L.R. Egberts

Experiencing the Past

Interest in our past and engagement with history is everywhere. Turn on the television and you will surely be able to find films or drama sewries set in the past. Take a stroll through any town and you will spot not only monuments and well-restored historic buildings, but also old-time cars, vintage clothing stores, and antiques dealers and second-hand furniture stores. Walk into any bookshop and you will find an abundance of historical novels, travel guides to historic places, and books on topics like art history or the Second World War. Researching one’s own family tree, watching historical festivals, and playing computer games that are set in historic environments are common leisure activities. The vintage, the traditionally hand-crafted, and the historically or personally significant are guaranteed to find attention, engagement, and passionate defense when threatened with loss or destruction.

A piece of peace in sWARajevo: Locally and globally interesting stories for virtual museums

Summary form only given. We present a method how to create locally and globally interesting stories for virtual museums in a relatively short time. The local interestingness is understood in a Koestlerian way (AH, AHA, HAHA bisociation effects). Global interestingness is achieved by discovering, within the given unique material, options for relating unrelated contexts, internal poetry and/or change of the narration mode. The craft of storytelling resulted in five short movies, completed during the South-East European Virtual Heritage School: Digital Storytelling for Virtual Museums. These intereStories“ are intentionally aimed at overcoming multiple limitations of backtelling, frequent in virtual museums. The five themes include Bosnian blues Sevdah, fate of Sephardic Jews, existing and nonexisting urban area, and traditional Bosnian coffee. The stories were coauthored by 15 beginners storytellers in groups (24 authors) in 5 days alongside with the 12 lectures on theory and narrative case studies from V-must network good practice. Besides the brainstormings, speed-up focused brainwritting feedback was provided twice: once for preexistent stories, second for betaversions. The final creations were produced in Adobe Premiere Pro and published at YouTube.

Moving beyond the hard boundary: Overcoming the nature-culture divide in the Dutch Wadden Sea area

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the consequences of a nature-culture divide in spatial policy on cultural heritage in the Dutch Wadden Sea area, which is protected by UNESCO for its ecological assets. Design/methodology/approach This paper investigates this by discussing the international and national policy frameworks and regional examples of the consequences of the divide. Findings The effects of the nature-culture divide appear to be negative for the landscape. Approaching the Wadden Sea Region as an agricultural-maritime landscape could help overcome the fixation on nature vs culture and the hardness of the sea dikes as spatial boundaries between the two domains. A reconsideration of the trilateral Wadden Sea region as a mixed World Heritage Site could lead to a more integrated perspective. Originality/value These findings inform policy development and the management of landscape and heritage in the region. This case forms an example for other European coastal regions that struggle with conflicting natural and cultural-historical interests.

Conceptual Fuel for Reviving the Past

Interest in history has moved to centre stage in Western culture. Its popularity extends to television, films, books, video games, theatre, and even to the street. The past is omnipresent in popular culture and daily life and its role is complex. Historical films, adventure games, war commemorations, vintage cars, retro fashion, and music performances on authentic instruments are just a few of the many ways in which the old, the past, and the original are ceaselessly brought back to life.

Creating a Shared Past

For international heritage revivals within Europe, the concepts, strategies, and policies of the European authorities are usually very important. Not only does the European Commission stimulate international cooperation in the field of shared heritage and identities; it also creates a framework for these projects, since many heritage networks, platforms, and co-operative efforts are established at the European scale. In addition, it provides the necessary economic and political liaisons. Therefore, it is important to gain some insight into how European cooperation and the idea of European identity have evolved. Today’s Europe was shaped by the wish to bring lasting peace to the continent. We would not need pan-European governance if the diversity between countries and cultures was not as large as it is, and thus diversity is a core element in the project of European identity: the attempt to create a shared notion of identity among the citizens of the member states. As we will see, most international heritage policies, projects and selections are based on national interpretations of the past. In practice, it appears to be extremely difficult to select and represent heritages in a truly international manner.

Battlefield of Histories

A heritage revival on a European scale will be ineffective if it is not embedded in heritage practices on a regional or local scale. Chapter 2 discusses the way in which the early medieval past is remembered and forgotten in today’s Alsace, a region with great symbolic value with respect to European peace and unification. In this chapter, I discuss heritage practices and the role of the experience of authenticity in a relatively new region: the Arnhem Nijmegen City Region in the eastern part of the Netherlands, where various interpretations and selections of the past compete for attention and investment.