The University of Barcelona coordinates a key project to define European cultural identity
How does the European Union (EU) decide where the research of the future goes? Defining the scientific lines that will mark the European funding summons for the 28 member countries and their 508 million inhabitants is one of the greatest challenges for the UE. “
CulturalBase. Social Platform on Cultural Heritage and European Identities
” is a European project organized by the University of Barcelona (UB) which intends to ease this process from a scientific solid basis and with the participation of as many interested parts as possible. It is the first initiative of this kind aiming to define a research agenda regarding heritage and cultural identities. Apart from the UB, the project counts with the participation of the University of Glasgow (Scotland), the Central European University (Hungary), the European University Institute (Italy), the University of Sussex (England), University of Paris 1 (France) and the company Interarts.
How does the European Union (EU) decide where the research of the future goes? Defining the scientific lines that will mark the European funding summons for the 28 member countries and their 508 million inhabitants is one of the greatest challenges for the UE. “
CulturalBase. Social Platform on Cultural Heritage and European Identities
” is a European project organized by the University of Barcelona (UB) which intends to ease this process from a scientific solid basis and with the participation of as many interested parts as possible. It is the first initiative of this kind aiming to define a research agenda regarding heritage and cultural identities. Apart from the UB, the project counts with the participation of the University of Glasgow (Scotland), the Central European University (Hungary), the European University Institute (Italy), the University of Sussex (England), University of Paris 1 (France) and the company Interarts.
“Before defining the kind of conferences which will be supported in the future, the European Commission (CE) has to establish which factors have to be studied and from which perspectives” says Arturo Rodríguez Morató, lecturer at the Department of Sociology of the University of Barcelona and organizer of the committee. With this goal, CE has launched this social platform for the first time in the fields of heritage and identity. It is a strategy that has been used for years in the development of technologies and it is based on a collective reflection process, research and structured dialogue among all the interested parts in a specific area. “It makes a lot of sense that investment is made on reflection processes, instead of strategic lines being decided by some bureaucrat or the use of mechanisms which are not built for the most general interests”, said the researcher.
The challenge of the common identity and integration
The attention on identities and cultural heritage comes at a time when it also centers political issues in Europe. “There is no wonder that there is a great tumult of the problems related to identities, common memory and integration, especially with the tension in some countries with the refugees. It is a problem that comes from afar, but it seems clear that European institutions have to focus on and define a clear idea of how to act”, said Rodríguez Morató.
The main challenge of this project is to shorten this ambitious theme horizon in strategic lines which summarize the most relevant and urgent aspects to be taken care of in the near future. To do so, CulturalBase started in May 2015 with a revision of all the scientific literature and policies which have been developed up to this moment, regarding this field. The idea of the researchers was to establish what is already known, from which perspectives, and -most importantly- what is left unknown. “We were interested in finding out which policies have been developed and if they have used all the available knowledge already. Sometimes some policies without a lot of scientific basis are implemented, others there are scientific projects without a policy to go with”, said the researcher.
Once all this information was collected, the project established six debate groups in which they defined 12 big strategic thematic areas born from the intersection of heritage and cultural identities with three big core ideas: memory, inclusion and creativity. Thanks to this conjunction some themes have risen, topics such as the need to create a common European memory; religion role and secularism on European identity; creativity from different perspectives to the mere economists or the challenge of the European unique digital market.
12 future challenges
The team of researchers, formed by political experts, historians, sociologists, art historians and anthropologists, have worked on the definition of 12 vision documents from these 12 big theme areas. “It is a common format in the technology area, where they are used to talk about future technologic challenges. Itʼs about summarizing the current situation, future expectation, and the expected challenges and problems in each area”. These documents have created a public debate through its website and have been compared to the advisory board of the project, a group of experts with a more international profile that compliments the predominant European vision in the project.
All this material has been discussed in a conference which took place last May in Barcelona and in which there was the participation of about 100 people (researchers, representatives of the interested entities, and from other European projects with similar goals). The implication of several stakeholders is something continuous during the entire project. “They are a core group in this process of research, reflection and dialogue. It is formed by the cultural agents that work from different perspectives in the cultural area: artists, cultural institutions, museums, heritage representatives, associations, cultural businesses, copyright societies…” said the researcher.
Scientific research agenda
The last CulturalBase stage, which expects to end in May 2017, will be the definition of a science agenda in each of the selected theme areas with the aim of using them in future Europe research conferences, as well as creating a series of action policy recommendations. “We hope this work has a real impact on the future European research regarding this field, but in any case, it certainly will give an expert network and methodology, diverse people and cultural agents who participated in the process and showed this knowledge”, concluded the researcher.