Digital meets Culture

Vienna, 4th September 2021

Immaterial Future Innovation Award ceremony

Immaterial Future Association spotlights CultTech entrepreneurs through its new IF Innovation Award initiative

Immaterial Future Association announced 6 startup finalists of the IF Innovation Award
The finalists represent 6 countries from the Americas and Europe. The winner will be announced on September 4 at the Award ceremony in Vienna and will receive a €50,000 investment for their business.
The discussions at the Award ceremony will shine a light on the state of impact investing in culture and creative industries, as well as the barriers and enablers for sustainable solutions in this space

Learn more about the IF Innovation Award here.

The Award celebrates the most inspiring entrepreneurs offering new bold solutions in the field of CultTech*. This year 165 startups from 52 countries participated in the competition by submitting projects that leverage technology and create new business models for culture and creative industries. Six finalists – startup teams from the Netherlands, US, UK, Brazil, Luxembourg, and Germany – will pitch their ventures to an international jury panel and compete for €50,000 in non-equity funding.

img. Floatscans

The finalists offer solutions that develop new business models that give culture financial independence or create distribution models that allow wide access to cultural experiences while upholding their authenticity. With a loss of 31% of its turnover^[1], the cultural and creative economy is one of the most affected in Europe by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it is vital to fund and support technological solutions and impact ideas that will help the industry build back in the most sustainable way.

img. Scan the World

This year’s IF Innovation Award finalists are:

FloatScans (Netherlands). Proprietary 3D scan technology that makes it possible to bring real-world objects to life digitally. The core focus is on art and cultural heritage, in which 95% of the objects are stored away or not publicly visible. With this technology, museums and galleries may unlock their full collections independent of available space + monetize collections by developing new business models.
ArtMe (Brazil). A platform (mobile app) where ArtCasets (stories, art descriptions and exhibition tours) can be submitted and translated into 19 languages. Content can be provided by the community with no museum censorship. ArtMe can be used to discover artworks within a city, making visits to museums and galleries even more pleasant.
Scan the World (UK). With over 18,000 objects online, it’s the largest digital museum of 3D printable cultural artefacts. It’s a community-built, open-source project archiving objects of cultural significance using 3D scanning and 3D printing technologies. Cultural institutions, heritage boards, and private collectors may use the 3D solution to generate new revenue streams: gift shops (selling high-quality facsimiles and merchandise), 3D scanning, and printing on demand.
Roots Studio (US). Works with indigenous and minority artists globally to digitize their unique and endangered heritage arts into new fashion and home products, through a model that can financially support their livelihoods, communities, and traditions. The model of the startup may be interesting for ethnic artists and collectors of ethnic fine arts.
Firstrow (Germany). A VR distribution platform that enables performing arts companies and venues in the culture sector to monetize their production through digital (VR) showcasing. The distribution platform is augmented by a home delivery service offered for consumers who don’t possess their own VR device.
ANote Music (Luxemburg). A marketplace for investing in music royalties. It enables publishers, record labels, and artists to list a portion of their royalty stream rights up for auction, introducing a new system of financing, as well as offering music enthusiasts and investors a new opportunity and the chance to own shares in their favorite music, thus turning music into an alternative asset class.

img. Firstrow

Composed of six members, the IF Innovation Award jury represents a group of visionaries in the fields of arts, technology and venture capital:

Oliver Holle, Сhairman of the IF Innovation Award jury panel, Founder and Managing Partner of Speedinvest, a leading European early stage venture fund.
Philip Ginthör, Digital entrepreneur and investor, former CEO of Sony Music for the DACH region, board member of Bonnier Media (Germany).
Thierry Baujard, Founder and CEO of Media Deals, a pan-European investment network focusing on the creative industries, active member of the EU’s ‘Creative Shift’ initiative;
David Yang, Founder of ABBYY, Co-Founder of Yva.ai, a pioneer of Artificial Intelligence;
Dmitry Aksenov, Founder and President of the Immaterial Future Association;
Pierre-François Marteau, Board Secretary of the Immaterial Future Association.

Following the pitch session the program will feature a panel discussion on impact investing in culture and creative industries with representatives of the leading social innovation organizations in Europe including Impact Hub Vienna, and the European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA).

img. Roots Studio

^[1] According to the January 2021 report by EY.

About Immaterial Future association

Immaterial Future (IF), a Vienna-based non-profit association, is established in 2021 to shift our world’s growth model towards intangible production and consumption, with culture as main vector of change. It aims to leverage culture’s huge untapped potential to positively impact every single human, breaking away from its elitist confines and becoming more accessible to all.

For more details please visit https://immaterialfuture.org

the first of a series of engaging events to promote the area took place in July, also including a theatrical performance

Launching the INCULTUM Pilot in San Pellegrino in Alpe (Tuscany)

photo courtesy of University of Pisa

One of the Pilots of the INCULTUM project, aiming and empowering sustainable cultural tourism in peripheral areas with communities engagement, is coordinated by the University of Pisa and is set in the beautiful landscape of the Garfagnana in Tuscany.

San Pellegrino in Alpe village, with its mountain breathtaking view and its spirituality athmosphere, has recently been the stage for the launch of the Pilot managed by the Department of Political Science of Pisa University and coordinated by Professor Enrica Lemmi (full Professor of Geography) in the framework of INCULTUM – INnovative CULtural ToUrisM in European peripheries, the European project financed under HORIZON 2020 programme.

On 17th July 2021, INCULTUM inaugural event was held in Saint Pellegrino and Saint Bianco Sanctuary, where a religious art exhibition called “San Pellegrino in Alpe. History of a boundary town” was set up. The event has been organized by the Departments of Political Science of Pisa University, in collaboration with private and public local stakeholders: the Priest of San Pellegrino in Alpe, Fondazione Area, Fondazione Campus of Lucca, the Municipalities of Castiglione di Garfagnana and Frassinoro, the Provinces of Lucca and Modena; the event has attracted numerous residents and visitors mainly interested to experience the high cultural identitary value of the place.

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all photos courtesy of University of Pisa.

The aim of the first INCULTUM event for this Pilot is to valorize San Pellegrino in Alpe village for its rural cultural heritage, its unspoilt landscape, as well as for its pilgrimage’s place history, especially through Saint Pellegrino lifetime and legend konwledge and promotion. Besides, during this inaugural event, particular attention has been given to local traditions, handicrafts, migration history and past rural lifestyle, told by the actress Elisabetta Salvadori, in her theatrical performance called “La Barbiera”, which have representing the central event of the day.

Web Site: https://santuariosanpellegrino.it/

Facebook: @santuariosanpellegrinoinalpe

Instagram: / santuariosanpellegrinoinalpe

Discover all the INCULTUM Pilots: https://incultum.eu/pilots/

Proceedings of the SoPHIA’s Stakeholders’ Virtual Conference: the UNCHARTED contribution

The proceedings of the SoPHIA Stakeholders’ Virtual Conference: Cultural Heritage – Rethinking Impact Assessments, held last April 21 and 22, have been released. The Conference gathered over 240 participants from 50 countries, mainly from Europe but also from beyond.
The aim of the Conference was to collectively reflect on pressing issues for cultural heritage that have proven to be relevant to the twelve cases of interventions analysed in the framework of the SoPHIA project when testing its impact assessment draft model.

During the first day, representatives from the case studies and invited guests discussed with the audience main challenges and opportunities that have been encountered.
In the framework of Panel 3 “Public Spaces and Cultural Heritage” Prof Gabor Sonkoly from Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) left a contribution based on the investigation carried out within the UNCHARTED project.
The session faced how to assess social capital, the access to larger cultural area, how negotiation processes can be initiated, the response to different demands and the inclusion of varying perspectives in impact assessments.

The inputs gathered through this collective reflection will be considered towards the completion of the CH impact assessment model and to feed further discussions for the policy briefs, recommendations and guidelines that will be submitted to the European Commission.
Read more…
Proceedings
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Sikinos, Cyclades (Greece), 20 - 23 August 2021

Little Islands Festival | Living Environments

Contemporary creation, new art forms, unexpected locations:

Little Islands Festival explores and creates new worlds and suggests alternative ways of viewing art and life.

With a view to connecting the Aegean landscape to contemporary creation and the power of new media, Little Islands Festival is experimenting at the crossroads of cultural heritage and innovation and proposes an open space where we can meet and interact, a summer festival that takes the viewer on an exciting audiovisual journey.

The third LIF under the title “Living Environments | Περιβάλλοντα Διαβίωσης” returns to the island of Sikinos from the 20th to the 23rd of August and transforms the labyrinthine public space of the Cycladic settlement into an ideal setting with outdoor screenings, exhibitions and installations. Abandoned buildings, shelters/sheds, windmills, cliffs and cobbled alleys, the traditional architectural lines are reinvented in a new performative/representational idiom, a metaphorical landscape symbolizing the link between human habitation and the natural environment.

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More than 60 art projects from 30 countries appropriate the public space of the settlement and propose new interpretations and correlations to the traditional element in search of a contemporary social landscape where the limits of art, nature, life are intertwined and fuel each other by weaving an active thread of dialogue with the past. Documentaries, short films, video art, animation, audiovisual performances and installations, live 3D mapping and VR, offer a new touring experience conveying ideas, images and experiences.

In the context of the topic “Living Environments | Περιβάλλοντα Διαβίωσης”, LIF also presents original site-specific project assignments, discussions with the artists, interactive workshops for children and alternative guided tours at Sikinos cultural heritage sites.

What we are going to see at the Little Islands Festival

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Open-Air Screenings

The main screening schedule includes short length and feature-length documentaries that explore the daily routines and rituals of the island life. Following the screenings, open discussions with the directors spark a fruitful public dialogue.

A section of recently produced short films that are conceptually related to the topic “Living Environments”, contemporary video art and award-winning animation for both children and adults are shown in iconic locations of the traditional settlement of Kastro and reflect their own perspective on the man-made and natural environment.

Audiovisual Performances

LIF 2021 hosts a wide range of audiovisual performances by Greek and foreign artists who interact with the specific architectural features of the site:

On the opening night of the Festival, the site-specific audiovisual installation ATLANTIS will be presented by the cinematographers Vicky Markolefa and Bastian Fischer (Mind the Bump). The two artists are mapping and surveying the underwater environment of Sikinos and turn the ruins of a Cycladic house into an underwater place inviting us to discover its secrets.

Director and performer Marine Midy introduces herself with the “aquatic” project AQUA VITAE that explores the uncertain future of the oceans through the iconic myth of Medusa in an audiovisual show with puppets for adults and children.

The VJ project “Paintscapes” and “Alienscapes” by Thomas Vallianatos, an installation presented at the magnificent courtyard of Agios Ioannis church, gives an artistic and theoretical perspective on the fractals of Nature, which unfold to the viewer as landscape scenes through 3D animation and visualised soundscapes.

Reclaiming the space of an old windmill, multimedia artist Panagiotis Tomaras and performer Despina Sanida-Krazi join forces and create Alexithymia, a light and dance show inspired by the situation of people who experience difficulty understanding and expressing emotions. The performative body remains cut off from external stimuli by making an abstract and repetitive motion while flashes and shifts of light reveal fragments of its movement.

Alexithymia (Light and Dance Performance) by Panagiotis Tomaras

3D Projection Mapping

The landmark house that dominates the settlement square is revived through the universe of 3D Projection Mapping: The project PIECES of MEMORIES by Eri Harigai recreates the “poetic” wear and tear that time has caused to the ruins of the house through images, colours and organic textures. The scene alternates with Panagioti Tomara’s live 3D mapping Sikinos Castle, which highlights hidden architectural aspects of the rubble, revealing the contradictory properties between new technology and the ravages of time.

Interactive Installations

The interactive installations forming a peripatetic exhibition interact with the complexity of the Cycladic public space. A hidden gallery, a historic side door, and other locations of the settlement are transformed into open art spaces that the public can visit during the festival.

NOBODY’S TALES by the artistic group Lele Marcojanny presents a hybrid book documentary with texts, sounds and videos that compose a collection of stories about the Mediterranean, approaching the concepts of time and identity in a sea that instead of separating as the dominant narrative suggests, eventually brings people closer.

The Still, Missing You installation transforms the “side door”, which opens into the square of the “Kastro” settlement, into a place that interacts with human senses. The artist, Layla Klinger, installs an impressive interactive “net” of different light patterns in the silent and dark environment of the shed, which is activated when one approaches or crosses the passage, leading them, through a new way of interacting with space, to the exit.

VR episkopi

Alternative Tours

A digital experience that combines interaction and learning by approaching the past and present of the place, as it guides visitors on unexpected paths. Through these alternative tours, the audience follows a different guided tour, an “unconventional” acquaintance with the nature and culture of Sikinos that offers both entertainment and education.

Episkopi Church in Virtual Reality | Giannis Koumoutzelis, Greece, 2021

Through VR glasses we get to know, interact and explore the history, the architecture, and other hidden aspects of a unique monument of the Cycladic landscape. Our exploratory tour is accompanied by the fictional narrative of Niko, whose unplundered tomb is the most significant archaeological discovery in recent years on Sikinos.

THE LEGACY OF SIKINOS | Ragna Kvernberg / Pål Kvernberg, Greece/Norway, 2021

The Legacy of Sikinos is a research project by land artists Ragna Kvernberg and Pål Kvernberg. A record of the chapels that dominate every path of Sikinos, key elements of its cultural heritage. The artists capture in 360ο photos the 61 chapels of Sikinos and place them with QR codes on a large map of the island that will be displayed at a central location. You can visit even the most remote chapel with the help of your mobile phone and plan to follow the most interesting route.

See here www.littleislandsfest.com the program of LIF 2021.

Follow us on Facebook www.facebook.com/littleislandsfestival and on our new Instagram page www.instagram.com/littleislandsfestival/

Created by: Creative Islands & New Media

Under the auspices and support: Ministry of Culture and Sports

Donor: Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)

Co-organization: South Aegean Region and the Municipality of Sikinos

Latest outputs delivered by UNCHARTED WP2 “Identifying the Emergence of Values of Culture”

The Work Package WP2 of the UNCHARTED project aims at analyzing the emergence of values linked to culture in practical contexts and in the field of cultural policy and cultural administrations.
The team in charge to carry on this part of investigation has recently released 4 reports that present the results of their studies and the basis for future actions.

D2.2 Report on the emergence of values in cultural participation and engagement

This research seeks to identify the plurality of social values of culture and the tensions, conflicts, and public controversies in the “valuation” of cultural participation in live arts and culture, as articulated by the practitioners themselves. Focusing on four different fields (community-engaged artistic projects, culture and community based creative tourism, illegal musical events, remote participation in cultural activities during Covid-19) the analysis is conducted through case studies based on a mix of methods, including participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, online questionnaires, and documental review. Their comparisons provide a rich initial analysis to understand the social value(s) of culture.

D2.3 Report on the emergence of values in television and new media

This report explores the plurality of values attributed to digitally mediated cultural participation with specific attention to participation in new media forms, exploring modes of remote cultural participation that are digitally mediated through live stream and teleconferencing platforms. Four case studies of cultural participation are presented, two from the UK and two from Norway, each of which maps the values emanating from two modalities of mediated cultural participation:

Dialogic cultural consumption: participation in fixed digital culture with interaction among participants, such as collective viewing and commenting on a cultural performance through Twitch, Facebook, Instagram TV or YouTube.
Distributed cultural co-creation: participation in co-created digital culture, such as the coperforming of amateur musicians through video conferencing platforms, or arts-based initiatives predicated on co-production between audiences, artists, and curators.

D2.4 Report on the emergence of values in cultural production and heritage

This report explores the emergence of values linked to culture production and heritage management. Six cases of studies were identified: three related to cultural production and three to heritage management. In order to cover the greatest number of values that are put into play in such vast field, a selection of the actors and areas involved was conducted with the following criteria:

the organisations, practices or events linked to creation and production within the art sector and the cultural and creative industries
the areas where intrinsic values prevail (e.g. aesthetic criteria, conservation, education etc.)were identified within each artistic-cultural sector
the areas where extrinsic values predominate (e.g. economic or social)
areas where there is an evident tension between intrinsic and extrinsic values
organisations, practices or artistic-cultural events, where professionals develop their cultural production.

D2.5 Mapping of the values of culture in cultural policy objectives

This section examines values in European cultural policies by addressing a set of case studies corresponding to twelve national, regional, and local administrations. The case study analysis aims to identify the plurality of values of culture and their existing tensions within EU cultural administrations.

The 12 studies include country capitals, peripheral cities and different kinds of substate national entities. This selection configures a vast plurality of value orientations and approaches to cultural policies from their socio-genesis, institutional dynamics and models standpoints.

The predetermined goals of the investigation are:

to draw a complete picture of the European scenario of predominant values and value tensions in cultural policy administrations
to analyse from a pragmatic perspective the tensions of value
to identify axiological affinities among the cases which refer to certain common value principles and to elaborate a synthetic representation of the main tensions between them.

UNCHARTED WP2 webpage
UNCHARTED downloadable page

a cooperation agreement for synergies and stakeholders outreach between projects in the area of sustainable cultural tourism

INCULTUM and Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea join forces

The aim of the Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea project is to demonstrate the potential of Data Analytics for tourism development in the area of Black Sea. To achieve this, pilot services will be tested and the dialogue with regional stakeholders encouraged. Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea project will boost sectoral cooperation and allow greater usage of the Industry 4.0 technologies in tourism. Data driven tourism will enable more sustainable development of tourism in the future.

More about this project: https://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/tourism-4-the-black-sea/

All these themes and actions are very close to the work of INCULTUM, which aims to demonstrate the high potential of the marginal and peripheral places, cultural heritage and resources when managed by local communities and stakeholders, also supporting the research with collecting quantitative and qualitative data on cultural tourism to produce innovative data analysis and new statistics on this phenomenon. INCULTUM findings are oriented to foster positive impacts of cultural tourism by using a participatory approach involving local population and stakeholders as communities of practices.

For this reason, collaboration between the two projects is expected to generate mutual exchanges and benefits and to boost outreach to stakeholder communities in Europe and beyond.

Outcomes of UNCHARTED participation presented at KISMIF International Conference

In July, members of the members of the UNCHARTED Consortium were invited to participate to the International KISMIF Conference ‘Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! DIY Cultures and Global Challenges’ (KISMIF 2021). The event goal was to foster a debate on the artistic sector considered in its widest expression: music, theater, performing arts, cinema, literature and poetry, graffiti and urban art, graphic design, drawing, architecture, radio, graphic design, drawing, architecture, cartoons and comics….In this general context the UNCHARTED project was presented with the Panel “Values in non-professional participation in cultural and artistic activities: examples from the UNCHARTED project” exploring diverse values from cultural participation.
The Panel brought together examples from four national and international cultural and arts-related cases that were analysed in the framework of the project; it pointed out the four different fields of investigation (community-engaged artistic projects, culture and community-based creative tourism, illegal musical events, remote participation in cultural activities during Covid-19) and it presented the general goal of the project (the identification of the plurality of values of culture and the tensions, conflicts and public controversies in the valuation of cultural participation in live and on-line arts and culture).
The panel was co-coordinated by Cláudia Pato de Carvalho, Paula Abreu, Sílvia Silva and Nancy Duxbury
Details of the case studies examined follow:

Paper 1 – Values from Community-engaged artistic projects

Cláudia Pato de Carvalho, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra
Nancy Duxbury, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra
Paula Abreu, Faculty of Economics and Centre for Social Studies– University of Coimbra
Sílvia Silva, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra

Community-engaged artistic projects focus on creative, participatory, and collaborative methodologies to engage different sectors of a community in a joint effort to design, implement, and evaluate an arts or culture-related initiative. The topic of these community-engaged projects often relates to the local history/heritage and/or contemporary issues facing a community. The goal of these projects is to involve local communities in the collaborative design and public performance of local narratives, often focusing on lesser known stories and perspectives. Both the degree of involvement of different people and local organizations and the different expectations for the future transformations of urban environments may bring interesting contributions for the discussion of value in cultural and artistic activities.
The research focuses on De Portas Abertas, a community arts intervention project coordinated by O Teatrão, a professional theatre company in Coimbra, that is designing collaborative, multidisciplinary performances (including theater, music, and dance) with the community (i.e., residents, local associations, and local authorities) of Vale da Arregaça. This is an urban area of the city of Coimbra that includes a social housing neighbourhood and other residences, an abandoned green valley and a ruined industrial facility. The project began in 2020 with a public performance in the area in September 2020, and 2021 marks phase 2 of the project which is proposed to be about the theme of “work,” a challenge to encourage further community involvement.

Key words: societal value of culture, non-professional participation, cultural participation, community engaged artistic projects

Paper 2 – Values from culture and community based creative tourism

Cláudia Pato de Carvalho, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra
Nancy Duxbury, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra
Paula Abreu, Faculty of Economics and Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra
Sílvia Silva, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra

Allied with sustainable and responsible tourism, culture- and community-based small-scale creative tourism can provide regenerative options for local traditions and local care, emphasizing more conscientious options, with explicit community benefits, such as the revitalization of local crafts and traditions, through co-creation and co-preservation, as well as benefits at a personal level, such as personal health and well-being. Creative tourism has significant potential for inspiring new ideas for the revitalization of local culture and heritage resources allowing the possibility to re-imagine community self-representation for tourism which will provide social, cultural, and economic added value for smaller places. This approach brings to the forefront of the discussion, different types of values attributed under the context of activities promoted in the context of intervention of Loulé Criativo.
Loulé Criativo is a creative tourism initiative developed by the Municipality of Loulé, Portugal, since 2014. The ongoing programme offers a range of workshops, short courses, thematic weekends, and other activities, provided through a local network of artisans and artists, linked tightly to the culture, heritage, traditions, and local identity of the municipality. Participants include both travellers (national and international) and local residents.

Key words: societal value of culture, non-professional participation, cultural participation, culture and community based creative tourism

Paper 3 – Values of autonomous culture : Illegal musical events in the times of COVID-19

Félix Dupin-Meynard, CEPEL, CNRS – University of Montpellier

Restrictions due to the COVID crisis (closure of cultural venues, ban on public gatherings) led to the emergence of illegal and self-organised musical events, such as clandestine concerts and rave parties. Some of these events were already taking place before these restrictions – notably for aesthetics and practices that are not recognised by cultural institutions and policies, or that claim autonomy, “do it yourself”, or political contestation. Others have emerged during the COVID crisis, from the expressed ‘need’ to experience musical events in collective presence, despite the health and legal risks – and faced an increased repression, as well as public moral judgements about their supposed responsibility for the pandemic dissemination.
Our research focuses on the values advocated and/or experienced by organisers and spectators of rave parties and underground concerts in the south of France during the COVID crisis. Do these events, organised without any link to cultural policies and institutions, carry the same social values as institutional events and “legitimate culture”? If not, what specific values and valuations emerge from this autonomy and informality? How do participants consider the balance between health risks, legal risks, and the ‘need’ for collective musical experience? How different values are intertwined in these cultural and social spaces (socialisation, entertainment, freedom, well-being, empowerment, autonomy, democracy…)? What are the relative places and shapes of aesthetic and social values? What is the reciprocal influence between social contexts and artistic contents?

Paper 4 – The Values of Remote Participation in Choirs and Cultural Initiatives during Covid-19

Victoria D. Alexander, Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship – Goldsmiths University of London.
Oliver Peterson Gilbert, UNCHARTED Research Associate, Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship – Goldsmiths University of London

The social distancing regulations implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic forced UK cultural and creative organisations to migrate to modes of remote delivery. Our research has looked to two spaces of non-professional cultural participation: amateur choirs in London and Reimagine, Remake, Replay – a cultural makerspace for 16–25-year-olds in Northern Ireland, both of which have moved online in response to the pandemic. Our objective was to capture the values that participants ascribed to this new mode of participation and how it compared to forms of synchronous co-present cultural participation that constituted pre-pandemic experience. Interviews were conducted with members from a variety of choirs. These choirs had different musical repertoires, deployed varied technological solutions to facilitate online participation, and comprised constituencies of participant ranging from beginners to longstanding members. Two focus groups were held with Reimagine, Remake, Replay participants alongside interviews with current staff members. We discerned certain value commonalities across the two case studies which suggest a cluster of values applicable to online cultural participation in the present moment: emotion regulation, sociality, identity consolidation, spatial-temporal affordances, new capabilities, and aesthetic values. These spaces of value production enabled us to propose a new typology (ESCAPISM) to frame the values attributed to remote participation in non-professional cultural activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: Online Participation, Choirs, Participative Museums, Cultural Democracy, COVID-19.

Conference Website: https://www.kismifconference.com/pt/
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ERIAC is the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture

Meet WEAVE Team: ERIAC

On a regular schedule, the WEAVE team publishes a blog post which features a partner of the WEAVE consortium. This blog item presents partner ERIAC European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture e.V..

WEAVE aims to connects various communities at local, micro and macro levels, and to do this we are relying on various organisations and cultural institutions. The European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture e.V. (ERIAC) is a joint initiative of the Council of Europe, the Open Society Foundations, and the Roma Leaders’ initiative – the Alliance for the European Roma Institute. ERIAC is an association registered under German law on 07 June 2017, in Berlin, Germany. ERIAC has its headquarters in Berlin and Belgrade but its work is international.

ERIAC has a unique and single mandate as the first transnational, European-level organization for the recognition of Roma arts and culture. It exists to increase the self-esteem of Roma and to decrease negative prejudice of the majority population towards the Roma by means of arts, culture, history, and media.

ERIAC acts as an international creative hub to support the exchange of creative ideas across borders, cultural domains and Romani identities. ERIAC aims to be the promoter of Romani contributions to European culture and talent, success and achievement, as well as to document the historical experience of Romani people in Europe. ERIAC exists to be a communicator and public educator, to disseminate a positive image and knowledge about Romani people for dialogue and building mutual respect and understanding.

The main long-term aims of ERIAC are to educate and inform the non-Roma population about Roma arts and culture in order to foster understanding, tolerance and mutual respect between Roma and non-Roma communities; to raise awareness among European institutions, policymakers and stakeholders about the role of Roma arts and culture; and to build-up broad partnerships across Europe (and beyond) for support of Roma arts, culture and communities.

ERIAC Serbia. 2021 © Srđan Tomašević (LESTE). Belgrade 25.05.2021. Launching Ceremony of ERIAC Serbia and the Roma Education Fund In Belgrade, Eriac are opened by Alexander Soros with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. OSF/Vladimir Zivojinovic

ERIAC is a membership-based organization, bringing together Roma and non-Roma individuals and organizations, with relevant and demonstrated competencies and experience in the field of arts and culture and who are committed to ERIAC’s values. Currently, there are over 150 Roma and non-Roma members, individuals and organizations, including museums, documentation centers, gallery spaces as well as Roma artists, cultural producers and private collectors, from across Europe and the US. ERIAC’s associate members are organized in four thematic sections: 1) Arts and Culture, 2) History and Commemoration, 3) Research and Publication in the fields of arts and culture, 4) Media and Information in the fields of arts and culture.

Through its membership structure, ERIAC will engage content contributors to provide valuable samples of Roma tangible and intangible heritage artifacts that will be included in the Europeana collection in the framework of WEAVE.

ERIAC’s role in the project consists of:

Connecting to the Roma community
Providing content
Being an expert on cultural community engagement

The items will be selected based on the following criteria: relevance and/or historical importance; authenticity (produced by Roma); quality of digitalization (meeting the standards); possibility of clearing the copyrights. ERIAC members will be invited to propose items to be included while the final selection will be supervised by ERIAC management (with experience and expertise in curating). An emphasis will be placed on contemporary objects, especially examples of contemporary art produced by Roma artists, to counterbalance the dominant folkloric/ ethnographic, and often stereotypical representation of Roma people.

This is relevant due to the following reasons:

a dominant part of the current items in Europeana collections website labelled as “Roma/ Gypsy” include items which are either produced by non-Roma (for example, ethnographic photographs of the Roma) or represent an imagined representation of the Roma (for example, works of art which fetishizes/ exotifies the imagined “Roma”, as a representation of an archetype/ stereotype);
Contemporary artistic practice is developed by Roma people themselves, giving an authentic and subjective representation of Roma identity and culture;

WEAVE is excited that ERIAC is partner and look forward to exploring the curated content, the collections and learning from them for the capacity-building strand of the project.

The VAST project joined the UNCHARTED network

The VAST project (Values Across Space and Time) is an international collaboration between eight partners from five countries: National Center for Scientific Research Demokritos (Greece), Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), Universidade NOVA de Lisboa – NOVA (Portugal), Fairytale Museum (Cyprus), Semantika (Slovenia), Museo Galileo (Italy) and Athens & Epidaurus Festival (Greece).

The project aims to study the transformation of moral values across space and time with specific focus on the core European values considered fundamental for the formation of sustainable communities and peaceful coexitance such as freedom, democracy, equality, tolerance, dialogue, human dignity, the rule of law and others. VAST envisions to bring values to the forefront in the field of advanced digitisation. By providing advanced modelling, methods, techniques and digital tools, enabling the collaborative study, annotation and continuous capture and digitisation of experiences, VAST will examine narratives that represent significant moments of European culture/history and narratives stemming from citizen experiences, to study how the meaning of specific values has been expressed through different narratives (Greek tragedies, 17th century Scientific Revolution texts, folktales) and user experiences (artists, spectators, curators, museum visitors, pupils).
The new collaboration between VAST and UNCHARTED is a good opportunity to enlarge the horizon of both projects and increase the sharing of experiences and knowledge in the mutual interest of the promotion of culture.
Read more…
VAST website

The importance of cultural heritage in the design of sustainable solutions and development of EU

Slovenian Presidency of the EU: presentation of priorities to the CULT Committee of the EU Parliament

Since the 1st July, Slovenia has taken the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union and last week Slovenian ministers for education, youth and for culture presented the priorities of the Slovenian Presidency to the Culture and Education (CULT) Committee of the European Parliament.
At the meeting the ministers highlighted the key points and goals on which Slovenia will focus over the next six months and stressed the importance of cultural rights and right to heritage as a central starting point for designing sustainable solutions for the EU’s development: “in designing sustainable solutions and turning the EU development, we must not overlook the importance of cultural heritage and its diversity in the EU ” from Slovenian Presidency website.

Two main topics have been identified:

the innovative potential of culture: in particular high quality construction and architecture, a topic strongly connected with the New European Bauhaus initiative, whose goal is to improve the living environment in cities and rural areas using architectural solutions;
the competitiveness of European audiovisual and media content in the global digital market.

More information: Slovenian Presidency and CULT.

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