results achieved, will be held on 16-17 December 2021 in hybrid format, in Rome and online.

The project, started in January 2020, aims to promote collective reflection within the European cultural and political sector on the impact assessment and the quality of interventions in the historical environment and in the cultural heritage at an urban level.

SoPHIA´s work was focus at creating a community of stakeholders from different fields and disciplines that work together towards the definition of an effective impact assessment model, quality standards and guidelines for future policies and programmes.

The agenda of the event includes two rich days of discussions and presentations:

the first day will focus on new scenarios for cultural heritage,
the second day will be about the SoPHIA Impact Assessment Model and and its concrete applicability, recommendations for cultural heritage policies.

The conference will facilitate discussions and exchange with relevant stakeholders and suggest recommendations for policy, action and research as well as prospects for the future.
Cultural heritage experts from European networks and organizations will be able to dialogue in view of the future deployment of the model in the cultural heritage sector.

Registration for online attendance is available here.
The programme is available here.