Describe your organization and the unique work that it is doing. Who and what is affected by the work? How does/will the work impact people’s lives?

The idea of astroθeasis was born a bit after I graduated from the MA in Heritage Management, aiming to run a company in the cultural tourism industry of Greece. Over time, I realized that my vision for astrotheasis went beyond such a specific sector and thereon astrotheasis has been shaped as a group of young people, active in Youth projects, always related to cultural heritage topics. For all us, the concept of culture (“politismos”) is very important because it signifies the progress of discovering our roots, our stories, our identity; it’s a self-discovery process that aims to spiritually cultivate individuals who can live together, peacefully, and with respect for each other in a modern society. This is the philosophy of our team and what we are trying to transmit through our actions. Particularly, we encourage people to participate in cultural activities and being educated through them, to support cultural initiatives, to live their local heritage, to love it, to protect it and talk about that, to explore other peoples’ living traditions, to find commonalities and to accept the cultural diversity. Ever since astrotheasis was created, we have organized many interesting projects for which we are very proud. For example, we have created cultural events for local communities of Crete, addressing mostly to the young population. We have also designed and implemented museum education activities for children and young people of marginalized communities in Athens, such as Muslims and gypsy, collaborating with many museums and cultural institutions. Last but not least, we are honored to have been the beneficiary coordinator partner of a Youth Exchange under the Key Action 1 of the Erasmus + Programme of the EU. After all, we are convinced that culture has the potential to inspire people, to unlock and release their identity and by promoting it we can hope for more active citizens and a better society! 

Tell us about a project that has benefited from the training you received from us? Why was the project important? Was there anything unusual or surprising about the execution of this project?

In 2019 astrotheasis had the honor of coordinating “The project Communi(ty)cation of Cultures”, under the Erasmus + Programme of EU. It was a mobility project – Youth Exchange (Key Action 1) among 5 partners -Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, and Croatia- that took place in Athens (11/09/2019 – 18/09/2019). For me, as the official representative of astrotheasis, responsible for the execution of the project, this experience was the best opportunity to implement all the knowledge, the tools, and the skills which I had been qualified with from my training by The Heritage Management Organization the previous years. In all the stages of the project, from the writing of the application to the planning of the activities, the content development, the financial organization, and the logistics management, I was needed to recall and make very good use of the courses I had attended during my MA in Heritage Management. Courses such as Project Management, Strategy, Human Resources, Ethnography, Archaeological Management, etc. had prepared me to face the demands of the Erasmus + Programme. However, during the execution of the project, I surprisingly realized that, despite the formal skills and the knowledge which I had acquired from my studies, the most essential qualification was the skills of informal/non-formal learning. Communication, collaboration, team-work, leadership, and positive attitude were unexpectedly necessary. Although these skills result from a life-long experience, I am very happy to remember that their importance had been many times underlined during the training I have received from The Heritage Management Organization and that there are always an outcome of the education it offers.  

Has your organisation worked on any other projects that are innovative, globally significant and can be replicated in a local market?

The joined informal learning project “Communi(ty)cation of Cultures” was supported by the European Union Erasmus + Programme and therefore it includes a strong international dimension ( i.e. corporation with Partner Countries) with globally significant outcomes. Particularly, our project promoted the active participation of young people in the democratic life in Europe, enhanced the cultural and intercultural awareness, strengthened the links between the youth field and the labor market of the professional field of Cultural Heritage Management and increased innovation and the sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. As a result, through the overall experience, the participants, the organizations and the stakeholders involved in this project create a network of active citizens and actors who are very motivated to generate new collaborations and implement their ideas in the national level playing an active role in the local market. 

What are the global issues that your project addresses (e.g., fighting climate change, preserving heritage and culture, promoting local participation)?

The overall activity of astrotheasis is focused on two main global issues: the youth policy and the preservation of heritage and culture. Youth policy is essential for us because we believe in the positive impact youth participation makes in local affairs and society. Particularly, youth can be a positive force for development when provided with the knowledge and opportunities they need to thrive. Αstrotheasis is composed of young people and its projects address to them to create conditions for learning, opportunities, and experiences which enable all us to acquire useful knowledge and skills for our active involvement in decision-making processes. Additionally to our contribution to an open, knowledgeable and creative society, we are also very interested in preserving heritage and culture. We believe that both heritage and culture are important because they provide people with an automatic sense of exploring their identity, discovering their roots and their story and feeling part of a community that shares the same values, beliefs, and customs. Culture and heritage are the threshold of the self – knowledge and therefore facilitate people to recognize and respect “ways of being” that are not necessarily their own. The act of preserving culture and heritage enhances democracy, social inclusion, respect for cultural diversity and the active participation of people in society. In the astrotheasis team, we all love exploring cultural heritage topics and do our best to promote its value through our projects.  

30 of July 2020 – Despite the context generated by the global pandemic COVID-19, the members of the TEACH FOR FUTURE project consortium, ANBPR Romania, as a leader, GLBF Bulgaria and HERITAGE Greece as partners, worked together to collaboratively develop a Methodology for training adult trainers in the field of ICT. The purpose of this Methodology is to make it easier for trainer trainers to know and apply a suite of methods and techniques that are suitable for ICT modules, to stimulate innovation and to make activities more creative, easier to prepare and with beneficial effects on the level of involvement of adult participants in the training process.

The innovative Methodology approached in an intuitive and integrated way modern teaching methods and techniques applicable in adult education in the field of ICT, with specific reference to the key areas addressed by the project, namely: 3D modeling and printing, image editing, digital marketing, and online collaboration tools, respectively.

The experts of ANBPR and of its partners who contributed to the realization of this Methodology documented the specific needs of the adult beneficiaries from the 3 countries participating in the project, in correlation with the objectives established for adult education, and detailed, in a structured, intuitive and pedagogical way, the best technology teaching techniques, defined the stages of the ICT skills testing and certification process and provided revealing examples of good practices from the experience of ANBPR and its partners in the technology field. Another added value of the Methodology is the inclusion of a series of recommendations for Member States and stakeholders who intend to replicate the mechanism and activities of the TEACH FOR FUTURE  initiative.

Through its theoretical and applied content, the Methodology contributes significantly to understanding the basic notions about 3D printing technologies, identifying the main types of 3D printing technologies, knowledge of the main areas of applicability of 3D printing technologies, notions of creation, modification and saving objects, import and export of 3D models, knowledge and use of the basic components of a 3D printer and the manufacture of a 3D model, and solving various mechanical problems in the operation of 3D printers.

In terms of image editing, the Methodology outlined guidelines on understanding key concepts related to the use of digital images, graphic format options and color concepts, saving images in different formats, using toolbar display options, etc., capturing and saving images, using various selection tools, creating and using layers, using different methods of preparing images for printing or publishing.

In the section on Digital Marketing, the Methodology provided substantial space to describe and explain the various options for online presence and how to select the right keywords for search engine optimization, use of social media platforms and tools, with the aim of understanding how to that the effective management of social media can contribute to the promotion and generation of potential customers (leads) and sales commitments.

Regarding the Online Collaboration component, the Methodology defined and explained the need to use online storage applications and web productivity, the possibility to create online and mobile calendars for managing and planning activities, as well as modern and intuitive ways to collaborate remotely using social networks, blogs, etc., but also options for scheduling and organizing online meetings and e-learning activities.

The training methodology for ICT trainers, developed within the TEACH FOR FUTURE project, is an innovative non-formal learning product for adult trainers, a co-designed intellectual product with a great replication potential, scalable and contributing to the acquisition of a complex set of attitudes, skills, knowledge and behaviors.

Describe your organisation and the unique work that it is doing.  Who and what are affected by the work?  How does/will the work impact people’s lives?

My initiative ‘Heritage4Fun’ aims to promote active citizenship for the protection of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in Palestine. Through my several years of working with youth, I realized that a significant segment of Palestinian youth lack awareness about the value and importance of our cultural heritage, and more specifically the historic buildings. There are many causes for this, including seven decades of living under Israeli occupation, socio-economic conditions, and lack of cultural awareness. Therefore, this initiative is needed to enhance the role of young people in public life, and to be active citizens and partners in protecting our cultural heritage, to transfer it to the next generation. In doing so, it provides a volunteer platform, where young people share their ideas and initiatives to serve their local community. 

It is based in Jenin, North West Bank. Jenin receives very little attention from national and international bodies of the culture sector. Many historic sites have been demolished by locals to build commercial and residential compounds, such as Cinema Jenin. 

Tell us about a project that has benefited from the training you received from us?  Why was the project important?  Was there anything unusual or surprising about the execution of this project?

Using the knowledge I learned during my programme courses, in November 2017 I applied for a competition for Masters graduates from Arab countries, organised by the Arab Council for Social Sciences in Beirut, Lebanon and funded by Sida. My project proposal ‘Active Youth for Heritage Conservation’, on the theme of Youth and Urban Spatial Inequality, won the competition and received a grant. I conducted four workshops and two field trips for 110 students (boys and girls) from six public schools in Jenin governorate.  

Has your organisation worked on any other projects that are innovative, globally significant and can be replicated in a local market?

Currently, I am working with other small local NGOs to implement similar workshops at schools, and with two local universities. I shared my work in two regional venues in Egypt and Morocco. I hope in the future to create or participate in further collaborative work, either within the region or internationally. 

What are the global issues that your project addresses (e.g., fighting climate change, preserving heritage and culture, promoting local participation)?

Through designing cultural materials and educational training for youths in a way that makes learning about history and local cultural heritage more stimulative and enjoyable, I advocate for the protection of cultural heritage, and encourage young people to participate. This also promotes the role of women as partners in the protection of Palestinian cultural heritage. 

Moreover, I attempt in my initiative to address the issue of youth mental health. Thousands of people annually worldwide die by suicide, and Palestine is no exception. Therefore, fun is one of the main aspects and objectives of my work. In this video, students are singing a folklore song in a renovated palace in Sebastia, Palestine.

Beside this initiative, I research cultural heritage and development programmes in Palestine. My interests include religious folklore, commodification of culture, women’s’ economic empowerment, anti-colonial resistance, and preservation of cultural heritage. 

The Lebanon Mountain Trail Cultural Heritage Project

The mountains of Lebanon contain hundreds of archaeological and ancient cultural heritage sites dispersed between its valleys, on mountain tops, next to riverbeds and amid far away villages. In 2007, the Lebanon Mountain Trail association was created to protect and promote a 470 km hiking trail extending along this mountain range. Along this trail one can visit many of these discrete sites off the beaten path, varying between ancient roman temples, byzantine churches, rock-cut tombs, medieval silk factories, antique oil and wine presses and many more ancient gems. To understand its immense cultural heritage, an initial project was developed in 2015, in order to complete a full database of all the sites. A catalogue was developed, becoming in turn the basis for future archaeological scientific study in collaboration with the DGA, the Lebanese General Directorate of Antiquities. Sites were studied according to their endangered status, future recommendations were suggested and preservation techniques were developed with an educational task – creating cultural heritage awareness in the 76 villages found along the trail, leading to many economic opportunities in those communities in the tourism sector. The initial archaeological purpose became a tangible one, relating ancient stones with present humans once again. The project became a collaboration with the local communities of the mountains, empowering them in turn to feel responsible for their heritage, to preserve it for future generations to come.

Until today, only 20% of the archaeological and cultural heritage sites along the trail have been surveyed. Many of these sites are beginning to disappear or fade away, while municipal stakeholders and ministries have little to no budget, often forced to tackle more urgent issues in their communities with their available funding. To create further awareness for protective measures, additional cultural heritage strategic policies at municipal level as well as supplementary educational awareness tasks need to be implemented. The initial aim of creating a hiking trail that crosses the country from North to South was developed into a series of large-scale projects requiring the involvement of every stakeholder of this value chain for it to succeed. Therefore, the Lebanon Mountain Trail Association is in continuous need of financial support in order to achieve its final goal, of protecting and preserving the priceless environmental and cultural heritage of Lebanon.

After having participated in the executive leadership workshop in Athens, I have been able to acquire a much better perspective on how to tackle funding strategies for our heritage project. Thanks to the valuable tactical and extremely well organized presentations of our training mentors, I began to obtain a clearer sense of how to increase our funding possibilities. The workshop also enabled me to demonstrate my own ideas through a series of discussions, improving my policies in the process. We also were also able to benefit from the diversity of case studies that were introduced by other participants in the workshop who came from around the globe and introduced their projects. The cooperative atmosphere and the resulting collaboration between the various contributors led to a truly successful training.

The workshop on community engagement took place in the afternoon of the second day of the HerMa HUB conference, on 6 December 2019. Twenty groups and initiatives form Athens and various areas in Greece met at the newly refurbished conference room of the Workers Centre of Elefsina. The workshop was organized and moderated by Dr Aris Anagnostopoulos and Dr Lena Stefanou.

The central themes of the workshop were the methods employed by such groups in approaching local communities or the public in general, the difficulties they meet in their actions, and the prospects they see for the future.

Among the activities and approaches recorded to engage communities and publics were educational programs, oral histories, urban games, the opening of inaccessible buildings and sites for public visits, theatre and role-play, cooperation with local authorities or ambassadors, the revival of old customs, cultural walks and tours, festivals, crafts workshops, collaborative design, and digital communication platforms.

The issues the initiatives raised were many and very challenging: primarily economic in nature (fundraising, the lack of strategic planning and the lack of returns for local societies), but also strategic (lack of adequate vision and realistic planning); also, questions of the presence or lack of cooperation locally, the difficulty of cooperating with local authorities, the lack of experience in dealing with social issues (e.g. inequalities) and difficult heritage; the gamut of issues also touched upon access in a community and the acceptance of heritage projects (values and attitudes, varying aesthetic preferences, suspicion towards outsiders, and “closed” communities) as well as the lack of communication on various levels (the reception of actions by the public, the transference of specialized knowledge, ideological disagreements and conflicts).

The workshop closed with a brainstorming session and open discussion on the prospects and needs for further development of community engagement initiatives. The points participants touched upon were the need for a clear setting of goals and planning strategically, the development and exchange of skills and the re-evaluation of collaborations, training in economic management (business plans, management plans, and budgets) and sustainability; They also expressed the need for further networking and synergies amongst groups and initiatives, interdisciplinary approaches, communication tools to approach communities and publics as well as to gauge and measure the impact of heritage actions on local communities.

Describe your organisation and the unique work that it is doing.  Who and what are affected by the work?  How does/will the work impact people’s lives? 

We launched Peripatos in 2015 with the aim of applying contemporary practices and innovative approaches in disseminating and managing cultural heritage. Over the years, Peripatos has evolved, renewed, and travelled far, embraced by people and filled with stories. Today, Peripatos is a sociocultural enterprise that imagines, designs and implements cultural projects that serve society and its progress. Our projects are of cultural nature and express the values ​​of the community that hosts them with respect to the place and its environment. At the same time, our services are customised so as to add value to the partnering institution today, as well as long term.

Parallel to Peripatos I am working as a Business Consultant for Museums, Libraries, Archives Solutions at Uni Systems ICT company, where I am contributing to the digital transformation of cultural institutions and to the development of new products and services.

Tell us about a project that has benefited from the training you received from us?  Why was the project important?  Was there anything unusual or surprising about the execution of this project?

In 2016, Peripatos was selected to participate in the Tandem Turkey programme, and I travelled to Turkey as its representative. Tandem Turkey is one of the many sub-programmes of Tandem for Culture initiative, which is a cultural collaboration programme that strengthens civil society in Europe and neighbouring regions. It brings together cultural professionals from different countries to work together and implement pilot projects with a big impact. I formed a partnership with Esra from the women’s cooperative Özgür Kadın Kolektifi from Batman city of Eastern Turkey and together we proposed and got funding to implement The Hasankeyf Workshop project.

The Hasankeyf Workshop (Hasankeyf Atölyeleri) is an initiative to socially empower women of Hasankeyf in eastern Turkey through art workshops to express themselves and communicate the cultural heritage of their beautiful, historic village. The importance of the project was twofold, to support the self-expression and personal development of the women of this local community, and to advocate for the cultural heritage of Hasankeyf: a place under threat because of the Ilisu hydroelectric dam that begun operations in 2018. For this project, a total of 185 settlements in the area evacuated, including Hasankeyf, as the whole place will flood, submerging the entire cultural heritage of the region and disrupting its social cohesion.

The training I received from the MA in Heritage Management helped me in a number of ways. Firstly I was able to assess the stakeholders’ dynamics and implement a project that would support women’s need for creative outlet and link this with the greater situation happening in Hasankeyf. Through my project management class I had the tools to organise and manage a complex project involving the funding bodies, two implementing organisations, visiting trainers and the local community. The courses I had in museum management and museum education were the base of my training in designing and delivering the outreach programme of the project (art workshops, cooperative exhibition, short documentary, etc.).

One challenge Peripatos faced during the execution of this project was the financial management of the funding, as during this time there was capital control in Greece limiting us transferring money in Turkey. With my colleague, fellow alumna of the masters programme and Peripato’s managing director, Evangelia Pelentridou, we had to implement risk management practices to move forward with the project’s timeline and implementation. 

At this point I would like to highlight the fact that I met my colleague and partner in Peripatos, Evangelia through the MA in Heritage Management and during our work in The Heritage Management Organization. Together we envisioned of what Peripatos is today. 

Has your organisation worked on any other projects that are innovative, globally significant and can be replicated in a local market?

Peripatos has designed and implemented a series of projects both in Greece and abroad. Our services are customised so as to add value to the partnering institution today as well as long term, taking into account the values ​​of the community that hosts them with respect to the place and its environment. Thus we are able to both replicate and scale up our projects in any type of context and place.

Just to name some of our implementations, we enjoyed the most:

• The MemoArt Project (2015-2016), a project that highlights intangible cultural heritage elements in Stuttgart through the Start – Create Cultural Change Scholarship Program and later in Corfu under the auspices of the Municipality of Corfu, was our first international implementation. 
• After that was The Hasankeyf Workshop (2016-2017) in Turkey. We returned to the Tandem Turkey project with the project Mardin Pasaji (2018-2019) in collaboration with Diadrasis NGO, a participatory socio-cultural action to raise awareness for the youth of the city of Mardin about the importance of their city’s architectural heritage and cultural identity. 
• In 2019, in Amsterdam and Verona we designed and implemented a series of creative personal expression workshops, utilising the emotional benefits of art under the CRISALIS programme, which aims at social inclusion and empowerment of 12 female survivors of trafficking. 
• Our collaborations with the Tegea Archaeological Museum (2017) and the Milos Mining Museum (2018-2019) have also been important projects. We designed a series of cultural activities, such as an escape room within the museums for adults, museum educational programme, backpacks for families and museums in Greek, English and French to be sent to schools in Greece and abroad, thus approaching audiences of various ages and interests of the local community of Arcadia and Milos. 
• In Athens, we have worked in a large number of schools in various areas through the Open Schools Program (2016 – 2019) of the Municipality of Athens, as implemented by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Athens Partnership, and the Latsis Foundation. We have implemented training programmes and summer camps on a variety of topics, such as Archeology, Olympism, Nature’s Ecosystems and the LandArt art movement.

What are the global issues that your project addresses (e.g., fighting climate change, preserving heritage and culture, promoting local participation, )?

Peripatos seeks to promote and manage the sociocultural heritage, since a cultural element is not completely understood outside the social frame that shaped it and there is no group, community or society lacking cultural creation and creativity. Nature is always present, completing the triptych that forms our work. In our work, we advocate access to cultural matters, gender issues, and inclusion; using cooperative, participatory methods, recycling and sustainability with responsible use of materials in our programmes.