Since October 2022 the VAST project communication team initiated a series of activities in the frame of the project’s outreach plan, exploring potential collaborations and synergies with other EU projects in the Cultural Heritage domain.

A series of online meetings were realised with five EU projects, where opportunities for collaboration  and synergies were discussed whilst sharing knowledge & methodologies, policy related matters and the exploitation of the VAST Digital Platform’s tools and facilities.

rurAllure

The rurAllure project works on promoting cultural venues and heritage sites from the rural environments of Europe in the vicinity of pilgrimage routes. The starting point was the weakness behind the enormous success of pilgrimage routes: the fact that many provinces and regions of a predominantly rural nature become passive witnesses of the flows of pilgrims while they could add much content and value to their pilgrims’ experience. Thus rurAllure’s goal is to overcome this situation through the allure of the cultural heritage in the rural environment.

TExTOUR

TExTOUR is an EU-funded project that co-designs pioneering and sustainable cultural tourism strategies with the ultimate goal to improve deprived areas in Europe and beyond. To do this, it set up Cultural Tourism Labs at eight pilots located within the EU and outside it.

ARTIS

ARTIS is a consortium of research institutions in the social sciences, Art History, Philosophy, Art Education, and Art and Cultural Policy. The project aims to integrate state-of-the-art empirical approaches from psychology, neuroscience, and phenomenology to conduct a series of investigations that identify specific types of experiences with art.

ReInHerit

ReInHerit is an Horizon2020 project that aspires to disrupt the current status quo of communication, collaboration, and innovation exchange between museums and cultural heritage sites, in a sense that it will connect cultural heritage collections and sites and present Europe’s tangible and intangible heritage to citizens and tourists in their broader historical and geographical contexts. The project proposes a very innovative model of sustainable heritage management through which a dynamic network will be born.

SPICE Project

SPICE project aims to foster diverse participation in the cultural heritage domain via citizen curation, where citizen groups will share and compare their interpretations of cultural objects with other groups. Various tools will assist citizens in this process, helping them build a representation of themselves and appreciate variety and similarity across groups to enhance social cohesion.

Aiming to offer expanded facilities to the VAST Platform’s users, the project’s technical experts keep working on continuous updates of the Digital Platform.

On 27 October 2022, VAST Project announced a new version of the annotation tool, which now supports audio/video file uploading. From now on, all modalities (text, image, audio, video) are supported, while the audio/video files can be played & annotated from inside the tool.

Direct link to the newly updated annotation Platform: https://annotation.vast-project.eu/auth/login

VAST Project launched a new animated video on 24 October 2022, highlighting the importance of value appropriation through space and time for our life in modern society and how VAST’s study and methodology shed light on this research field.

Watch the video and learn more about the project, its digital tools, and how a researcher in the field of values can take advantage of them.

If you find the work of VAST exciting, contact us!

VAST project partner National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) organised a Symposium on 25 October 2022 to present research results from the International Theatre Conference (realised in November 2021) on the past and the present of values in Ancient Greek Drama.

Emeritus Professor Theodoros Grammatas, NKUA welcomed the audience and referred to the past and present of values conveyed in Ancient Greek Drama and how the values are communicated and perceived through theater.

Dr. Georgios Petasis, VAST project coordinator, continued with a presentation of the project’s vision, objectives and research results which included the digital tools developed (VAST Platform).

Thereafter, NKUA’s research team representatives showcased the methodology of ancient Greek Drama text analysis and its digitisation in the VAST’s platform, the survey’s results of the online projected theatrical performance of “Seven Against Thebes” Aeschylus, directed by Cezaris Grauzinis (2017) as well as the proceedings of last year’s International Conference Values of Ancient Greek Theatre Across Space and Time: Cultural Heritage and Memory.

The proceedings of the International Theatre Conference «Values of Ancient Greek Theatre Across Space and Time: Cultural Heritage and Memory are available in the link: International Conference Proceedings.

VAST Partner Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy, realised on 13 October 2022 the educational activity: Bacon and Kepler – Travelling in Science between reality and imagination.

Addressing high school students in Italy, the activity examined the works of the “travelers in Science” of the past and discusses the values included in the idea of “journey,” “discovery” and “dialogue” with others.  Students were motivated to work in groups and create value maps reflecting on current challenges in the society they live in.

For more info about Museo Galileo’s planned educational activities, visit the link: Museo Galileo Educational Activities.

In early October, VAST participated in a European Bootcamp on the inclusion of marginalized youth in educational projects. The activity was organised by the Green European Foundation (GEF) in collaboration with the Green Institute Greece and the Bosch Alumni Network and took place in the Municipal Market of Kypseli in Athens, Greece. The initiative hosted 15 educators from various European countries and offered them the chance to exchange experiences and discuss methodologies and tools which could facilitate the inclusion of socially vulnerable adults in educational projects.

Dr. Dora Katsamori, postdoc researcher at the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications of coordinator NCSR Demokritos presented the VAST project’s scope, its methodologies as well as the tools and services available for educators through the VAST Digital Platform. The presentation also included the findings of VAST’s pilot case study on a group of socially vulnerable adults.

A few words about the Bootcamp

The three-day bootcamp on The inclusion of marginalised youth in educational projects was organised by the Green European Foundation (GEF) in collaboration with the Green Institute Greece and the Bosch Alumni Network, and took place between 30 September and 2 October 2022 at the Kypseli Municipal Market in Athens, Greece

VAST partner Museo Galileo (IMSS) is scheduling a series of co-creation activities, addressed to students in Italy, aiming to trace the transformation of values found in 17th-century documents over the centuries and to evaluate the Museum’s role in the perception and interpretation of values. In October 2022, Museo Galileo started implementing the following activities with schools:

Fantastic creatures in unknown lands

This activity starts with descriptions of unknown or imaginary populations, and by observing sea monsters and fantastic animals, children are guided to the discovery of the creatures hidden in the cartographic representations. Talking about the difficulties and challenges of travelers in the past while discovering new worlds and interpreting new social and natural realities will open a dialogue regarding the value of tolerance among different living beings and its importance in everyday life.

More about the activity on Museum Galileo’s website: https://www.museogalileo.it/it/museo/impara/il-museo-per-la-scuola/2329-creature-fantastiche-in-terre-sconosciute.html

From Telescope to Microscope: useful and entertaining Science

The activity aims to display the link between the “infinitely large world” and the “infinitely small world” revealed by Galileo’s telescope and the compound microscope that followed. Through this activity, children will understand the evolution of the microscope and the importance of those discoveries for today’s science.

More about the activity on Museum Galileo’s website: https://www.museogalileo.it/it/museo/impara/il-museo-per-la-scuola/2331-dal-telescopio-al-microscopio-la-scienza-utile-e-d-intrattenimento.html

Geographical discoveries, astronomical achievements, and the new representation of the world

The activity aims to raise awareness regarding the evolution of terrestrial cartographic representation focusing on the geographical and astronomical discoveries that changed the image of the world.  Special attention will be paid to astronomical and nautical instruments used during ocean travels and the new celestial word that was revealed by Galileo’s telescope.

More about the activity on Museum Galileo’s website: https://www.museogalileo.it/it/museo/impara/il-museo-per-la-scuola/2330-scoperte-geografiche-conquiste-astronomiche-e-la-nuova-rappresentazione-del-mondo.html

Galileo, Bacon and Kepler: “Travelling in Science” between reality and imagination

Galileo’s telescope brought people’s perception nearer to the vast celestial image, narrowing the gap with those who believed that celestial space had nothing more to reveal. Galileo’s virtual travel became a reality. The activity aims to motivate students to reflect on the value of collaboration and knowledge sharing, starting with those characters who were among the most important protagonists of the period of the scientific revolution.

More about the activity on Museum Galileo’s website: https://www.museogalileo.it/it/museo/impara/il-museo-per-la-scuola/2332-galileo-bacone-e-keplero-viaggio-nella-scienza-tra-realta-e-immaginazione.html

The VAST Project was among the 30 stakeholders that participated in the first Polifonia Hybrid Stakeholder Network Workshop which was held in hybrid mode at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris, France on 20 September 2022.

Konstantina Giouvanopoulou, of coordinator NCSR Demokritos, represented the VAST Project during the roundtable session “Computational Musicology and Knowledge Graphs (tunes, tonalities, facets, interlink, organs) where she briefly explained the project’s scope and initiatives as well as the progress and the outcomes that have been taking place so far.
During ontology-clinics, VAST connected with Polifonia stakeholders on the moral aspects and values conveyed in texts (a research area of VAST) and how these can be portrayed in music (Polifonia’s research area).

The meeting’s goal was to establish a clear mapping between the project’s first outcomes and the stakeholders’ goals and interests. At the same time, stakeholders had the opportunity to extend their network of contacts and provide insights into their projects and expertise.