Digital meets Culture

The ROCK project sees historic city centres as laboratories to demonstrate how Cultural Heritage can be an engine of regeneration, sustainable development and economic growth. ROCK approach foresees the systemic and flexible application of a series of role-model practices in the testing sites of three Replicator cities, to turn historic city centres afflicted by physical decay, social conflicts and poor life quality into Creative and Sustainable Districts.
This book, edited by UNIBO, highlights the major result of the ROCK project: it includes essays, practices descriptions, reflections from the project as well as a series of lessons learned from the ROCK cities and tools.
It is part of the CPCL Series, published in Open Access by TU Delft Open Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology.
Reach the book here.

#i-Portunus Houses call for applications: two days left to the round 1 deadline

The pilot project i-Portunus, financed by the European Commision, supports artists mobility focused on creating, connecting, learning and/or exploring.
i-Portunus Houses is open to hosts (organisation or established individual artists/cultural professionals) to team up with 2 to 5 artists and/or cultural professionals, legally residing in different Creative Europe countries + UK, with the intention to work together on one or more collaboration projects. The scheme is open for all cultural sectors (except audio-visual sectors), approaches and working modalities. To participate is required to organised a project with a hosting organization or with a partner in another Creative Europe Country.
Under this new pilot scheme two similar calls have been launched, to enlarge the opportunities for physical mobility:

Round 1: Friday 21 May – Wednesday 30 June
Round 2: Monday 23 August – Sunday 3 October

Throughout both submission periods, a series of online peer-moderated i-Portunus Market Square events is offered. The i-Portunus Market Square events are info- and matching sessions for hosts, artists and cultural professionals to identify, form and prepare new teams for successfully co-designing and submitting a joint collaboration proposal. These events are not mandatory.

In the framework of round 1 the main objective of the collaboration project has to be one of the following:

Create: (co-)creation of artistic work, production, performance
Connect: networking, internationalisation
Learn: increase competences, professional development
Explore: research, future collaborations/projects

Apply Now!!
More information here

The Programme is online!

The 2021 MARE People & the Sea Conference

The 11th MARE People and the Sea Conference will take place from the 28th of June to 2nd of July, 2021. This year, the conference will be held virtually and will focus on the theme “Limits to Blue Growth?”. For decades sustainable development has served as guiding concept for policy makers, including those concerned in coastal and ocean governance. At the same time, the ‘blue economy’ and ‘blue growth’ have nowadays become popular concepts in marine policy. Notions on blue growth especially ask attention for new uses of the oceans, such as renewable energy (wind at sea), deep sea mining and deep-sea fishing but also aim at highlighting ecosystem services that have societal value (coastal protection, CO2 storage and biodiversity). The concept aims to reconcile two seemingly opposing uses of the oceans: exploitation and conservation, in the same way as was intended with the use of ‘sustainable development’. The concept also seems to promise that there still is a new, not yet reached frontier for economic expansion.

MARE Policy Day 2021: Coastal & Maritime Cultural Heritage
As always, the MARE Conference is accompanied by a Policy Day. This year theme is Coastal & Maritime Cultural Heritage.

MARE, the Centre for Maritime Research, is an interdisciplinary social science organisation interested in the use and management of marine resources. Its objective is to provide a stimulating intellectual climate for academics and policymakers working on topics related to coasts and seas. Although MARE limits its action radius to the social sciences, it seeks active collaboration with other disciplines. It strives to maintain a balanced mix of academic and policy-oriented research. MARE takes a global perspective, emphasising the coastal zones of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It covers a broad spectrum of topics, drawing on expertise from fields such as law, history, economics, political science, public administration, anthropology, and geography.

Mare Conference programme and schedule here.
For more information about the theme and the policy day program, please click here.
MARE website

A female director for the Louvre!

The Louvre is about to get its first female director for the first time since its opening in 1793. Laurence des Cars, current head of the Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, was recently appointed by President Macron as the future leader of the world’s greatest museum and will start her new position on September 1^st.
Laurence des Cars’ focus for the future of the Louvre is threefold :

increase access to young adults and teenagers, a segment of population whose opportunities and well-being have been particularly hit by the Covid crisis
strengthen the process of restituting Nazi-looted art. As the Director of the Musée d’Orsay, des Cars initiated and spurred the restitution of the only Klimt painting owned by a French museum (Orsay) to the heirs of the former owner Nora Stiasny
present exhibitions that resonate with and address current societal events

Under her leadership, the Musée d’Orsay has seen its number of visitors increase every year, reaching 3.7 million visitors in 2019, year of the acclaimed exhibition Posing Modernity : the Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today. Trying to appeal and serve younger and more diverse audiences was already a big focus for des Cars at Orsay : her last and latest capital project for the Parisian institution (titled Orsay Wide Open and made possible by a 20 million euros donation) is a new building comprising – amongst other things – of an 650 square meters educational center dedicated to young people. This new site is set to open in 2024.

Investments focus is on accelerating the green and digital transitions and support resilience and sustainable recovery

Horizon Europe Work Programmes approved by the EC

Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner. Ph. Christophe Licoppe, European Union, 2021 Copyright. Source: EC – Audiovisual Service

The first Horizon Europe Work Programmes for the period 2021-2022 were approved by the European Commission and are already published on the Funding and Tenders portal. These investments will help accelerate the green and digital transitions and will contribute to sustainable recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and to EU resilience against future crises.

Especially of interest for the cultural sector is the Cluster 2 dedicated to Culture, Creativity and Inclusive society. This cluster aims to strengthen European democratic values, including rule of law and fundamental rights, safeguarding our cultural heritage, and promoting socio-economic transformations that contribute to inclusion and growth. The expected impacts of this cluster are contained in the Horizon Europe strategic plan.

Areas of intervention

democracy
cultural heritage
social and economic transformations

The first calls for proposals will open on the Commission’s Funding and Tenders Portal on 22 June. The European Research and Innovation Days on 23 and 24 June will also mark the occasion to discuss Horizon Europe amongst policymakers, researchers, innovators and citizens.

Finally, the Horizon Europe Information Days dedicated to potential applicants will take place between 28 June and 9 July. The 10-day event will give the opportunity to prospective applicants, and other stakeholders of EU research and innovation, to receive information and ask questions about the novelties, main funding instruments and processes of Horizon Europe.

“The societal value of culture and the impact of cultural policies in Europe”: UNCHARTED at EVA 2021 Florence International online Conference

On June 14^th 2021, the UNCHARTED project was presented at EVA Florence 2021, the “Foremost European Electronic Imaging Events in the Visual Arts”. The Conference was held at Palazzo del Pegaso, Regional Council of Tuscany, Florence and attended by participants on line.
The key aim of this yearly meeting is to provide a Forum for the user, supplier and scientific research communities to debate and exchange experiences, ideas and plans in the wide area of Culture & Technology. Participants receive up to date news on new EC and international arts computing & telecommunications initiatives as well as on projects in the visual arts field, in archaeology, history and other culture activities. It represents an important opportunity to promote working groups, new projects, technology and art exhibitions as well as to present scientific and technical demonstrations.
In this general context the UNCHARTED project was introduced by the Technical Coordinator, Antonella Fresa from Promoter srl, in the framework of session 5 “Access to the culture information” chaired by Enrico Del Re, University of Florence. After a brief description of the mission and the topic of research, Dott. Fresa presented the activities and events planned for the next future, in particular it was announced the first UNCHARTED workshop that will be held in Porto on September 2021 and will be the occasion to presents and discuss the first outputs of the project.
Download the presentation here.
Visit the UNCHARTED website regularly to follow the progress of the project and subscribe the Newsletter.

The 2021 Special Prizes shortlist is out!

The ILUCIDARE Consortium including Europa Nostra, and the European Commission are delighted to present the shortlisted projects for the 2021 edition of the ILUCIDARE Special Prizes, awarded within the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards!
Being co-funded by the Creative Europe and the Horizon 2020 programmes, the ILUCIDARE Special Prizes are a concrete example of how synergies can be built among EU programmes to enhance their impact.
The European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards are run by Europa Nostra in partnership with the European Commission since 2002 and are widely recognised as Europe’s top honour in the field of cultural heritage.

The 9 shortlisted projects for the ILUCIDARE Special Prizes 2021 are:

Heritage-led innovation
- 3D reconstruction of the Maison du Peuple – Horta Museum, Brussels, Belgium
- Basilica of Santa Croce, Lecce, Italy
- HAP4MARBLE – Marble Conservation by Hydroxyapatite, Italy
- AP Valletta, Malta
Heritage-led international relations
- Northern Lebanon Project, Italy / Lebanon
- Friends of Bryggen and the Bryggen Foundation, Bergen, Norway
- Preservation of the Wine Cellars of Negotinska Krajina, Serbia
- Leather Painting Restoration in the Hall of the Kings of the Alhambra, Spain

EU-LAC Museums − Museums, Community & Sustainability in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, United Kingdom
Read more…
Download the press release

web-based solutions for presenting digital content

Meet WEAVE Team: the coordinator IN2

Every couple of weeks the WEAVE team will publish a blog post which will feature a partner of the WEAVE consortium. This first blog item features the project coordinator IN2 (https://in-two.com), based in Germany.

IN2’s mission is to provide software solutions that simplify how businesses and people collect, organise, discover and present digital content. IN2 builds cutting-edge scalable software for the web & mobile. The company covers the whole spectrum of application development and provisioning from human-centered-design, user interaction, software development and deployment from our own private cloud (DevOps). IN2 has a strong experience in R&D activities and the transfer of that knowledge to the market and is working closely with top universities, actively shaping European funded research in the fields of social media, digital content, digital culture, and cultural heritage. Previous work includes building a flexible framework for multimedia management and publishing, social media sensing and social media analysis, semantic annotation of web content using linked data, semantic recommendation engines, and aggregating archives of media art and building one‐stop destinations for accessing and reusing thematic content.

IN2 has coordinated the Europeana Generic Services project CultureMoves and was the main technical partner providing the underlying tools for content re-use. Previously we have successfully coordinated the H2020 project EMMA, which developed a platform that uses interactive storytelling and AI to better connect and engage with audiences through more compelling content and experiences (a result of this project was the now commercially available Tellit service – https://tellitapp.com/about).

The coordinator of WEAVE is Dr. George Ioannidis, a senior manager with many years of experience in multi-partner collaborative projects. The project also names Dr. Konstantina Geramani from IN2, who has extensive expertise in knowledge transfer and business modelling, as the sustainability manager of the project and Alexandru Stan as the main person responsible for the technical work.

Feel free to contact George (gi@in-two.com) for any questions about WEAVE.

Cover Photo by Marvin Meyer

online, 16-17 June 2021

Europeana Aggregators Fair

On June 16 – 17, the Europeana Aggregators’ Forum will open their virtual doors to cultural heritage professionals and anyone with an interest in high quality, open cultural heritage content at the Europeana Aggregators’ Fair.

The event is a a great opportunity to find out more about how high quality cultural heritage content is being made accessible to new audiences through Europeana, and how you can get involved. An exciting programme will give participants the opportunity to listen to inspiring speakers, join panel discussions, take in training webinars and ask questions of the people working in aggregation.

If you’re interested in bringing your content to new audiences, meeting the people who work behind the scenes to make cultural heritage available through Europeana and receiving guidance and training from experts in this field, register now!

Coordinated by the European Commission

“Towards gender equality in the cultural and creative sectors” the new report by the OMC working group of Member States’ experts

The report “Towards gender equality in the cultural and creative sectors” focuses on the role that culture plays in promoting gender equality and how to achieve gender equality within the cultural and creative sectors.

It was drafted by the OMC (open method of coordination) working group of Member States’ experts and implements the Council Work plan for culture 2019-2022 when, for the first time, the promotion of gender equality and the fight against gender discrimination were identified as goals of the EU, including in culture.
The document focusses on the following key challenges:

gender stereotypes
sexual harassment
access to the labour market and the gender pay gap
access to resources
access to leadership positions and female entrepreneurship

A chapter is dedicated to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women working in the cultural and creative sectors.

The report provides recommendations on how to achieve gender equality and diversity and use the potential of culture and arts as a vector for promoting these values.

It also displays an overview of over 250 good practices from all over the EU.

More information at https://ec.europa.eu/culture/news/new-report-recommends-how-close-gender-gaps-cultural-and-creative-sectors

Download the report here.