Digital meets Culture

Let’s talk about Green Conservation and Cultural Heritage!

The International Conferences in Green Conservation of Cultural Heritage have been the main international forum for cross- disciplinary research on green conservation and cultural heritage aimed at more ecological and sustainable solutions.
This third edition will be an opportunity to bring participants together from different areas including professionals from all sectors of conservation and heritage management; cultural institutions; researchers and industry partners around a compelling and scientifically sound conference program for fruitful discussions on topics and case studies related to the conference themes.
Main topics:
a. Biotechnology applications to conservation and development of bio-based products;
b. Green chemistry and nanotechnology for eco-friendly conservation;
c. Feasibility of application of innovative methods, products and strategies;
d. Sustainability in the conservation practice: successful and unsuccessful case studies;
e. Sustainable conservation.
The event will take place between 10th and 12thOctober 2019, on the Universidade Católica Portuguesa no Porto. The event is co-organized by the Research Center for Science and Technology of the Arts – CITAR from the School of Arts and by the Center of Biotechnology and Fine Chemistry – CBQF from the School of Biotechnology, having as international partner the Italian association YOCOCU – Youth in Conservation of Cultural Heritage.
Read more…

Dublin (Ireland) 22-23 October 2019

UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities, preparatory workshop

AHRC Arts and Humanities Research Council in UK is pleased to announce a call for participants to attend a workshop on “UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities”. The workshop will take place in Dublin, from 22-23 October and bring together leading experts from both countries to explore the current environment of digital humanities and opportunities for collaborative research between the UK and Ireland in the field.

The workshop will launch a new research programme focused on UK-Ireland collaboration in the Digital Humanities for which the AHRC has received funding from the UKRI Fund for International Collaboration. It will play a key role in informing the thematic priorities to be taken forward through the programme and embedded within future collaborative activity – it is anticipated that a number of funding calls informed by the workshop will be launched shortly afterwards.

The workshop and wider programme will be delivered in partnership with the Irish Research Council (IRC).

Expressions of interest to participate in the workshop are invited from UK-based researchers from HEIs and IROs who meet AHRC’s standard eligibility requirements.

Applicants should be able to demonstrate how their research interests support the vision and themes outlined in the guidance document. Deadline for applications: 26 September 2019.

EOI Application link: UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities- Workshop EoI form.

For more information: https://ahrc.ukri.org/funding/apply-for-funding/current-opportunities/uk-ireland-collaboration-in-the-digital-humanities-workshop-eoi-call/

the annual grant is awarded to holders of heritage archives for supporting digiitzation and accessibility

TownsWeb Archiving – TWA announcing the winners of the UK grant

The TWA UK heritage digitisation grant scheme ran for its fourth year in a row this July/August and we reached a record number of archivists and holders of heritage material. It was great to see so many organisations on board with promoting this initiative, which aims to reduce one of the biggest hurdles for holders of heritage archives. Funding is often a real barrier when it comes to protecting collections and holdings through digitisation while accessibility is a matter of great public importance. So it is thanks to the support received and the many incredibly high-quality applications that made 2019 a buzz of grant-related activity.

We now have pleasure in announcing that the winners of this year’s £6,000 primary grant are the National Brewery Heritage Trust for their online archive project which seeks to digitise industry related archives and artefacts consisting of around 500,000 items, spanning over 250 years. The Trust are looking to protect and preserve these entirely unique archives for future generations and move towards making them more visible and accessible to the public, whilst producing an on-line digital catalogue listing the entire contents of the archives and artefacts.

Our secondary winners of £3,000 are the Alpine Club Library who wish to digitise official papers in order to enhance their catalogue entries. The material is entirely unique, offering a wonderful insight into early mountaineering and the developments of this through the twentieth century. It is hoped that this aspect of the collection will be digitised and made available online in order to support research within this truly fascinating field.

There were also a number of institutions that made it onto the shortlist too, securing match funding of £500 each to put towards their own digitisation projects.

You can watch the announcement video and hear a little bit more about the projects from the successful winners themselves here:

We wanted to take this opportunity to extend our gratitude and provide you with the great news and, for all applicants who were not successful this time around, there’s always 2020 when we will be running our grant again!

https://www.townswebarchiving.com/

deadline is 31 October - apply now

Europeana Research Grants Programme – 2019 Call for Submissions

Theme 2019: Digital Cultural Heritage for Open Science

Applicants are invited to submit proposals that address challenges and opportunities related to the reuse of cultural heritage data in research, or provide training to build up the digital capabilities of cultural heritage professionals involved in research projects. The Europeana Research Events Grants are made possible by the European Commission’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Programme.

Proposals can address the field of Cultural Heritage in general or focus on one of its specific domains (such as Galleries, Libraries, Archives, or Museums). They can also focus on challenges and opportunities for specific academic disciplines that use digital cultural heritage as a source for Research, (for instance all the disciplines within the Humanities, such as Archaeology, History, Linguistics, History of Art and Architecture, etc.).

The Europeana Research Events Grants, for a overall amount of euro 25.000 per year, are intended for planning and organising:

Conferences
Workshops
Series of seminars
Summer schools
Training activities

with the aim of bringing together cultural heritage professionals and researchers interested in digital cultural heritage.

Deadline is 31 October 2019.

All information and application form: https://pro.europeana.eu/page/europeana-research-events-grants-programme-2019-call-for-submissions

Berlin (Germany), 20-21 February 2020

Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope – final conference

ANNOUNCING
The final conference of the CEF project Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope is organized in Berlin by SPK – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

“New strategies for user engagement and digital heritage”

Mixing stories and lessons learnt in the project with interesting speeches about photography, the history of the fifties, and the value of digital cultural heritage for citizens, students and professionals, this conference wraps up the innovative approach of Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope for user engagement with Europeana content.

Come meet us to participate in the event and rediscover with us the visual narrative of the 1950s in Europe across the Cold War divide and learn more about innovative practices for engaging users with the digital photographic heritage. Take the opportunity to share experiences, discuss next steps and projects, and network with (new) partners, experts and stakeholders.

Parallel to the conference, two exhibitions will be presented that complement each other: the “BLUE SKIES, RED PANIC” outline of Europe in the 1950s, and another focusing on the life’s work of the well-known German photographer Ludwig Windstosser.

Registration: https://forms.gle/2p2xeTTw43rRxA4Q6

Full programme: PDF, 471 Kb

Venue: Museum für Fotografie, Berlin
Date: 20-21 February 2020

The conference includes a pre-event on the 19th February:

h16-17: open meeting of the Kaleidoscope project, looking at next steps and projects
h18: vernissage and guided tour of the photographic exhibition by curator Sofie Taes (KU Leuven)

Share your experience and join the network!

Open-Heritage, the new Cultural Heritage platform of REACH Project is online

Open-Heritage.eu is an independent online space open to the contribution of the whole community of Heritage Research, aiming to offer a set of multidisciplinary and multimedia conduits for the exchange of expertise and experience between people and institutions.
It is managed by the Social Platform created by the REACH project (RE-designing Access to Cultural Heritage for a wider participation in preservation, (re-)use and management of European culture) and it is intended to continue to function after the end of the project.
The website gathers links to data, documents, and project’s websites from the EU and from beyond Europe, to support the exchange of experiences and reflections among those sharing a common interest on the themes connected with Heritage Research.
The information is indexed by keywords, thematic categories and date of publication to facilitate user’s access.
Send your good practices, your research and policy documents and the link to your projects to info@reach-culture.eu and contribute to populate the scenario of Cultural Heritage.

EMOTIVE demo event: 30 October, Glasgow

Emotional experiences at the museum and heritage sites

EMOTIVE storytelling for cultural heritage, is an EU funded Horizon 2020 project which seeks to develop emotionally-resonant digital experiences for visitors at cultural heritage sites; the basic premise of the project is that cultural sites are highly emotional places.

From 2016 up to now, EMOTIVE project has researched, developed and evaluated methods and tools that can support the cultural and creative industries in creating narratives which draw on this power of “emotive storytelling” to foster the emotional connection between the visitors with the sites.

The project explored digital storytelling, tangible objects, social interaction between visitors and more experiential approaches; both on-site and virtual experiences were being designed, created and tested iteratively in close collaboration between the partner sites and the technology providers and the outputs of this process have been prototype tools and applications to create engaging, memorable stories, and enable the public to enjoy and share these stories.

The experiences were focused in the UNESCO World Heritage sites of the Roman Frontier display on the Antonine Wall at the Hunterian Museum in Scotland and the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey.

On 30th October 2019, the final public demo event will take place at the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. It is supported by the University of Glasgow’s newly created Digital Cultural Heritage Network (funded by the Arts Lab).

During this public event, EMOTIVE will show and give the opportunity to try out a range of the experiences and prototypes created for the two cultural sites.

A variety of different applications will be showcase, including:

– Verecunda: A window to the Scottish Roman Past
– Collaborative Çatalhöyük

– Ebutius’s Dilemma
– The Çatal Schoolkit

More information:

https://emotiveproject.eu/index.php/2019/08/15/save-the-date-h2020-emotive-public-demo-event/

https://emotiveproject.eu/

Pisa (Italy), 6 - 20 September 2019

BLUE SKIES, RED PANIC – photo exhibition

Photographic exhibition from the EU project “Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope”.

6 – 20 September 2019

Vernissage on 6th September h. 17.30

Museo della Grafica, Palazzo Lanfranchi in Pisa.

Through the images from some of the most important European photographic archives, this exhibition showcases the era of the 1950s of a nascent Europe, balacing between east and west, freedom and repression, terror and euphoria. The Pisa display is the first of a series, as the exhibition is conceived to be travelling across Europe.

The exhibition in Pisa saw a collaboration with Museo Piaggio, Fondazione Pisa and Fondazione Palazzo Blu, enriching the BLUE SKIES, RED PANIC exhibition with an original Vespa from 1957 and a selection of images from the local exhibition Gli Anni ’50, Immagini di un decennio a Pisa which was displayed at Palazzo Blu in 2018.

[Show as slideshow]

BLUE SKIES, RED PANIC is created by the EU project Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope, co-financed by the European Union in the CEF Connecting European Facility programme.

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The 1950s in Europe were a decade of transition and (re-)construction, modernisation and change. This change was fundamental and reached all Europeans who longed for the normality of everyday life after decades of war with new designs, new consumer products, new media, music and fashion. Glamour, “sweet home” and prosperity: these are well-known stereotypes that characterize the myth of an iconic age.

But this is just one side of the coin. This era was shaped by contradictions: many in Europe still suffered from the consequences of the Second World War such as hunger, poverty, lack of housing and displacement. The formation of interstate relations, which on the one hand led to rapprochement and cooperation between formerly hostile nations, but on the other hand was determined by hegemonic foreign policy and domestic repression, strengthened the already existing division of Europe into East and West and intensified Cold War tensions to the brink of a nuclear conflict.

The narratives that emerge from the black-and-white images are far from rendering simplified pictures of the past. Quite the contrary, many different facets and nuances, differences and similarities become visible. With a kaleidoscope of visual impressions, the exhibition aims to evoke memories that are familiar to us or invite us to a completely new discovery. Looking back on the iconic era of the 1950s in Europe, the exhibition offers a photographic retrospective, without falling into mere nostalgia, and promotes a critical understanding of the creation of the European Union in which we live today.

More info:

fifties.withculture.eu

www.photoconsortium.net/50s-in-europe-kaleidoscope

Realized as main outcome of the Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope project, the exhibition offers unusual insights on the faboulos Fifities

Blue skies, red panic – a photographic exhibition about the 1950s

Much like scents, flavours and music, photographs are powerful triggers of memory. So what better medium to recall a past as recent and as visually recognizable as early postwar Europe…? For about a year, the consortium involved in the EU-funded project ‘Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope’ has been diving into collections of libraries, archives and commercial agencies across Europe, to trace the tracks of the fifties in photography.

Visit the exhibition: https://www.photoconsortium.net/exhibitions/blue-skies-red-panic/

As the expected imagery surfaced quite quickly, we soon started to question its veracity. With project partners from both sides of the Cold War divide, our perspective was ‘bifocal’ from the outset. The fifties were indeed the breeding ground for Europe as we know it today, but at the time political regimes, economic circumstances, societal developments, levels of prosperity and consumer trends were very different in the east and west, north and south.

This exhibition could have easily turned into a simple game of contrasts and opposites. Yet while the pictures we selected are very much black and white, the stories they convey boast an endless range of greys. Through these shades, the reflection of the 1950s gains nuance, color and depth. Instead of a lens or a looking glass, we ended up using a kaleidoscope: a compound eye on differences and similarities, parallels and resonances, making the most of the ‘beautiful forms’ of an iconic age.

“Blue skies, red panic” created in the framework of the EU project “Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope” is:

a travelling photographic exhibition, which will be on view from 6th until 20th September 2019 in the Museo della Grafica, Palazzo Lanfranchi in Pisa, and will then travel to Spain, Belgium and Germany
an interactive exploration of images and stories, to premiere in Leuven on the National Day of Science on 24 November 2019
a virtual exhibition on Europeana.eu, coming soon in Autumn 2019.

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The contribution of the REACH Project to the EYCH 2018 published by the SCIRES-IT Journal

Embedding engagement: participatory approaches to cultural heritage

The article, written by Prof. Neil Forbes and Prof. Silvana Colella (both from Coventry University, REACH project coordinator and leader of the sustainability and resilience Work Package) went on-line last Saturday, in the Special Edition of the SCIRES-IT Journal titled “European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018. A laboratory for heritage-based innovation”.

The paper presents the work of the REACH project and its contribution to the EYCH Initiative #9 ‘Heritage for All’. It reflects on the issue of participatory approaches to cultural heritage, focusing in particular on:
1) the REACH repository of good practices, a dataset comprising over 100 examples, European and extra European, of social participation in cultural heritage;
2) the REACH Participatory Framework, developed to provide a protocol of participatory procedures and to support the organisation of local encounters;
3) the future of heritage research, in the light of current discussions about the constitution of a new coordination structure for European heritage research.

After just few days of promotion on social media this special volume received remarkable reactions and positive feedback for gathering precious information, new perspectives and excellent contributions in support and preservation of Cultural Heritage.
The entire publication is available on line at www.sciresit.it
More References:
SCIRES-IT Vol. 9 N° 1 Special Issue – European year of Cultural-Heritage. A laboratory for heritage-based innovation
Guest Editor Erminia Sciacchitano and Editors in-Chief V.Valzano and M.Cigola.
@itScires
Download the article
Embedding Engagement Perticipatory Approaches to Cultural Heritage