The Horizon 2020 Innovative Training Network POEM (PARTICIPATORY MEMORY PRACTICES. Concepts, strategies, and media infrastructures for envisioning socially inclusive potential futures of European Societies through culture) trains future experts for the heritage sector and studies participatory memory practices and digital heritage in Europe. POEM starts in April 2018 with the recruitment of early stage researchers for the 13 projects. Three of the 13 projects are being led by the University of Hamburg. The project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie. PHOTOCONSORTIUM was invited to support the project as a non-academic partner organization.
Participatory memory work is critical to understanding the inclusion of memories across nations and social situation (gender, wealth, education, migration) into institutional memory work and heritage building and thus to acknowledge them as a significant part of the history and contemporary life in Europe. Over four years, in 13 different projects will research participatory memory work, i.e. the strategies and practices of both public memory institutions, like libraries, archives, and museums, as well as individuals and diverse groups, who take advantage of digital technologies and social media to connect publicly, share materials, and participate in a socially inclusive way to remember or celebrate our cultural legacy, such as events, persons and ideas.
POEM addresses the qualification of experts in the heritage sector who are competent for working with the mediatized memory ecology, the changing socio-technical, organisational, legal, economic, and ethical frameworks for the use of cultural materials in digital times. POEM will see the University of Hamburg work with 6 European partner organisations, including University of Glasgow in the UK, Uppsala University in Sweden, Aarhus University in Denmark, Cyprus University of Technology, and heritage experts such as the Museum Europäischer Kulturen in Berlin, and Ashoka, civil society organization based in the UK. Support will also come from well-known international organizations and creative industries partners specializing in open knowledge, data and media literacy, social entrepreneurship and empowerment.
Funding comes from the European Union via Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions (MSCA), which supports high quality doctoral-level training and career development in and outside academia. As a European Training Network, the programme will train the next generation of researchers in methods necessary to make significant progress in understanding participatory memory work. The research and training will be structured around three themes to study how connectivities are built by institutions, people and groups, and by memory modalities for a socially inclusive, participatory heritage work and what facilitates or hinders collaboration.
