The European Academy of Participation – Benchmarks, reflections and challenging practice on the interface between academia and the creative sector, by Lars Ebert and Joachim Umlauf, is now available.
This publication sketches the connections between participation, arts, identity and contested heritage that have been the focus of a series of EU-funded projects by Goethe-Institut and Stichting H401 in the last 15 years. Collaborators and partners in these projects reflect on the definition, potential and limitations of participation in the arts.
“The authors of this piece and editors of this book have in all these years built a unique trust and way of collaboration around which an ecosystem has emerged that made this collaboration possible. An ecosystem of individuals and organisations that have contributed to the projects, have grown in them and have stayed for a shorter while or longer. […] They have fostered diverse communities and have empowered artists and creative practitioners to grow and impact on the communities in which they work.“
Ebert and Umlauf, Preface, pp. 7-10
The European Academy of Participation consists then of contributions ranging from policy recommendations to academic articles and friendly conversations: a resourceful collection of food for thought on inclusive and accessible participation in the creative and heritage sector.
Publishing house: AVINUS – dem Verlag für Medien und interkulturelle Kommunikation, ISBN 978-3-86938-174-9, 152 S.
Lars Ebert also devotes a chapter to the Heritage Contact Zone (HCZ), a project in the frame of the European Year for Cultural Heritage funded by the EU subsidy Creative Europe. Throughout the project (2018- 2020), H401 together with the HCZ consortium, explored heritage spaces as space for creative dialogue as well as constructive conflict.
“The HCZ project provides a set of methods and tools, online and analogue, that will help develop a space of European heritage for multiple voices, a shared heritage-making space for all citizens, which enables sharing various heritages with one another and working through the conflict that comes with it […] HCZ aims at dealing with conflict as something cathartic and creative.“
Ebert, Heritage Contact Zone pp. 139-144
The findings and outcomes of the project are collected in the HCZ Toolkit, a guide designed to assist practitioners working with complex heritage. The Toolkit is available online here: https://heritagecontactzone.eu/toolkit/
The project partners were: Goethe-Institut (GR), H401 (NL), Human Platform (HU), Etz Hayyim Synagogue (GR), Timisoara European Capital of Culture Association (RO), Culture Action Europe (BE) and The European University Institute (IT).