Digital meets Culture

The best regeneration of urban heritage

Brtnice town, REACH associate partner, winner of the Historical Town of the Year competition

The Historical Town of the Year competition is organised by the Association of Historical places of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Regional Development of Czech Republic.
The activities of the Association are in all respects focused on the preservation, protection, and permanently sustainable use of the cultural heritage.

The prize is awarded for the best regeneration of urban monument reserves and the revival of historical town centres.

This year the winner is the historical town Brtnice (Czech Republic), REACH associate partner.

Award appreciates the town, which was most successful in implementation of the Program of regeneration of urban heritage reservations and zones in which are amalgamated finances from various donors – public/ state, community and private funding.

The town was severely hit by rain and flood in May 2018, therefore the award obtained, which brings one million crowns to the city’s treasure, represents a very important resource for the reconstruction of the architectural heritage and an opportunity that must certainly be appreciated by the community.

Congratulations to the town and its Mayor Miroslava Švaříčková!

Kyoto (Japan), 1-7 September 2019

ICOM Kyoto 2019 – Museums as Cultural Hubs: The Future of Tradition

A wide programme of ICOM members meetings, keynote speeches and excursions constitutes the 25th edition of ICOM conference, in Kyoto, under the main theme “MUSEUM AS CULTURAL HUBS: The Future of Tradition”.

On 1-7 September 2019, Kyoto will be the city to receive some 3,000 participants to the ICOM General Conference. A flood of discussions and exchange of ideas on museum-related issues will sweep the city during the week. The event will offer opportunities to engage with museum professionals and enthusiasts from all over the world and to broaden user experience and understanding of the museum world.

The theme, “Hubs” aims to highlight 2 key concepts:

Museums as “Networks” –supporting collaborative partnerships with one another,
Museums as “Cores” –invigorating communities at the local level.

The sub-theme “The Future of Tradition” aims to link museums to the future whilst respecting traditions. Looking forward to discussing these timely topics with participants from all over the world.

Website: http://icom-kyoto-2019.org/index.html

Madrid, 2-5 April 2019

REACH Project at “Museums for all people!”

Museums for all people! This was the title of the international conference held from 2 to 5 April 2019 at Complutense University in Madrid. Keynote lectures, short talks and posters discussed the diverse and multi-layered dimensions of art and cultural heritage and in particular of the museum as an institution. The focus was in particular on the great diversity of the public and barrier-free access to culture. Further topics were: the relations between museums and universities, the use of new technologies as well as participative, integrative and cooperative projects. The majority of the presentations and discussions again highlighted the social importance and responsibility of museums. The congress offered valuable opportunities for an intensive exchange across countries and sectors, which will enable the further development of ideas on future museum work in theory, practice and politics.
Museums for all people! This was the title of the international conference held from 2 to 5 April 2019 at Complutense University in Madrid. Keynote lectures, short talks and posters discussed the diverse and multi-layered dimensions of art and cultural heritage and in particular of the museum as an institution. The focus was in particular on the great diversity of the public and barrier-free access to culture. Further topics were: the relations between museums and universities, the use of new technologies as well as participative, integrative and cooperative projects.
In this context the REACH project was presented by Dr. Berlekamp. In her presentation she emphasized on museums as a very special place, as they enable manifold forms of participation. Further she reflected on the role of participation and its impact for the participants, the institution and the environment.
The majority of the presentations and discussions again highlighted the social importance and responsibility of museums. The congress offered valuable opportunities for an intensive exchange across countries and sectors, which will enable the further development of ideas on future museum work in theory, practice and politics.

http://museumforall.musacces.es/en/home/

Sofia (Bulgaria), 26-28 September 2019

Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage – DiPP2019

The Ninth International Conference on Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage–DiPP2019 will be organized under the patronage of UNESCO and Burgas District Administration. It aims at presenting innovative results, research projects and applications in the field of digitisation, documentation, archiving, representation and preservation of global and national tangible and intangible cultural and scientific heritage.

DiPP2019 web site: http://dipp2019.math.bas.bg/

Call for papers: PDF, 311 Kb
The deadline for title and authors’ names submission: 20 May 2019.
The deadline for paper submission: 5 June 2019.

The focus of conference Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage – DiPP2019 is to provide open access to digitised cultural heritage and to set up sustainable policies for its continuous digital preservation and conservation. The priority area is the digital presentation and preservation of cultural and historical objects under conditions of risk. The forum will demonstrate innovative technologies and prototypes, including digital repositories, digital archives, virtual museums and digital libraries, which result from established practices and achievements in the field. Representatives of a number of public and specialised libraries, museums, galleries, archives, centres, both national and foreign research institutions and universities will be invited to participate and exchange experiences, ideas, knowledge and best practices of the field.
There will be also Workshop on Open Access to Scientific Publications, Data and Data Science, which will primarily focus on the following activities: Open Access indicators; disseminate partners’ best practices; discuss research problems in the field; discuss the possibilities of establishing a network of open access repositories; contribute to the problems of the harmonization of national legislation and practices; and discuss the possibilities of developing training courses for creators and managers of scientific digital repositories to ensure interoperability.

Principal organiser:
Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1113, Sofia, 8, Acad. G. Bonchev Str., website: http://www.math.bas.bg, phone: +359 2 870 1072, fax: +359 2 971 3649, e-mail: director @ math.bas.bg

Co-organisers:
Regional Academic Center – Burgas, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Regional Historical Museum – Burgas, Burgas Free University, Index Ltd.
Under the patronage of: UNESCO and Burgas District Administration

DiPP2019 conference: September 26-28, 2019
Deadline for papers submission: June 05, 2019

17, 30 March; 13, 14 April; 4, 5 May 2019, Spain.

Good practices from the Rural Heritage Pilot: MEMOLab campaign “recovery of historic irrigation channels”

MEMOLab laboratory of the University of Granada, in the framework of REACH project, continues the planning and implementation of events dedicated to the recovery and use of historical irrigation systems.

Also this year the “recovery of historic irrigation channels” campaign was organized; the cleaning of the historic irrigation channels with the irrigation communities was started already in March, earlier than usual, because the irrigation communities of the province of Granada, due to the lack of rain, need water to start irrigating their fields.

The activity was organized over several days of work:

17th of March Romayla Irrigation Channel in Granada
the activity took place with the community of local irrigators and the collaboration of the Council of Alhambra and Generalifee, 25 volunteers participated. The activity carried out by MemoLab is also aimed at dynamize the community and putting their irrigators in contact, since the community of irrigators has disappeared.

30th of March “Barjas” Irrigation Channel in Cáñar: activity with Cáñar Irrigator Community (20 members) and the participation of 50 volunteers.

On the occasion of World Water Day, the 5th Annual Cleanning of the medieval irrigation Barjas- Water Party was carried out.
In this area, the work of MemoLAb plans to support irrigators on their objectives, such as the promotion of agricultural activity, for the next 4 years.

13-14 of April “Nueva” Irrigation Channel in Barranco del Poqueira with the local irrigators community (18 members), the participation of 45 volunteers and with the collaboration of the Natural and National Park of Sierra Nevada, Capileria town hall, Bubion town Hall and pampaneira town Hall.
The work carried out is to help the irrigators to establish a directive and start to working as a community.

The last local encounter is scheduled on 4-5 of May at Jerez del Marquesado.

This campaign promotes the direct participation of civil society and public administration in the preservation and promotion of local landscape and cultural heritage and represents a model of good practice for the rural heritage pilot of REACH Project.

The “recovery of historic irrigation channels” initiative .

a new platform to explore musical itineraries, recitals from processions, organs and other sounding experiences in Granada and Sevilla

Historical Soundscapes: listen to Andalusian cities’s voices

This project was originally conceived by Juan Ruiz Jimenez, PhD from Granada University, with the aim of exploring historical urban soundscapes in Andalusian cities, aided by the outreach potential made possible through new technologies. Throughout the digital platform Historical soundscapes (c.1200 – c.1800) users are offered alternative possibilities of understanding the city (currently Granada and Sevilla) as the centre of production of sounding experiences.

This innovative approach allows users to recreate music of the past in historical locations through the use of online interactive maps with digital resources (documents, videos, sounds, etc.). The contents aim to be inclusive and help achieve a better understanding of urban culture, establishing an aesthetic and intellectual dialogue with their sensorial aural history through an interdisciplinary approach that brings together urban musicology with areas including cultural history and art history, among others. This platform is intended to be a useful and innovative tool for the educational institutions (from primary to tertiary education), museums, tourist boards, etc. of different cities.

Explore Historical Soundscapes: http://www.historicalsoundscapes.com/

One of the greatest resources and communities for presenting LOD and for support tools

EuropeanaTech and Pelagios, together for Linked Open Data

The current issue of EuropeanaTech Insight newsletter is solely dedicated to the Pelagios community and was done in close collaboration with the Pelagios team. Pelagios is a community and infrastructure for Linked Open Geodata in the Humanities, which means that it aims at connecting online resources by linking historical materials through their common reference to particular places (hence geodata).

Pelagio’s well known resources are Recogito, a tool that makes it easy to identify, record and export as Linked Open Data the places referred to in historical texts, maps and tables; Peripleo, a search service that allows you to find community-curated content related to specific places; and Pelagios Map Tiles, a set of resources that allow you to project data onto dynamic maps dedicated to different historical period, and the three of them are widely used by digital humanities researchers and heritage institutes.

EuropeanaTech has been engaged with Pelagios for many years, and the issue 12 of the EuropeanaTech newsletter provides 7 different implementations and insights into making use of Pelagios and being involved in the community. It’s a rich resource for any researcher or institute curious about exploring LOD or those already familiar with it curious about implementing it in new settings.

Read the Newsletter: https://pro.europeana.eu/page/issue-12-pelagios#letter-from-the-editor

img. Portolano by Grazioso Benincasa, Public Domain via Wikimedia commons. This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

New Coventry University funded project

Get involved in the Dancing Bodies in Coventry!

Dancing Bodies in Coventry is a Coventry University 2021 funded project that is being led by researchers from Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research (CDaRE).
Dancing Bodies in Coventry is a multimedia project that will document the legacy of dance in the city of Coventry.

The project aims to make three films, two podcasts, and five visual banners, to be shared at a public projection at a location in the city of Coventry, as well as in an online archive.
Through the making of the three films (each of which will respectively cover the past, present and future of dance in Coventry), the creation of an archive for the city that is focussed on dance will start.

The project aims to bring forward a range of dance artists, festival organizers, dance schools and local groups, and allow them to share their dance stories with the wider Coventry community. The films will sit online and will be publicly available for people to view. All images and videos will be created with the intention to celebrate the dance legacy of the city.

For further information:
Rosa Cisneros, Research Fellow, C-DaRE ab4928@coventry.ac.uk
Marie-Louise Crawley, Research Assistant, C-DaRE ad1803@coventry.ac.uk
Follow us on Twitter: @RosaSenCis @CrawleyMLC @CDaRE

14-16 March 2019, Castelo de Vide (Portugal)

REACH at the International Conference “Small Cities and Environment (from the Middle Ages to Contemporary Times)”

From 14 to 16 March at Castelo de Vide (Portugal) was held an international conference on Small Towns and Environment in History – Pequenas Ciudades e Ambiente – organized by the international network Small Cities in Time (In-SCIT).

The main subject of this conference sets out from the principal that the “environment” (in the twin sense of “nature” and “area surrounding a locality”) provides small cities with amenities, possible benefits and probably also restrictions (above all for societies in ancient times) and on the other hand, small cities have an impact on environment. The knowledge, the exploring the amenities and becoming aware of the restrictions and impacts and elaborating solutions to rectify them, concern both the political sphere (and therefore cultural, including religious aspects) and the economic sphere.

This three days conference brought together number of historians interested in small towns, like Peter Borsay from Aberyswyth who spoke about English spa towns, Peter Clark from Helsinki who offered a reflexion on small towns in global perspective, Marjaana Niemi from Tampere with a talk on small towns in Finland and a number of British expertes from Leicester CUH, Norwegian experts from Nord University in Bodo and Spanish and Portuguese colleagues.

REACH project contributed to the event by the participation of the Charles University (CUNI), task leader of the Small Towns Heritage Pilot: Prof. Luda Klusakova provided a key note lecture on small towns and environment presenting the Pilot Study for the REACH project, while Dr. Jaroslav Ira spoke about a case of Kdyně – small town in western Bohemia, which knew its short period of glamour in interwar period.

Thanks to the interventions of the REACH representatives, which have met with considerable success and aroused the interest of the organizers, the event was an important opportunity to forge partnerships in particular on the Portuguese case for the Small Towns Heritage Pilot study and to expand the network of REACH.

The conference was particularly exciting for the atmosphere of empathy for small towns and energy devoted to the organization of the conference, not forgetting about the generous hospitality of the municipality of Castelo de Vide.

Further information:

2019 – Small Cities and Environment website

summer School of the UNESCO chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites

LeVERAGE ICTs for Tourism

Image by: Rufino Emmenegger, Copyright: Foundation Pro Monastery of St. John.

LeVERAGE ICTs for Tourism – Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism for preserving LiVing hERitAGE

August 24-31, 2019 – Lugano & Müstair, Switzerland

The 2019 Summer School of the UNESCO chair will take place in Switzerland: the activities of the first two days (August 24th and 25th) will be run within the 2019 edition of the MEM Summer Summit in Lugano, then the group will move to Val Müstair, home to the Benedictine Convent of St John at Müstair, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.The focus this time is on living heritage, which is living practices and expressions passed down from generation to generation and constantly recreated by communities in response to their environment, their relationship with nature and their history. The importance of living heritage is not the cultural manifestation itself but rather the wealth of knowledge and skills that is transmitted.

The Summer School is conceived with the following characteristics:

– it is addressed both to an academic and a professional audience, in particular: Master and PhD students, researchers and academic fellows, professionals, in the field of digital technologies, heritage and tourism;

– it will take place from August 24^th to August 31^st;

– the first two days will be organized in Lugano, while then the group will be moved to Müstair, where there are a World Heritage Site and a biosphere reserve;

– the topic this year is the role of ICT in Tourism for preserving living heritage;

– applications are open until April 30^th.

(Download: brochure)

More info can be found here: http://www.unescochair.usi.ch/activities-2/summer-schools/summer-school-2019