Digital meets Culture

The Pilot set in the Altiplano de Granada continues establishing collaboration of the town councils and the irrigation communities of the municipalities

INCULTUM Pilot: meeting in Castril with the Town Hall and the Irrigators’ Community

text and images courtesy of Elena Correa Jiménez (University of Granada).

INCULTUM Pilot in Granada is coordinated by the Biocultural Archaeology Laboratory (MEMOLab), led by Professor Dr. José María Martín Civantos, from the Department of Medieval History and CCTTHH of the University of Granada. It includes fieldwork of digitisation of irrigation ditch networks and location of elements intended to the creation of cultural trails.

One of the towns in the area of the Pilot is Castril, located in the northeast of the province of Granada, where the mapping work of irrigation ditches is taking place with collaboration of the municipality and by participatory activities which involve citizens, volunteers and students.

The Pilot is also continuing negotiations between the irrigation community and the Town Hall, with the aim of finalizing the administrative agreement for payment for the services.

On 3 February there was a meeting with the Castril Town Council and the Community of Irrigators of the municipality. The experts of MEMOLab continue to gather information about the cultural trail that will run along the main irrigation channel of the Vega de Tubos to the town centre.

Learn more about INCULTUM Pilot 1 – Altiplano de Granada

A new action for creating a Greenway in the Trapani territory is extending the impact of INCULTUM pilot in Sicily

Recovering train routes and linking trails in the Sicilian Inland

The INCULTUM Pilot set in Sicily is coordinated by the GAL Elimos, and is focused on establishing collaborations with local municipalities in the Trapani province, specifically Calatafimi-Segesta, Custonaci and Buseto Palizzolo. One of the scopes is to develop territorial promotion and especially to enhance the islamic heritage in the territory of Mounts of Trapani. Now the GAL Elimos is extending activities also in neighbour areas, and specifically supporting a project of recovering historical train routes among villages such as the trails “Kaggera-Vita-Salemi”, “Salemi-Santa Ninfa” and “Castelvetrano-San Carlo Burgio”.

These routes have a huge potential in linking the smaller train infrastructures of the area to other existing routes such as cycle lanes, foot lanes and horse lanes, which all pass across the territory and link architectural and historical heritage sites.

This “Greenway” project also intends to create synergies and cooperation with various stakeholders operating in the area such as hostels, B&B, slow food tasting and restaurants, and all the other tourism activities in the territory.

The effort on establing the new “Greenway” complements the work already done in INCULTUM and is sustained with local projects that support investments on infrastructures.

Learn more about INCULTUM Pilot in Sicily

All photographs in this post courtesy of Promoter s.r.l

The International Festival of Volterra’s Roman Theatre is selected among 260 projects

Volterra in Art Bonus Contest

The Art Bonus Contest, organized by Ministry of Culture, has selected the International Festival of Volterra’s Roman Theatre among the 260 projects in Italy that in the last year have successfully closed their fundraising Art Bonus, the tax measure introduced to encourage donations in favour of culture.

The selected projects have been included in the portal page dedicated to the competition to be voted so as to access the final phase.

Vote for the International Festival of Volterra’s Roman Theatre project!

Volterra in concorso Art Bonus

Il Festival Internazionale del Teatro Romano di Volterra selezionato tra 260 progetti

Il concorso ART BONUS, organizzato dal Ministero della Cultura, ha selezionato il Progetto Festival Internazionale del Teatro Romano di Volterra tra i 260 progetti d’Italia che nell’ultimo anno hanno chiuso con successo una loro raccolta fondi Art Bonus, la misura fiscale introdotta per incentivare le donazioni a favore della cultura.

I progetti selezionati sono stati inseriti nella pagina del portale dedicato al concorso per essere votati così da accedere alla fase finale.

Votate il progetto Festival Internazionale del Teatro Romano!

e-IRG sees a clear need to enhance the coordination and cooperation among major European e-Infrastructure initiatives, which are an indispensable part of EOSC.

e-IRG White Paper 2022

The e-IRG White Paper 2022 addresses the coordination and cooperation among European e-Infrastructures and takes further the series of e-IRG policy documents. Since the introduction of the e-Infrastructure Commons in the e-IRG Roadmap 2012, some progress has been made towards an integrated e-Infrastructure landscape, most notably with the implementation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and the federation of generic (horizontal) and thematic (vertical) services from e-Infrastructures and Research Infrastructures accordingly.

Still, progress is slow given the complex European research ecosystem spanning institutional, national regional and European components, at different maturity levels and speeds. The current cooperation and coordination among European e-Infrastructure initiatives and related organisations under the EOSC undertaking or other efforts, is ad-hoc and not properly framed. e-IRG sees a clear need to enhance the coordination and cooperation among major European e-Infrastructure initiatives, which are an indispensable part of EOSC.

The objective of this e-IRG White Paper 2022 is to provide recommendations to the different stakeholders to strengthen the communication between e-Infrastructure providers at European level and their cooperation towards an enhanced and coordinated strategy setting.

The e-IRG White Paper 2022 has been published and is available on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/record/7584778#.Y9joOi9XYdU

online, 28 February 2023

A Cultural Deal for Europe – Policy Conversation

Culture Action Europe (CAE), European Cultural Foundation, and Europa Nostra invite you to join the Cultural Deal for Europe annual policy conversation: Culture is the new energy for Europe on 28 February from 15.00-18.00 CET.

The European Parliament elections 2024 are approaching, preceded in 2023 by the mid-term review of the Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF), which might add extra resources to the EU’s budget for the second half of the financial cycle to tackle the era of multicrisis.

Culture needs to be at the core of both debates, and strategically associated with the collective effort ahead of the major democratic exercise in Europe. We believe culture is a fundamental value for democracy and that it is our duty to imagine the future place and role of culture and cultural heritage in Europe.

The Cultural Deal for Europe campaign – by Culture Action Europe, European Cultural Foundation and Europa Nostra – presents eight proposals to put culture centre stage in EU’s policies.

On 28 February, it is organized and online conversation with the members of the European Parliament representing various political groups.

It is possible to register for the online webinar via the link below. The deadline to register is 27 February at 12pm CET.

Register here!

From the acculturation of people on everyday actions, to fostering digital sobriety in the use of technologies, EUreka3D takes into account climate-related issues

Mindful of climate impact: EUreka3D looks into awareness

images in this blog come from the Europeana webinar “How to create more climate-friendly communications”.

The EUreka3D project, co-funded by the Digital Europe Programme of the European Union, is supporting the process of enabling the digital transformation of the Cultural Heritage (CH) sector, by building capacity and offering services to institutions especially regarding 3D digitization, storage and access.

In the strand of work for impact assessment, it is important to look at the impact that the digital transformation has on climate, particularly referring to online data storage and sharing. For this reason and in the light of initiating a path of awareness raising that accompanies the project’s activities, EUreka3D follows the initiatives of the Europeana Network Climate Action community, such as the recent workshop “How to create more climate-friendly communications” that reflected on how in the everyday work of any cultural professionals small actions can be taken to make a difference in terms of climate impact.

Larger reflections and mindfulness of climate impact delivered by storage and data management & sharing are also an element of EUreka3D technical requirements for the services developed in the project, as part of the activities of the technical partners in the project EGI and ACK Cyfronet AGH, who are collaborate with Cyprus University of Technology and Europeana Foundation.

First task is in facts setting the stage of the upcoming technologies, tools and services that EUreka3D will make available for supporting bigger and smaller CHIs with 3D and other types of cultural collections.

Grand prize of the European Commission honoring Innovation in Technology, Industry and Society stimulated by the Arts

STARTS Prize 2023 Open Call

S+T+ARTS is an initiative of the European Commission to foster alliances of technology and artistic practice. As part of this initiative, the S+T+ARTS Prize awards the most pioneering collaborations and results in the field of creativity and innovation at the crossings of science and technology with the arts. The S+T+ARTS Prize of the European Commission is launched by Ars Electronica and the consortium partners Bozar, Waag, INOVA+, T6 Ecosystems, French Tech Grande Provence and Frankfurter Buchmesse.

Since 2016, more than 200 projects out of 14.291 submissions from 96 different countries have been honored and a total of 280,000€ in prize money has been distributed in the S+T+ARTS Prize competition.

Science, Technology and Arts (= S+T+ARTS) form a nexus with an extraordinarily high potential for creative innovation. And such innovation is considered to be precisely what’s called for if we’re to master the social, ecological and economic challenges that Europe will be facing in the near future. The role of artists thus is no longer seen to be just about propagating scientific and technological knowledge and skills among the general public but much more as a kind of catalyst that can inspire and trigger innovative processes. The artistic practice of creative exploration and experimental appropriation of new technologies has a wide-reaching potential to contribute to the development of new products and new economic, social and business models. Accordingly, the S+T+ARTS Prize focuses on artistic works that influence or change the way we look at technology, and on innovative forms of collaboration between the ICT sector and the world of art and culture.

Two prizes will be awarded, each endowed with €20,000 euros. The “Grand Prize – Innovative Collaboration” will be awarded to projects that combine industry or technology and the arts, with the goal of opening new paths for innovation. The “Grand Prize – Artistic Exploration” will honor artistic research and works that have the potential to influence or change the way technology is used, applied or perceived. In addition, twenty eight more projects will receive a Nomination or an Honorary Mention. The winning projects, which will be announced in June, will be then featured at Ars Electronica Festival in September 2023 and other events of the consortium partners BOZAR, Waag Futurelab, INOVA+, T6 Ecosystems, French Tech Grande Provence and Frankfurt Bookfair.

Please see here the full rules and regulations for the application: https://starts-prize.aec.at/en/open-call/

Key-dates:

January 11, 2023: Submission phase for the STARTS Prize 2023 starts
March 3, 2023: Submission deadline
April 20 – 23, 2023: Jury Meeting
S+T+ARTS Prize 2023 winners will be notified by Mid-June 2023 at the latest
September 6-10, 2023: Exhibition and talks at Ars Electronica Festival
September, 2023: STARTS Day at Ars Electronica Festival

A session to discuss common challenges and synergies chaired by Europeana Foundation took place on 24 January 2023

EUreka3D: networking with sister projects

img. EUreka3D kick-off meeting at Museo della Grafica, by Rudy Pessina.

On the occasion of the EUreka3D kick-off meeting, organized by coordinator Photoconsortium in Pisa at Museo della Grafica, a networking and collaboration session of all the projects financed under the Digital Europe Programme to support the development of the European Data Space for Cultural Heritage took place online on 24 January 2023, chaired by Milena Popova, Programme & Business Development Manager at Europeana Foundation.

The meeting aimed at bringing together sister projects operating in the area of 3D digitization, capacity building, AI for cultural heritage and and tools, to share about common challenges and discuss synergies and collaboration. The coordinators and other key partners of DeBIAS, AI4Europeana, 5Dculture and of course EUreka3D presented their plans for future work and explored in an open discussion common topics such as the technical tasks on 3D and AI, the integration of projects’ services and outcomes with Europeana, capacity building actions and communication.

More than 30 participants attended this meeting in the village of Fâchin, and a special focus was dedicated to the pilot project conducted by Bibracte within the framework of INCULTUM

2022 review and 2023 outlook for Bibracte pilot project at the General Assembly of the Grand Site de France Bibracte – Morvan des Sommets

Text Flore Coppin, picture courtesy of Bibracte.

On 14 December 2022, Bibracte organised the end-of-year meeting of the 12 village communities involved in the Grand Site de France label. More than 30 participants attended this meeting in the village of Fâchin, including elected representatives, partners of the label, members of the Grand Site de France working groups, representatives of French hiking federation, the area’s tourist offices, etc. During this session, a special focus was dedicated to the pilot project conducted by Bibracte within the framework of INCULTUM.

A review of the year 2022 was presented by the INCULTUM coordinator at Bibracte, and the representatives of the tourism and agriculture working groups introduced their actions carried out in synergy with the project.

photo courtesy Bibracte, December 2022

Between October and December 2022, a survey was carried out by the INCULTUM coordinator and a sociologist to qualitatively assess the impact of the pilot project’s actions among the members of the Grand Site de France’s rural paths working group. This survey was also a way to brainstorm on the strategic orientations of the pilot. Interviews were carried out in the 12 villages with around 30 members of the working group. It confirmed the relatively good satisfaction of the members and enabled us to identify priority areas for action in the coming months.

In 2022, the emergence of the heritage community around the rural paths was thus confirmed by the mobilisation and awareness through its various actions (inventory of the paths network, cultural events, working groups, etc.) of more than 400 inhabitants of the territory. The reactivation of the Common of the rural paths confirmed the collective awareness of this shared heritage and the will to put in place management rules and sustainable means to ensure its preservation, in particular via the construction of a shared management plan.

During the meeting, the main milestones of the 2023 action plan were presented by the three above-mentioned working groups leaders:

Management of the common heritage:

Co-construction of a management plan for the common heritage of rural paths in order to anchor the management of the heritage in Municipal Councils. Objective: finalise the inventory of the network of paths and list the priority paths. This shared management plan will integrate the landscape and heritage issues of the Grand Site de France label. At the level of the working group, the aim will be to create a platform for sharing good practice and pooling resources and tools.
Organisation of a second session of the summer heritage workcamp at Bibracte in August 2023 as a continuation of the work begun in 2022

Tourism project:

In October 2022, teams from the Morvan Regional Nature Park carried out new technical checks on the new cultural route developed within INCULTUM. Technical and safety recommendations were sent to the 12 villages to improve the itinerary, their implementation will condition the launch and the promotion of the route in the coming weeks.
Work on the homologation « Grande Randonnée de Pays » label with the French Hiking Federation
Development of a marketing plan and communication tools through participatory methods with the stakeholders and the other working groups
Organisation of trainings and eductours for tourism stakeholders
Launch of the Evalto 2023-2024 survey by the Bibracte tourism observatory

Animation of the heritage community:

In 2022, 6 themed walks were organised in 7 of the territory’s 12 villages, mobilising more than 300 participants: inhabitants, visitors and members of the heritage community
The 2023 programme of the heritage community will be discussed at a meeting of representatives of the 12 villages with the partner association CHEMINS on January 27^th 2023

In 2023, the three multisectoral working groups will intensify their collaboration with a view to consolidating the service offer in the destination. This service offer currently has indeed a certain weakness, particularly in terms of satisfying the itinerant hiking market segment: few dedicated accommodation facilities, lack of small-scale catering facilities, problems of access and mobility.

In this respect, the work of the agriculture working group and its future economic and environmental interest group (a French Ministry of Agriculture mechanism designed to promote the organisation of agricultural players around collective sustainable projects), with the creation of connections between the agricultural economy and the local economy (farm reception, short sales, etc.) – will be one of the main areas of work for the Bibracte pilot project in 2023.

Download the PPT presentation shown at the meeting (in French)
Download the mental map of the brainstorming carried out by the rural paths working group in the framework of the survey conducted at the end of 2022
View the map of the prototype of the “Tour du Morvan des Sommets” circuit

Presented the project in continuity with “Volterra 2022 Human Regeneration”

Volterra: a stable theatre in prison

The presentation of the project – Courtesy of Municipality of Volterra

Volterra, studied by UNCHARTED as a main case of WP5 experimental and demonstrations, continues to carry on the process of ‘Human Regeneration’ started with ‘Volterra 2022’ for engagement with heritage and innovation of culture.

Yesterday 26th of January 2023, the public presentation for the project of a Stable Theatre in the Prison of Volterra was held. The event took place a few days after the ‘Leone d’Oro’ for the career awarded by ‘Biennale Teatro 2023’ to Armando Punzo, artistic director and founder of Compagnia della Fortezza, the theatre company active since 1988 inside the prison of Volterra.

The project, promoted by the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility, comes from the need to create, inside the prison of Volterra, a space suitable for the performance of theatrical activities and professional training for prisoners. The project is curated by Mario Cucinella Architects, in partneship with Compagnia della Fortezza.

The event, which was attended by many representatives of political and cultural institutions and prominent representatives of regional and national authorities, opened with an intense theatrical interpretation, performed by some actors of Compagnia della Fortezza, to inaugurate the new theatre for Volterra, first in the world inside a prison.