News

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Artistic Residency in Madrid, Day 1

The first day of our week-long artistic residency started with a brief introduction of the project’s expected outcome and main goals, followed by a session of short presentations of the designers themselves, to get to know each other.

Our designers from Austria, Hungary, Malta, Norway, Portugal and Spain at Loom Princesa, Madrid.
Product presentation by Siegfried Gruber

After this introductory phase, the first product presentations were scheduled – beginning with the two Austrian designers Mr Hansjörg Schwab and Mr Siegfried Gruber (photo):

Followed by the designers from Hungary: Ms Dóra Rea Kövér and Ms Zsófia Neuzer (photo):

The presentations were each followed by a question-and-answer session, while later on the whole group deepened the impressions in 2 short brainstorming sessions.

The final activity of the first day was the common visit to the Museo del Prado‘s permanent collection, trying to get new impressions and inspiration for other merchandise products to be commonly developed in the course of the artistic residency.

The participants of the project’s artistic residency, accompanied by our Spanish project leaders.

Stay tuned for further updates…

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Artistic Residency, Madrid, 17th – 21st February 2020:

image c/o Innovación Colaborativa S.L. "LOOMHouse" Paseo de la Castellana, 257, 28046 Madrid

The coworking space “Loom Princesa” in the centre of Madrid will be the steam boiler of creative energy during the upcoming week of 17th to 21st of February 2020.

Our 12 selected graphic and industrial designers from Austria, Hungary, Malta, Norway, Portugal and Spain will get together to present, evaluate and discuss prototypes of merchandising objects based on key documents from the project partners’ archival holdings.

The fine line our creative minds had to balance while preparing named objects was, how to bridge a historical context depicted by an archival document into merchandise with out-of-the-box changeovers, but without unhinging the relevance the archival treasure has in view of our shared European heritage! Not an easy task – but we are expectantly looking forward to a variety of solutions and products to be presented during and after the residency- as each designer has his/her own creative focus, preferred working method and material, educational background etc.!

… read more about the artistic residence here…

Factsheet

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Way to go! Activities’ update No 1: Exhibitions

The first year of our project has passed and we would like to share some of our experiences, achievements and activities with you:

Starting point for all our efforts concerning the enhancement of the visibility of archival treasures was the selection of such documents from the vast holdings of the participating archives. During the preparation phase even before the official start of  the project in October 2018, the partners agreed on 3 different thematic areas that would be the basis for the 3 planned interactive, multimedia exhibitions:

  • The construction of Europe – History, Memory and Myth of Europeanness over 1000 years

  • Exiles, Migratory flows and Solidarity

  • European Discoveries: From the New World to New Technologies

All partner institutions made a first pre-selection of unique, noteworthy and so-far hidden archival documents, creating a pool of storytelling objects to draw from. The three lead partners of the different exhibitions then made a second and final selection, reaching a number of about 40 documents per topic/exhibition.

Currently three expert historians, hired by the exhibition lead partners, are in charge of the contextualisation of the documents and creating a common thread to link the objects with the story of each exhibition. Additionally our partners from the Cork Institute of Technology are working on the trans-medial part of the exhibitions – featuring videogames and interactive storytelling – to attract also the younger generation.

The year 2020 will see the finalisation of the exhibitions, to have them circle around Europe by the beginning of 2021!

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Join in, silver researchers!

For many people the prospect of retirement from work gives an opportunity to seek fresh directions and new challenges. Archives seem to become an increasingly popular place to pursue such new ro(o)utes (key word: genealogy). Our project is keen to explore and co-shape these routes together with the silver researchers.

More and more people spend their active life in retirement and many of them wish to pursue existing or new hobbies, leisure and volunteering activities. Furthering one’s own education at the same time is equally important.

There are already a lot of retirees that use the archives actively, for research on local or family history for example. Also, there are certain groups of volunteers (i.e. retired historians) that support archives in crowd sourcing activities such as the identification of certain items on pictures, etc. “Silver researchers bring both great delight into our reading rooms and proof to be of great help for the archive.”, affirms Ole Gausdal from the National Archive of Norway.

As the archives increasingly adapt to the digital age, it seems though that many of the elderly generation are faced with the challenges of new technologies. The archives clearly need to adapt to their active and potential users and explore together how to improve their cooperation with user communities and keep opening their doors for the silver researchers.

A survey to identify fields of interest of archive users

To learn more about the nature of silver researchers in archives, our project has set up an online survey to identify pan-European fields of interests and acquire more knowledge about the specific needs of this specific user community. 

If you are part of the silver researcher community (60+ years old), please be kindly invited to take part in our survey. Your participation will be an important contribution to further amplify the services of archives as well as enhance the cooperation between the public and archives in the digital age.

Online survey

Note: The survey is open until 15 December 2019.

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#eudigitaltreasures at the ICARUS Convention #24

Hosted by the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade and Historical Archives of Belgrade, this year´s second ICARUS Convention tackled all topics related to digital platforms and digital research of archival sources, challenges of archives in the digital societies, international cooperation networks and initiatives creating new ways to use digital sources and bring history closer to the public.

This convention was an excellent opportunity to invite a large audience to join us in unlocking the treasures kept in archives!
Our colleagues from the General Sub-directorate of the Spanish State Archives in the Ministry of Culture and Sports and the National Archives of Hungary took the stage to share what´s new and next in our project.

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#eudigitaltreasures at joint meeting EAG/EBNA

EBNA meetings are organised twice a year in the country that holds the presidency of the Council of the EU. On the agenda are issues of strategic importance in the field of archives, such as digitisation and digitalisation, storage of electronic documents, document theft, disaster preparedness and standards. The European Archives Group (EAG) as an official Commission expert group that ensures cooperation and coordination on matters relating to archives often meets on the occasion of EBNA meetings.

This time our project partner the National Archives of Finland hosts the joint EAG/EBNA meeting as they are also holding the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
We are happy that we get to share our project with the audience!

Impressions

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