Gonies is located on the northern flanks of the mountain Psiloritis on the island of Crete, an hour’s drive from the capital Heraklion. Until the 1960s, the village was a thriving place, where people mostly lived on agricultural activities. The social life took place in several shops, taverns, and coffee shops located in the village. However, socio-economic changes and reduced incomes from traditional agricultural activities motivated many young residents to move to the cities or even abroad, resulting in a rising average age of the people who stayed and still stay in the beautiful village. The village and its immediate surroundings are rich in cultural heritage and many stories are told from generation to generation about all aspects of life and landscape. With fewer and fewer people living in Gonies, these stories are threatened to be forgotten and lost. That’s why HERITAGE organizes intensive campaigns, summer courses and workshops to capture these stories through interviews and creating a digital archive. While the content of this archive is initially considered non-spatial, they form the perfect starting point for creating a virtual ‘storytelling’ environment, where folklore is literally tied to spatial locations.

 

To kickstart this process, HOGENT students and faculty used digital tools to model Gonies heritage (laser scanning, image 3D modeling and GIS). These techniques are being used to create a digital 3D model of the entire village. Furthermore, several buildings have been measured down to the smallest detail, resulting in a large series of architectural orthopics and digital elevation models of multiple facades.

The third and final TEACH FOR FUTURE project Mentoring Campus took place from 6 to 10 June at the American Farm School’s “Dimitris and Aliki Perrotis” Library in Thessaloniki, Greece.

During the session which was coordinated by HERITΛGE, the librarians of the American Farm School presented the history of the Foundation and ways of utilizing its Historical Archive for the educational process, as well as their educational activities and initiatives. The head of the library, Damiana Koutsomiha, talked about the role of librarians in the new digital age and coordinated a workshop entitled “Time Management for Librarians”.

40 beneficiaries from Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania, were selected from more than 300 people who participated in the individual local educational activities of the program. They had the opportunity to practice and broaden their skills in innovation management and networking, to further enhance their ability to develop new innovative products/services, and to use the right collaboration tools, in line with technological developments and requirements of the labor market.

The campus was organized by HERITΛGE, in collaboration with the Romanian National Association of Librarians and Public Libraries (ANBPR) and Global Libraries – Bulgarian Foundation, with the support of the American School of Agriculture and the International Hellenic University and under the guidance of Dr. Emmanuel Garoufallos , President of the Department of Library, Archives and Information Systems of the International University of Greece.

*TEACH FOR FUTURE program is co-funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+.

 

 

Our recent publication Making Heritage Together: Archaeological Ethnography and Community Engagement with a Rural Community, by Routledge, is co-authored by Aris Anagnostopoulos, Lena Stefanou and Evangelos Kyriakidis. It has been long in the making, and the distillation of many years of community engagement and collaborative knowledge creation with a rural mountain community in central Crete, Greece. The project this book stems from is archaeological research initiated in 2011 by Evangelos, aiming to investigate and publish the material from three Minoan peak sanctuaries in the wider area. From quite early on, the project involved ethnographic research to inform and enrich the archaeological record, but soon enough the community took over and pushed the ethnography towards more recent tangible and intangible heritage.

This book aims to record and discuss the methods and activities of ethnographic research that spans nearly a decade. We show the rationale behind setting up collaborative actions in the field and present the strengths and the shortcomings of our research and activity. It shares methods from artistic research, ethnographic action research, and experimental archaeology and tries to spell out in detail the steps taken and the local, regional, and national context in which these were set out. Essentially it aims to show how ethnographic research should be an initial and central part of every heritage project as a method that both creates spaces for the production of knowledge on an equal par, as well as enables heritage workers to understand better the local context, as well as the needs, capacities and hopes of the people they work with.

Making Heritage Together is the second book in a series of planned publications, in dialogue and critical engagement with the first one in the series A Community Empowerment approach to Heritage Management, that Evangelos wrote in 2019, and anticipating the third, mainly archaeological book that is forthcoming. It shows how even a small project like this profits from multiple takes, approaches, and methodologies, to produce good practices and aephoric developments that are in sync with local communities.

Order now.

 

The online 3-day workshop on “Organizing Temporary Exhibitions from your Collections and Touring Strategies” took place from 18 to 26 May 2022, and was organized exclusively for Iranian cultural heritage managers.

18 heritage managers from Iran have been trained on how temporary exhibitions can enhance and promote the mission of a cultural organization, create new audiences, build partnerships and potentially generate revenue.

The format of the workshop was discursive and participatory. All participants were invited and encouraged to bring their own ideas and projects for discussion and development, allowing them to engage further with a more emotional understanding of the training they received. During the days of the workshop participants were trained on building an organizational strategy for exhibition making, as well as partnership building, and explored the process behind making temporary exhibitions for display at home and for tour. This included identifying exhibition objectives, shaping the narrative and content to create a compelling visitor experience, as well as strategies for touring exhibitions nationally and internationally.

The workshop has been conducted by Dana Andrew.

Dana Andrew, is an independent museum consultant and trainer specializing in temporary and touring exhibitions and international projects. Based in Dublin, Ireland, she is Professional Development Manager, trainer and mentor for TEG (Touring Exhibitions Group) and part-time Executive Director of ICOM UK (International Council of Museums UK). Supporting museums, galleries and cultural organizations to develop successful projects and programs with impact, and having the vision, structure and processes in place to do this, is the main focus of Dana’s consultancy and training work.

The workshop’s guest lecturers were Dr Moya Carey and Maria Blyzinsky.

Dr Moya Carey, is Curator of Islamic Collections at the Chester Beatty in Dublin. In 2022, she curated the exhibition “Meeting in Isfahan: Vision and Exchange in Safavid Iran”. Previously (2009-2018) she worked as the Iran Heritage Foundation Curator for the Iranian Collections, at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. In 2017, she published “Persian Art: Collecting the Arts of Iran for the V&A”, a book about British collecting activities in late nineteenth-century ajar Iran. In 2019, this was awarded the International
Book of the Year prize in Iran. Dr Carey is interested in visual culture in all media, most particularly carpets, metalwork and the arts of the book, as well as the cultural contexts surrounding later appropriations, reuse and object biography.

Maria Blyzinsky, is a heritage consultant and independent curator specializing in exhibitions and interpretation. Her career began as a curator for the Royal Observatory Greenwich, where she now holds the post of Curator Emeritus. Later, as Head of Exhibitions for Royal Museums Greenwich, she managed a team of interpretation specialists, project managers and designers responsible for delivering a busy program of special exhibitions, gallery upgrades and touring shows. In 2007, Maria co-founded The Exhibitions Team, an association of independent museum professionals with a passion for exhibitions, collections and interpretation. She is a published author and is currently writing a book about generating ideas for exhibitions, due to be published in 2023.

On World African Heritage Day, the Heritage Management Organization is happy to announce that 41 heritage and cultural managers in Banjul, Barra and Janjanbureh attended its 3-day “Engaging Communities in Cultural Heritage” workshops.

“This workshop addresses the needs of the country’s heritage organizations and local groups as they themselves set them out in a survey we conducted to establish the sector’s specific training needs. As a result, we are delighted to be offering this workshop and to be working with multiple and very diverse stakeholders including the NCAC, Banjul, Janjanbureh, Lower Niumi, and Basse local communities, as well as the festival committees of Barra and Janjanbureh, tour guide groups and local heritage-related business managers,” said Evangelos Kyriakidis, the Heritage Organization’s Director.

The workshops, which are held online, are part of the Heritage Management Organization’s “HerMaP Gambia” program, which aims to develop the business skills of heritage and cultural managers working for civil society organizations in The Gambia. The aim is to enable them to establish and better support heritage and cultural enterprises. It is hoped that supporting enterprise-building based on the Gambia’s cultural heritage will promote greater community solidarity and eventually provide opportunities that will help reduce the number of people being lost to The Gambia through brain drain.

“The HerMaP project is a unique opportunity for us to engage with the incredibly diverse heritage sector of the Gambia, a country extremely rich in traditions, oral history, poetry, song, and dance among others. It is extremely encouraging to see the engagement of the Gambian stakeholders who ultimately will have ownership of this program. It is here important to thank all stakeholders in this program, and the European Commission for making it possible,” Kyriakidis added.

During the workshop, which was held online, participants familiarized themselves with the context of community engagement through heritage, the importance of values in community initiatives, discussed methodologies based on ethnography and oral history, and engaged in practical exercises aimed at understanding the communities they work with and producing multimedia content with the guidance of the instructors.

“We need to redouble our efforts at proper management of our cultural heritage. This will enable our younger generation to benefit from it since it will also promote tourism’’, said Saloum Sheriff Janko program manager Artists in Alliance for Arts and Culture.

The project is co-funded by the European Union with  some funding partly matched by the UN Economic Commission for Africa. It is being realized in partnership with the National Centre for Arts and Culture.

“Engaging Communities in Cultural Heritage” Summer School

Arezoo Khazanbeig, Architect

With the aim to broaden my knowledge in the field of heritage preservation and to develop further my personal project which is called “Workshop on Regeneration”, I participated in the “Engaging Communities in Cultural Heritage Summer School” offered by HERITΛGE in July 2021. As an architect, I am mostly interested in the preservation of heritage in rural settings, and to this end I have co-organized several workshops aiming to regenerate rural neighborhood and abandoned villages. In my work, I realized the importance of community and the engagement of rural inhabitants in the process of rural regeneration and heritage preservation and this is one of the main reasons why I joined this summer school.

The villages of Iran forget their wise and sustainable methods of living. They are transforming from primary producers to mass consumers. Neglecting the value of their vernacular heritage, the rural population is leaving for the cities. Villages are left abandoned for the sake of unbalanced development. We tried to overcome the issue by designing “Workshop on REGENERATION,” a bottom-up, teamwork process whose primary aim is to frame the problem in the context of conservation, sustainability, indigenous construction, and resiliency. Besides this, it aims to investigate possible solutions through lectures, discussions, and hands-on work. These yearly workshops are also the starting point for interdisciplinary collaboration and practical effectiveness.

 

The workshop makes different groups of people work together and encourages them to get involved in a specific issue, which is vital in sustainable development. It has been designed to make a link between professionals, academicians and locals to form a bond of mutual respect and perception. Professionals and heritage practitioners will find here an alternative influence through working in a rural context, and local populations will revive their relationships with the heritage values of their properties.

 

 

In these projects, the regeneration and the restoration of public spaces – like the watermill of Sarar in the centre of the village – was completed successfully through the cooperation of academia and local craftsmen. However, the lack of comprehensive and inclusive communication and community engagement as the principal users of these sites were noticeable. Also noticeable was the dissatisfaction and disapproval of the community and the inhabitants, as well as their apathy towards the future of the project.

My participation in the summer course illustrated to me the importance of the ethnographic study, oral histories as well as media and digitalization in the research and preservation of heritage today. All these aspects emphasize the participation of the communities as the main users and inhabitants of heritage sites; in other words, they are the “authors” of these places not only during the restoration and preservation projects but also in their maintenance and their long-term sustainability.

Moreover, I noticed the importance of oral historical and ethnographic research to engage locals further in the process of highlighting the values of tangible heritage especially in rural neighbourhood where enough written historical information and archives do not exist.

At the end, all the study materials, case studies and lectures together with the possibility of practicing all the learned topics with the inhabitants of Paros in small groups, turned into a special experience. Subsequently, I believe with applying the essence of this course on the “Workshop on Regeneration” project, not only the community will engage with the project in a comprehensive and inclusive way, but also the projects themselves will progress in more sustainable ways.