Vicky Papadimitriou
Managing Director at Symvoli, Cultural Society of Entrepreneurs of Northern Greece and Theophano Foundation

Community engagement gradually becomes a mainstay in the public programs of heritage institutions worldwide. A variety of methods and good practices have been developed to successfully engage the bewildering variety of communities and publics that such institutions address. Still, the uncritical application of “toolkits” for effective engagement is perhaps not the ethically appropriate way to incorporate cultural difference in the field. In this hybrid program, we aim to develop a different approach to community engagement, that is based on social and artistic research with community-led initiatives. Research-led practice can lead to exhibition design and collaborative actions that are better suited to the cultural and social particularities of each milieu and each specific group or community and its relation to others. This course draws from our long experience with community engagement through heritage and will discuss several examples from our own and other work.