We are looking for initiatives that bring together groups of citizens or small circles of cultural mediators (intellectuals, policy makers, artists, activists, journalists) to discuss pressing and controversial issues of contemporary societies, fragmentation, populism, exclusion, new narratives and languages, roadmaps and manifestos. We are especially looking for initiatives that use a site of memory (be it tangible or intangible heritage) to create a protected environment, an empowering setting, a space in which people feel safe to enter into a dialogue about conflict issues with other participants who hold opposing opinions. Areas of conflict can be positioned under the headings Civic Space & Gentrification, Nationalism & Revisionism, Post Communism, Social Heritage & Religious Identities, Colonialism & Contested Monument and Abuse & Exploitation.
Case studies instrumentalise heritage as a laboratory, a workshop in which nothing is set and all is in motion and thus historic transgression becomes possible. In these cases heritage environments offer an “objectifying” space in which the individual perspective is taken serious but not absolute, because it is experienced in relation to a historic perspective.
Case studies will be presented in a comparative overview including an introduction to highlight main findings. Based on the comparative overview and making use of the various sections of the template a variety of options, modules, will be formulated in fiches. These will be discussed and edited by all partners and published in a toolkit here on the project website and a brochure together with a user guide.
If you are working with objects and communities or heritage as a space of encounter, we invite you to fill out our survey.
For more information, visit the project website.
