Digital meets Culture

online, 23 June 2023 h. 14 CEST

Be.CULTOUR webinar: Community-led and innovative entrepreneurship for circular cultural tourism

The Be.CULTOUR project, focused on enhancing cultural heritage and landscape values for sustainable cultural tourism, is launching a new series of webinars to boost peer learning among its Community of Interest and other followers. Given that Be.CULTOUR and INCULTUM established a cooperation agreement for cross-dissemination and knowledge exchange, the webinar series is promoted also via the INCULTUM channels and and in the INCULTUM network.

Various experts and on-field stakeholders are invited to present and discuss their innovative ideas, their progress and their challenges concerning cultural tourism and beyond. In this webinar, INCULTUM cases will be presented by the Network and Dissemination manager Antonella Fresa.

Webinar 5: Community-led and innovative entrepreneurship for circular cultural tourism – 23 June 2023

14.00-14.05 Antonia Gravagnuolo | CNR Institute of Heritage Science Welcome and introduction
14:05-14.20 Eva Leemet | CEO of Loov Eesti – Creative Estonia
14:20-14:35 Antonella Fresa | Promoter s.r.l., Communication and Dissemination manager at INCULTUM project
14:35-14:40 Break
14:40-14:55 Anna Salvagio | Vice president and experience manager of the Diffused Museum of 5 Senses of Sciacca, First Prize ECTN Award 2022
14:55-15:10 Antonio Della Corte | “La Paranza” Cooperative, Catacombs of San Gennaro, Naples
15:10-15:20 Hanna Szemző | Metropolitan Research Institute
15:20-15:30 Q&A and concluding remarks

The webinar will address the challenges and opportunities of community-led entrepreneurship for circular cultural tourism. By sharing experiences of projects and initiatives operating in European regions, it will discuss the great potential of less-know and peripheral destinations in which cultural assets and local resources are co-managed by communities and stakeholders. Through the case studies, we will reflect on how engaging community capacity for collective care of cultural heritage could represent a key driver in fostering innovative entrepreneurship and sustainable social, cultural, and economic development.

Registration is accessible from https://becultour.eu/becultour-webinars

The list of all other topics addressed includes:

Understanding the European value of cultural heritage: Power of networks – 24 March 2023
Innovative solutions for circular cultural tourism – 21 April 2023
Values-based innovative marketing for less-known cultural tourism destinations – 15 May 2023
Community-led and innovative entrepreneurship for circular cultural tourism – 23 June 2023
Creative tourism and the role of arts, interpretation and storytelling – September 2023
Circular economy implementation in the tourism sector – October 2023
Innovative finance for circular cultural tourism – November 2023
Smart data management for circular cultural tourism assessment and monitoring – December 2023

Relevant information will be published in due time on the website of the project here.

Be.CULTOUR stands for “Beyond CULtural TOURism: heritage innovation networks as drivers of Europeanisation towards a human-centred and circular tourism economy”. It expresses the goal to move beyond tourism through a longer-term human-centred development perspective, enhancing cultural heritage and landscape values.

Read more about the project in the official website: https://becultour.eu/

Informative materials highlighting and promoting the diversity of cultural heritage resources in the area are now available for tourists

New visitors’ leaflets launched in the pilot area of the Upper Vjosa valley

Article and images courtesy of Eglantina Serjani (CeRPHAAL)

In April 2023, INCULTUM partner CeRPHAAL in Albania launched new visitor leaflets about the cultural heritage assets of the Upper Vjosa valley. CeRPHAAL is coordinating pilot 8, Vjosa the shared river, aiming at highlighting and promoting the diversity of cultural heritage resources embodied in the mountainous landscape of the Vjosa valley.

In line with this, two leaflets were designed and published, presenting for the first time to the public some of the lost and neglected heritage of the area, such as the Vlach culture, as well as several landmarks related to the Second World War and the Communist Period.

One of the leaflets is an introduction to the historic city of Përmet and its surrounding, accompanied by easy-to-read maps, brief explanatory texts, and images. The second brochure broadcasts historical information about the Vlach – a people who have historically inhabited swathes of the Balkans and are distinguished by their language, which derives from Latin and their ways of living based primarily on pastoral transhumance, whiles also inviting the visitors to hike in the mountains of the Upper Vjosa valley following the footprints of the Vlach nomadic journeys.

During the second half of May, these promotional materials were introduced to the heritage specialist in the tourist office of Përmet and shared with some of the hotels in the city. The materials are now available for the visitors and provided at these locations both in printed and as downloadable versions.

[Show as slideshow]

Historical city of Permet and its surroundings_leaflet Download

Walking-with-the-Vlachs_leaflet Download

Participatory fieldwork continues to restore and valorize rural areas in the Altiplano de Granada

INCULTUM Pilot: cleaning of the acequia Baja de Pitres

text by Elena Correa Jiménez (University of Granada), photos by Rocco Corselli, MEMOLab researcher.

On the 10th of June, the cleaning of the acequia Baja de Pitres (Granada) took place. This activity was organised by the Laboratory of Biocultural Archaeology (MEMOLab UGR) and the Irrigation Community of the irrigation ditches Baja and Alta de Pitres.

Fifty volunteers, including locals, archaeology students, environmental volunteers, etc., took part in the clean-up. The activity consisted of clearing vegetation and soil from this historic irrigation channel, fundamental in shaping the landscape and life of La Taha. This historic canal is about 12 kilometres long, from its source in the Mulhacén river to the Bermejo river.

This initiative is part of the work carried out by MEMOLab in the context of INCULTUM Pilot project, to revalue historical irrigation channels and the irrigation communities that manage them, in order to preserve a cultural and environmental heritage that is fundamental to our landscapes.

Learn more about INCULTUM Pilot 1 – Altiplano de Granada

UNCHARTE representatives met in Volterra with Mayor and Culture Councilor of the town

UNCHARTED study on strategic planning of cultural policy

The representatives of the European project UNCHARTED met in Volterra with the Mayor Giacomo Santi and the Cultural Councellor Prof. Dario Danti on 13 June 2023.

For the UNCHARTED project the team of Promoter S.r.l. was represented by Pietro Masi Administrator, Dr. Antonella Fresa Director of Implementations and Arch. Giulia Fiorentini responsible of the case study on Volterra, together with Prof. Eszter Gyorgy of the ELTE University of Budapest connected online.

The meeting was the occasion of reviewing the progresses of the main case study of the Experimental Demonstrations of UNCHARTED about cultural strategic planning in Volterra, and the experience of its nomination as City of Culture in Tuscany.

Promoter Srl, as leader of the case study, will report to the UNCHARTED Workshop planned in Barcelona on 15-16 June 2023 about the results of the interviews with the group of stakeholders of Volterra conducted during the period of April-May 2023.

The interviews will be followed by an online questionnaire that will be open to the contribution of all the citizens of Volterra during July-August 2023.

The study will conclude at the end of October 2023 with a public event hosted by the Municipality, where results and outcomes will be presented and discussed with the citizenship.

Picture from the meeting

Actions included the cration of new dissemination materials, a training to local stakeholders in Permet, and the continuation of the efforts to reconstruct the heritage of Vlachs minority

INCULTUM Albania pilot latest activities to support cultural tourism in the Upper Vjosa valley

Article and images courtesy of Eglantina Serjani (CeRPHAAL)

Activity 1 – New visitors’ leaflets launched in the pilot area of the Upper Vjosa valley

In April 2023, INCULTUM partner CeRPHAAL in Albania launched new visitor leaflets about the cultural heritage assets of the Upper Vjosa valley, presenting for the first time to the public some of the lost and neglected heritage of the area, such as the Vlach culture, as well as several landmarks related to the Second World War and the Communist Period.

[Show as slideshow]

Published by PH journal of Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage (Seville, Spain).

Paper by INCULTUM Portuguese pilot on cultural landscape of Campina de Faro.

The noria as a privileged expression of heritage andwater mastery | photo Desidério Batista

The cultural landscape of the Campina de Faro is characterized by the
presence of vegetable gardens and orchards associated with a historical,
evolving, and adaptable irrigation system, revealing a technological unit
(hydraulic infrastructures) and a social unit (local community).

The paper, “The cultural landscape of Campina de Faro: solutions based on water heritage and cultural tourism”, focuses on INCULTUM’s Portuguese pilot, located in the Algarve region in southern Portugal, and describes the process of research and cooperation carried out in the first two years of the project to fulfil their goals, reflecting and debating around the role and importance of the agrarian landscape and water heritage as a basis for community-based cultural tourism, in a territory subject to a process of disqualification.

To download and read the whole article (PDF, 9,78 MB), follow this link.

Methodology and workflow of virtual reconstruction

Time Machine Academy: LILLO 1640

Time Machine Academy shows how a virtual reconstruction of a historical site is made, based upon the example of the 17^th century fortress of Lillo, Belgium. This fortress was reconstructed by Visual Dimension bvba, in close cooperation with the Centre for Urban History at the University of Antwerp and the European ‘Recapture the Fortress Cities’ (RCF) project.

Just north of Antwerp (Belgium) lies Fort Lillo, one of the oldest forts around Antwerp. The villages around the area have disappeared during recent harbour expansions in the 1960s, but Fort Lillo has been preserved as a heritage site. In the coming years, Fort Lillo will go through a process of intensive spatial replanning, mainly initiated from the need for more substantial levees protecting the inland area from flooding.

To facilitate this process, a true ‘Time Machine’, allowing to virtually travel between past, present, and future of Fort Lillo was designed. To build this Local Time Machine, researchers from the Antwerp Time Machine and the specialised digital heritage company Visual Dimension teamed up with Regionaal Landschap de Voorkempen in a pilot action VirtuaFort within the project RFC (Recapture the Fortress Cities), funded by Interreg Europe and the City of Antwerp. While historical sources tend to be fragmented and incomplete, a 3D reconstruction asks for filling in all missing information to visualise every part of the given study area.

VirtuaFort consists of 3D virtual reconstructions of the historical fortress and its immediate surroundings in 1640 (past), panoramic visualisation of the current situation (present) and 3D visualisation of the masterplan for the future fortress in a Time Machine application that allows to interactively explore these three time periods and switching interactively from one period to another.

The results of VirtuaFort are in the first place aimed towards the general public, consisting of local inhabitants, tourists and guided groups, making heritage more visible through virtual reality. It also proves to be an excellent tool for more sustainable conservation and as a tourist attraction.

Dates of the Academy:

Friday, 16 June 2023 – 14:00 to 16:00 CEST
Friday, 23 June 2023 – 14:00 to 16:00 CEST
Friday, 30 June 2023 – 14:00 to 16:00 CEST

Prerequisites to participate in this Academy:

A working computer with an internet connection and a recent web browser
An intermediate level of English

Follow these links to register and to learn more about the Academy.

Barcelona, 15-16 June 2023

2nd UNCHARTED Co-creation workshop

The second co-creation workshop of the UNCHARTED project is held in Barcelona, at Centre d’Estudis i Recursos Culturales, on 15-16 June 2023.

This workshop is gathering members of the Advisory Board, invited stakeholders from the various fields related to cultural policy and cultural institutions, and partners of the consortium who are part of the research process.

The aim is to debate with actors about the central issues investigated during the UNCHARTED research, in order to deepen our understanding and, at the same time, to generate new hypothesis and research questions in the run up to the comparative analysis to be completed afterwards, and to look forward to the production of final project’s outcomes.

The workshop is led by UB, the project coordinator, in collaboration with CNRS, lead partner of WP4, and ELTE, lead partner of WP5.

15 stakeholders have been involved in dedicated interviews A questionnaire will soon be launched for all citizens A public event is scheduled in autumn 2023

Volterra: the fieldwork of the case study continues

The UNCHARTED project includes as part of its Work Package 5 (WP5) the main case study about cultural strategic planning in Volterra and the experience of its nomination as City of Culture in Tuscany.

The first phase of the investigation on the case of Volterra ended in May with a campaign of interviews involving about 15 stakeholders of the territory. Promoter Srl, as leader of the case study, is reconstructing the first results in a report and developing an online public questionnaire to collect the contributions of citizens.

The questionnaire is going to be published at the end of June 2023 and remains open until September 2023 to intercept the highest number of people, thanks to the support of the city administration and their contacts.

In parallel, a public event is planned to take place in Volterra in autumn 2023 to present the results of the survey.

The next appointment is scheduled for Tuesday 13 of June 2023 in Volterra for a meeting with ELTE, the University of Budapest, lead partner of UNCHARTED WP5, and with the participation of institutional actors.

Some picuters about fieldwork

Programme of Small-scale partnerships in school education of the Erasmus+ Project: Turkey-Italy-Bulgaria

“From Intangible Expression to Digital Cultural Heritage”: update on Erasmus+ Project

text and images in this post courtesy of the project “From Intangible Expression to Digital Cultural Heritage”.

After our first virtual meeting in Italy, this time we were welcomed by the “St. St. Cyril and Methodius” Primary School from 7th to 13th May in Razlog, Bulgaria. It was again attended by 6 students and 2 teachers from each partner schools. Razlog is a town in Blagoevgrad Province in the southwestern of Bulgaria. This visit we made to Bulgaria was an experience for us where we nearly witnessed history. It is a town which is rich in traditions and customs.

On the first day of our visit we had a tour in Razlog and visited the Nicola Parapunov History Museum. It has many valuable collections of traditional local clothing and works of local craftsmen. In Bacheco village, our students had the experience of riding horse and tasted very delicious traditional foods of Bulgaria.

On the second day, we were in Bansko which is full of traditional houses. The Pririn National Park is located here and this park is included in the convention for the Preservation of World Natural and Cultural Heritage Sites. Here in Bansko, having experienced the Bulgarian folk dances and local hand crafts made our students get together and communicate in foreign language. They also shared cultural heritages by exposing to them.

On the third day we were in the secon biggest city of Bulgaria called Plovdiv. It is one of the most historical cities there. The history of the city dates back to a thousand years Before Christ. In 2019 it became the European Capital of Culture. It is a city that contains colours.

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In the end of our meeting we noticed again that we should respect and accept other people’s culture, history and traditions and also save them for the next generations. All the cultures are worth to be shared and made more visible. Beside this, we had the opportunity tu use our foreign language to communicate. We ensure the intercultural dialogue among people. Our Project encourages us to do all those things. And that’s why we love Erasmus+ projects!