A bibliometric analysis of cultural heritage research in the humanities: The Web of Science as a tool of knowledge management

AbstractSubstantial research on the topic of cultural heritage has been conducted over the past two decades. At the same time, the overall output volume of journals and citation metrics have become important parameters in assessing and ranking researchers’ performance. Even though the scholarly interest in cultural heritage has recently increased world-wide, a comprehensive analysis of the publication output volume and its correlation to the shift in the cultural heritage regime starting in 2003 is still lacking. The article aims to understand the role of Web of Science (WOS) as a tool of knowledge management in academia by drawing on the scholarly output volume, the patterns displayed by t…

The role of Christianity in the European Union’s heritage and history initiatives

In its political discourse, the European Union balances Christian heritage, the secularization of European societies, liberal values and Europe’s culturally and religiously diverse contemporary reality. This article explores how the European Union narrates the story of Europe and the role of Christianity in this narrative. This exploration is based on two qualitative case studies focusing on key heritage and history initiatives of the European Commission and the European Parliament: the European Heritage Label and the House of European History. The article argues that issues related to Christianity become easier to handle for the European Union when they are dealt with as memory, tradition…

Introduction : Europe, Heritage and Memory-Dissonant Encounters and Explorations

The introduction to Dissonant Heritages and Memories in Contemporary Europe theoretically grounds the book’s various problematizations of heritage and identity struggles in Europe today, including the heritage policies of the EU and other intergovernmental organizations, struggles over ethnographic and historical exhibitions, activist practices, and dissonant memories. By discussing these struggles and their problematizations, the introduction connects the book to a wide range of ongoing debates across the humanities and social sciences. At the same time, it discusses how convergences and divergences within and between the volume’s chapters foster new insights regarding the concepts of diss…

Conclusions and Suggestions for Improving European Education Policies

In the concluding chapter, we draw together the main arguments and results of the research, highlighting the differences and similarities between the education policy documents produced by the European Union and the Council of Europe. We also provide suggestions for improving future education policies to better encompass the concerns about the lack of dialogue in a diversified but also polarized Europe. Education policy documents dealing with intercultural dialogue act as important guidelines for tackling racism, chauvinism, xenophobia, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice in Europe. As policies function as ‘actants’ that create webs of meanings and action, it is crucial that policy doc…

Sairaala taiteen näyttämönä

Suomessa on viime vuosina rakennettu useita uusia sairaaloita ja laajennettu tai peruskorjattu vanhoja. Näihin sairaaloihin on sijoitettu ja hankittu runsaasti taidetta, sillä taiteella on tutkimuksissa osoitettu olevan terveyttä ja hyvinvointia edistävä vaikutus. Sairaaloihin hankittua ja niissä esiteltyä taidetta voidaan kutsua sairaalataiteeksi. Artikkelissa esittelemme, millaista tutkimusta sairaalataiteesta on tehty, pohdimme millaisia taiteen tiloja sairaalat ovat ja millaisia mahdollisuuksia tai haasteita sairaalat tarjoavat taidehistorioitsijoille niin työskentely-ympäristöinä kuin tutkimuskohteina. Artikkelimme empiirinen osuus perustuu havainnointiin neljässä sairaal…

Afrikkalaisesta nykytaiteesta kirjoittamisen haasteet. Näyttelyluetteloiden risteävät diskurssit

Länsimaissa järjestetyt afrikkalaisen nykytaiteen näyttelyt ovat osoittautuneet monin tavoin ongelmalliseksi: purkavatko vai uusintavatko ne länsimaiden ja Afrikan välisiä koloniaalisia valtahierarkioita? Myös Suomessa on järjestetty viime vuosina useita laajoja nykytaiteen näyttelyitä, joissa Afrikkaa on lähestytty eri näkökulmista. Millaisia merkityksiä afrikkalainen nykytaide saa näiden näyttelyiden näyttelyjulkaisuissa? peerReviewed

Analysing Intercultural Dialogue Through Conceptual Densities

In this chapter, we exemplify our methodological approach to analysing ‘densities’ of interrelated concepts in European education policy documents. We scrutinize instances where many of the core concepts of intercultural dialogue appear in the documents at the same time. Four core educational themes and four longer excerpts from the selected policy documents are examined in more detail. The chosen documents deal especially with multilingualism, migration, history teaching, and lifelong learning. The analysis of the conceptual densities in the chosen excerpts indicates how the meanings of intercultural dialogue are constructed through the conceptual frameworks and co-occurrences of their cor…

Kulttuuriperintö kriiseissä

Area-based identities and their audience reception in the European Capital of Culture events in Tallinn 2011

Humanismi nyky-yhteiskunnan haasteissa

Puhe Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian humanistipalkinnon jakotilaisuudessa Säätytalolla Helsingissä 10.9.2017.

Introduction : Interdisciplinary Discussions on Beauty

A Sociocultural Approach to Children’s Visual Creations

AbstractThis chapter locates the book within the research on children’s art. It explores interpretations of children’s visual creations throughout the twentieth century and situates the approach of the book within the research landscape. The authors take developmental psychological, educational, and aesthetic approaches to form a sociocultural view of children’s art, challenging many of the previous research assumptions. Through adopting the paradigm of the sociocultural approach, the authors embrace its view of children as competent cultural actors and active participants in cultural production. Thus, the discussion focuses on meaning-making: the authors analyze visual artifacts made by st…

Conflicts and Reconciliation in the Postmillennial Heritage-Policy Discourses of the Council of Europe and the European Union

AbstractLähdesmäki analyses the heritage-policy discourses of the EU and the Council of Europe. She particularly discusses how these institutions deal with the challenges the idea of heritage faces in today’s Europe and the opportunities that these may present to respond to these challenges. The analysis shows how the EU and the Council of Europe seek to reconcile heritage-related conflicts by approaching heritage as a space for civil participation, interaction, intercultural dialogue, and conversation about divergent values and narrations of the past. However, their policy discourses often relay on a static and materialist notion of heritage. This kind of discourse maintains geographical, …

Kulttuurisen lukutaidon oppimisohjelma : työkaluja empatian ja vuoropuhelun opettamiseen ja oppimiseen

Nykymaailmassa tarvitaan kulttuurista lukutaitoa eli taitoa toimia vuorovaikutteisesti ja empaattisesti osana kulttuurisesti monimuotoisia yhteisöjä. Artikkelissa pohditaan, mitä kulttuurinen lukutaito tarkoittaa, miksi se on tärkeää ja miten sitä voidaan opettaa ja oppia kouluissa. Artikkeli perustuu Euroopan komission Horisontti 2020 -ohjelmasta rahoitetun DIALLS-hankkeen tutkimustuloksiin ja yhteistyöhön koulujen kanssa seitsemässä Euroopan maassa. Hankkeessa toteutettiin kaikille avoin kulttuurisen lukutaidon oppimisohjelma. nonPeerReviewed

Epilogi

Discursive Constructions of White Nordic Masculinities in Right-wing Populist Media

Using superordinate intersectionality as a theoretical framework, this article explores notions of men and masculinities within right wing populism. It is attentive to how the right-wing populist media in Finland and Sweden construct white Nordic masculinities through discursive interactions across several axes of difference: gender (masculinities); sexuality (heterosexuality); social class (elites); and race (whitenesses). Employing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as methodological approach, we show how the discursive constructions of white Nordic masculinities are context contingent, rendering them subject to constant reinterpretation and repositioning, at times privileging some axes of…

Europe from Below : Notions of Europe and the European among Participants in EU Cultural Initiatives

In this book, Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Katja Mäkinen, Viktorija L. A. Čeginskas, and Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus scrutinize how people who participate in cultural initiatives funded and governed by the European Union understand the idea of Europe. The book focuses on three cultural initiatives: the European Capital of Culture, the European Heritage Label, and a European Citizen Campus project funded through the Creative Europe programme. These initiatives are examined through field studies conducted in 12 countries between 2010 and 2018. The authors describe their approach as ‘ethnography of Europeanization’ and conceptualize the attempts at Europeanization in the European Union’s cultural policy as po…

Reconceptualizing cultural literacy as a dialogic practice

Culture and heritage are plural and fluid, continually co-created through interaction between people. However, traditional monologic models of cultural literacy reflect a one-way transmission of static cultural knowledge. Using the context of a large European project and augmenting the work of Buber with models of literacy as social practice, in this article cultural literacy is reconceptualized as fundamentally dialogic. We argue that cultural literacy empowers intercultural dialogue, opening a dialogic space with inherent democratic potential. Considering implications for the classroom, we outline how a dialogic pedagogy can provide a suitable context for the development of young people's…

Kaupunkien elämyksellinen kehittäminen ja imagotyö

Intercultural Dialogue in the European Education Policies : A Conceptual Approach

This open access book analyses intercultural dialogue as a concept, policy and ideal in European education policy documentation. The core European transnational organizatons – the Council of Europe and the European Union – have actively promoted policies to engender inclusive societies and respond to challenges that diversification may entail. This book, in turn, offers suggestions for improving education policies in super-diversified Europe and beyond, where there is an increasing need for cultural understanding and constructive dialogue. The authors utilize concept analysis to reveal how these organizations seek to deal with dialogue between cultures, as well as weight given to cultural d…

Genealogy of the Concept of Heritage in the European Commission’s Policy Discourse

This article investigates the genealogy of the concept of heritage in the European Commission’s (EC) policy discourse from 1973 to 2016. Based on conceptual analysis of 2,412 documents gathered from the EUR-Lex database, the uses of the concept in the EC’s policy discourse were categorized into seven thematic areas: nature, environment, and biodiversity; human habitats; economy and employment; agricultural products and foodstuffs; promotion of societal development and stability; audiovisuality and digitalization; and European identity and integration. In the EC’s discourse, the concept of heritage develops in the context of intertwined phases of EU integration and cultural Europeanization. …

Reframing Gender Equality in Finnish Online Discussion on Immigration: Populist Articulations of Religious Minorities and Marginalized Sexualities

Gender equality is an essential part of Finnish self-understanding. The public discussion on equality does not, however, only focus on gender; it is also used to promote antiimmigration-minded, homophobic opinions. In the article, the co-existence of contradictory discourses on gender equality is interpreted as populist rhetoric. The articulations of gender equality in online debates on gender, sexuality, and immigration are analyzed. The main questions are: How is gender equality re-framed in anti-immigration-minded online debate? How are the notions of sexuality and gender fixed in order to oppose immigration? How are gender, sexuality, and immigration articulated intersectionally? The in…

EU heritage diplomacy : entangled external and internal cultural relations

Cultural heritage is an expanding yet contested area of EU policymaking, which has recently been identified as an instrument for EU international cultural relations. In this article, drawing from critical heritage studies and recent scholarship on heritage diplomacy, we see external and internal cultural relations as blurred and deeply entangled in EU heritage policies. Empirically, we focus on the European Heritage Label (EHL), a central EU heritage policy instrument. We explore how heritage practitioners at selected EHL sites and EU heritage policymakers understand and give meanings to international cultural relations and explain the role of cultural heritage in diplomatic endeavours. Our…

Discourses of Europeanness in the reception of the European Capital of Culture events: The case of Pécs 2010

Europeanness has been determined in various ways in academic, political and everyday discussions. The concept has become profoundly current in European Union (EU) policy during the past few decades: the EU is paying more and more interest in creating cultural coherence in Europe. The EU has various cultural instruments, such as the European Capital of Culture programme (ECOC), which aim to produce and strengthen Europeanness and cultural identification with Europe among its citizens. The ECOC programme creates an ideological frame for an urban cultural event: the frame directs the reception and experiences of the festivals, exhibitions and performances in the ECOC. Pécs – a city in souther…

The role of space in the politics of intercultural dialogue

Taidetta tutkimaan : menetelmiä ja näkökulmia

Dialogic approach in the EU’s international cultural relations : joint EUNIC-EU delegation projects as heritage diplomacy

Culture and cultural heritage have become central aspects in the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy that increasingly emphasizes dialogue and people-to-people connections as the basis for international cultural relations. This article explores 11 projects jointly facilitated by the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) and EU Delegations in nine countries located in Europe, Africa, and South America as part of a strategic cooperation between the European Commission, the European External Action Service and EUNIC. We identify five modes of highlighting dialogue as a key element in the EU’s international cultural relations and discuss how the ideas of dialogue, cultural her…

Introduction.

In geography, the notion of scale has been discussed within diverse theoretical frameworks. The concept of geographical scale indicates socio-spatial organization within a bounded geographical area – usually labelled as size (such as province or continent) or level (such as global, national, regional, local, and even household). Besides these ‘technical’ definitions, recent research also includes more nuanced elaborations. The introductory chapter discusses four conceptualizations for understanding and utilizing the concept of scale that are critical in underscoring the power relations in heritage. These conceptualizations – scale as a hierarchy, scale as an instrument of power, scale as a …

The Inclusion and Exclusion of Europe as a Discursive Strategy in Populist Political Rhetoric

In recent decades global cultural flows and the movement of people within and across the borders of the EU have diversified Europe by increasing the inner pluralism of European societies. At the same time European societies have faced the rise of diverse nationalist and populist movements and political parties. These movements and parties have criticized the increasing diversity in Europe, finding faults especially in the EU integration process, current immigration policies, and the consequent development of multi- and intercultural societies. In current populist discourse, ‘borderlessness’ and the transformation of the current cultural, symbolic, and societal borders are often objected or …

European culture, history, and heritage as political tools in the rhetoric of the Finns Party

Various studies have indicated how notions and (mis)interpretations of national history, heritage, and culture are utilized by diverse populist and extremist political parties in Europe. However, scholars have less explored how the idea of a common European history, heritage, and culture are used by these parties to justify their xenophobic, anti-immigration, anti-globalization, and monoculturalist political attitudes and the defense of ‘us’. This chapter focuses on this question by examining the political rhetoric of the Finns Party, the core populist party in Finland. The data consists of selected texts discussing broadly the topics of the EU, Europe, nation, identity, and/or culture, pub…

Kulttuuriympäristöä tutkimassa

Children's exploration of the concepts of home and belonging: Capturing views from five European countries.

Understanding one's sense of belonging is a central part of identity formation and self-awareness; feeling safe somewhere, with specific people is identified as a basic human need. This paper explores the ideas of children from three age groups in five different European as they discussed the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’. Findings showed that the children's ideas could be organised into six interrelated aspects: Spatiality, Materiality, Multiplicity, Social Relations, Affect, and Dislocation. Whilst there were differences in the ways that the children conceptualised home across the classes, even the youngest children were able to describe their ideas using metaphors and abstract conce…

Kaikki kotona?

Tämä teksti on lyhennetty ja toimitettu versio Jyväskylässä 10.–13.8.2017 pidettyjen Kotiseutupäivien paneelista ”Kaikki kotona – keskustelua kodin, kotiseudun ja kuulumisen kokemuksista”. Paneelikeskustelun järjestivät Jyväskylän yliopiston musiikin, taiteen ja kulttuurin tutkimuksen laitos sekä tutkimushankkeet EUROHERIT ja Arts of Belonging. Puhetta johti tutkimuskoordinaattori Tarja Pääjoki (TP), ja paneelissa keskustelivat akatemiatutkija, dosentti Tuuli Lähdesmäki (TL), dosentti Tuija Saresma (TS) ja tutkijatohtori Antti Vallius (AV). nonPeerReviewed

Multimodality: Art as a Meaning-Making Process

AbstractThe authors of the book see multimodality as intrinsic to human communication and texts, and as consisting of a multiplicity of signs. This chapter discusses how this applies in educational settings, to examine how different modes of communication are intertwined and utilized in learning, including children’s creative learning practices. In this, the authors use the semiotic concepts that operate in all communicative contexts: Field, tenor, and mode. Through them, the authors view the CLLP as a space that enables social activities, exploration of cultural, social, and societal contents and topics, and the development of social relationships. All this occurs through various communica…

Becoming Mediterranean : The Intangible Cultural Heritage of Klapa Singing in Identity-Building and Nation-Branding

Universalist and Particularist Discourses on the Intersection of Reality, Truth and Beauty

The history of the Western civilisation can be seen as a continuum of epistemological battles and alliances between two modes of grasping and describing the world. According to these conflicting views, the world has been grasped either through particular or universal explanations. These two views have formed a dualistic scholarly context which has directed philosophers, artists, and scientists to discuss whether the world and its diverse phenomena can be perceived and explained through the universal laws of mathematics and science or rather as culture-bound narrations and symbols; whether the world is best represented using the language of mathematical formulas and equations or that of the …

Euroopan komission ja kansalaisten näkemyksiä eurooppalaisesta kulttuuriperinnöstä

Heritage Diplomacy Discourses in the EU: Notions on Cultural Diplomacy, Cultural Heritage, and Intercultural Dialogue among EU Officials and Heritage Practitioners

The European Commission has recently identified cultural heritage as one of the focus areas for EU cultural diplomacy. The article explores EU cultural diplomacy that deals with cultural heritage and discusses the concept of heritage diplomacy based on a discourse analysis of interviews with EU officials and heritage practitioners working at sites awarded the European Heritage Label. How do EU officials and heritage practitioners understand the role of cultural heritage for cultural diplomacy and what kinds of discourses do they use in talking about it? My analysis indicates that heritage diplomacy means different things for EU officials and heritage practitioners. Their discourses…

Aesthetics of Geometry and the Problem of Representation in Monument Sculpture

Since the 1920s and 1930s, constructivist and concretist visual art movements have stressed geometric forms, proportions and orders as a base for artistic expressions and aesthetic experiences. After the World War II geometric form was adopted to the public sculpture. Abstract, geometrically constructed sculpture was also used in commemorative functions in modern monument art. The combination of the commemoration of a significant historical event or a national hero, and the aesthetic ideas based on constructivist or concretist art movements caused a lot of debates and confrontations in many Western countries. In particular, the interpretation of abstract monuments problematized: abstract mo…

Introduction: What Is Intercultural Dialogue and Why It Is Needed in Europe Today?

The authors introduce the concept of intercultural dialogue and how it has been utilized as a policy by the Council of Europe and the European Union since the early 2000s. First, we explore intercultural dialogue’s relation to and differences from other concepts commonly used to describe different stances in the governance of diversity, ranging from assimilation to integration and from multiculturalism to interculturalism. These different conceptual stances are contextualized by exploring the recent transformations in Europe and their impact on the political aims, goals, and discourses of the Council of Europe and the European Union. Second, we review the previous research on the concept of…

Euroopan kulttuuripääkaupungit identiteettiprojekteina

Suomi ja eurooppalainen kulttuuriperintö : paneelikeskustelu

Euroopan kulttuuriperintötunnus (EHL) on keskeinen osa Euroopan unionin (EU) vahvistuvaa kulttuuri- ja identiteettipolitiikkaa.Suomi liittyi mukaan kyseiseen unionin toimeen marraskuussa 2018. EUROHER IT-tutkimushankkeen järjestämässä paneelissa keskusteltiin suomalaisen ja eurooppalaisen kulttuuriperinnön välisistä suhteista ja EHL:n Suomelle tuomista mahdollisuuksista ja haasteista. Paneelissa olivat keskustelijoina Tuuli Lähdesmäki (Jyväskylän yliopisto), Virpi Mäkinen (Keski-Suomen Museo) ja Ulla Salmela (Museovirasto). Paneelin puheenjohtajan toimi Johanna Turunen (Jyväskylän yliopisto). Paneeli järjestettiin osana eurooppalaista tutkijoiden yötä ja kulttuuriperinnön eurooppalaista tee…

Definitions and Contexts of Intercultural Dialogue in European Policy Documents

In this chapter, we analyse how the concept of intercultural dialogue is both explicitly and implicitly used in European education policy documents. First, we explore how the concept is explicitly dealt with in the documents and how its meanings are produced in relation to other concepts and terms, such as culture, cultural heritage, identity, inclusion, empathy, tolerance, multiculturalism, citizenship, participation, and social responsibility. We pay special attention to the values and ideals conveyed by the education policy documents in general and these concepts in particular. Second, we discuss the thematic overlap of these concepts and how different concepts, terms, and conceptual exp…

Teaching Archaeological Heritage Management: Towards a Change in Paradigms

The concept of archaeological heritage management (AHM) has been key to wider archaeological research and preservation agendas for some decades. Many universities and other education providers now offer what is best termed heritage management education (HME) in various forms. The emphasis is commonly on archaeological aspects of heritage in a broad sense and different terms are often interchangeable in practice. In an innovative working-conference held in Tampere, Finland, we initiated a debate on what the components of AHM as a course or curriculum should include. We brought together international specialists and discussed connected questions around policy, practice, research and teaching/…

Syväluotaus Taidehallin näyttelytoimintaan Bertel Hintzen toimikaudella

Kirja-arvio Maija Koskisen väitöskirjasta "Taiteellisesti elvyttävää ja poliittisesti ajankohtaista – Helsingin Taidehallin näyttelyt 1928–1968 (Helsingin yliopisto, 2019).

Introduction: Europe, Heritage and Memory—Dissonant Encounters and Explorations

AbstractThe introduction to Dissonant Heritages and Memories in Contemporary Europe theoretically grounds the book’s various problematizations of heritage and identity struggles in Europe today, including the heritage policies of the EU and other intergovernmental organizations, struggles over ethnographic and historical exhibitions, activist practices, and dissonant memories. By discussing these struggles and their problematizations, the introduction connects the book to a wide range of ongoing debates across the humanities and social sciences. At the same time, it discusses how convergences and divergences within and between the volume’s chapters foster new insights regarding the concepts…

Cultural Literacy During COVID-19

AbstractAs implementation of the CLLP was challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, the DIALLS project included in the program an additional lesson in which children reflected on its impact on their social environment. In this chapter, the authors analyze how the children’s artifacts express their understanding of the COVID-19 situation, including themes such as care and protection. The chapter focuses on how the students address empathy, tolerance, and inclusiveness under pandemic conditions. It starts by contextualizing the artifacts with international COVID-19 imagery and nationally similar or differing COVID-19 circumstances. Then, it analyzes the artifacts and their textual narratives.

Performing ‘us’ and ‘other’ : Intersectional analyses of right-wing populist media

Finland and Sweden share the ideal of a Nordic welfare state, with gender equality as a central tenet. In both countries, right-wing populist parties have gained prominence in mainstream politics. Despite similar political agendas at the moment, these parties have different political histories, and different modes of expressing their anti-immigration pleas. In this comparative study, we examine how the distinction between ‘us’ and the ‘other’ is performed intersectionally in terms of gender, social class, ethnicity and ‘race’, and sexuality. For this purpose, we examine empirical material collected from the party newspapers of the Finns Party and the Sweden Democrats, because their content…

Comparing Notions on European Cultural Heritage in EU Policy Discourse and Scholarly Discussion

Cultural heritage is an idea and a concept repeatedly brought up in current EU policy discourse. In recent years the European Commission has launched several initiatives which aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The idea is also often referred to in scholarly discussion. There has been vivid discussion in academia about the possibility of a European cultural heritage and what it could be grounded upon. What is a European cultural heritage? How has it been explicated and defined in recent EU policy discourse and scholarly discussion? Through qualitative content analysis of diverse EU policy documents and selected scholarly publications, the article clarifies the mu…

Kuohahdus Suomen kansan sydämestä : henkilömonumentti diskursiivisena ilmiönä 1900-luvun lopun Suomessa

Suomeen pystytettiin vuosien 1989–2000 välisenä aikana lähes yhdeksänkymmentä henkilömonumenttia tai -muistomerkkiä. Osa näistä teoksista aiheutti julkista keskustelua, eräät hyvinkin kiivaita debatteja, joissa sanailtiin muun muassa monumentin sopivasta muodosta, oikeasta tulkinnasta, menneisyyden tapahtumien "oikeista" ja "vääristä" muistoista ja erilaisista historian näkemyksistä. Tuuli Lähdesmäen kirja Kuohahdus Suomen kansan sydämestä pureutuu monumenttien herättämien keskustelujen kautta niille julkisuudessa tuotettuihin merkityksiin. Kirja avaa diskurssianalyysin menetelmällä monumenttikirjoittelun sisältämiä valtarakenteita ja erilaisia tapoja ymmärtää ja jäsentää monumentteja taide…

Attributes of democratic culture as represented in young children’s drawings

Democratic culture refers to a set of values, attitudes, and practices shared by citizens and institutions, without which democracy cannot exist. Preschools and schools have a core role in teaching and transmitting democratic culture as they offer most children their early encounters with the public realm that provides social environments for democratic culture. The aim of this article is to increase knowledge on democratic education of young children and creative means to implement it. The core questions raised are: How do young children understand their classroom social environment and their own role in it? Which of the children’s understandings of their classroom social environment refle…

Conclusions: Cultural Literacy in Action

AbstractIn this chapter, the authors emphasize how even very young children can deal with complex and abstract ideas and emotions through creative practices and how the differences between people are not an issue for children. The analysis indicates that children have a multifaceted capacity for empathy. The authors stress that image-making is an important mode of communication through which children and young people shape their understanding of the world. This is a constructive and dialogic process of thinking in action. It allows children and young people to develop their imagination, emotional responses, personality, and position in the community, in relationship with others, and with th…

Gender, nation, narration : critical readings of cultural phenomena

The Problematic of Conceptualizing a European Cultural Heritage

The idea of a common European cultural heritage is frequently referred to in the political discourses and practices of the EU. The idea of a European cultural heritage elevates the ideas of ownership and inheritance beyond the local, regional, or national frameworks and transforms the heritage sites and objects into a ‘common good’ belonging to all Europeans and into a source of a common European cultural identity. Scholars have debated the possibility of a common European cultural heritage, and in case such could exist, what it could be grounded upon. Critical scholars have asked what might be the trans-border European dimension of heritage that goes beyond the mere sum of national, region…

Founding myths of European Union Europe and the workings of power in the European Union heritage and history initiatives

Along with the European Union’s (EU) increased interest in a common European culture and past, narration as a means to create and communicate about them has gained new momentum. By applying the Discourse-Mythological Approach, I explore how the EU narrates the story of the origins of EU Europe in two recent EU heritage/history initiatives. The analysis brought out three storylines in the mythmaking of EU Europe. While the first storyline emphasizes temporal continuity, shared cultural roots, and preservation and transmission of a common legacy, the second focuses on the idea of a break and a rebirth of a civic/political community. The third storyline highlighting founding figures and key he…

Emotive Strategies and Affective Tactics in The Islam Night Television Show

Politics of affect in the EU heritage policy discourse : an analysis of promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label

European cultural heritage is discussed with affective rhetoric in current European Union (EU) policy discourse. How does affect contribute to the meaning-making of a European cultural heritage and how are the workings of affect used by the EU to promote certain meanings of heritage and effect thereupon? The analysis focuses on recent promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label by the EU. In the videos, affective textual, visual, audible, and narrative tropes intertwine with the tropes of EU policy rhetoric, increasing its capacity to impact and ‘move’ the receivers. The ethos of a European cultural heritage in the videos is based on a paradox: the history of the se…

Introduction: Cultural Literacy and Creativity

AbstractThe introductory chapter explains the core concepts of the book: Cultural literacy and creativity. Cultural literacy is defined as a social practice that is inherently dialogic and based on learning and gaining knowledge through emphatic, tolerant, and inclusive interaction. Creativity is seen as stimulating cultural literacy learning through openness and curiosity to test and develop something new or imaginative. The chapter introduces the Cultural Literacy Learning Programme (CLLP) and the research data: 1906 works created by 5–15-year-old children and young people who participated in the program in 2019 and 2020 in Cyprus, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, and the UK. …

Broadening the Scope of Heritage:

Mapping the Concept(s) of Belonging

Various epistemological changes – such as the linguistic, narrative, and cultural turns that have influenced humanistic and social scientific studies since the 1980s – have contributed to the increased academic interest in politics, discourses, processes, and practices of belonging. During the recent decades, the idea of belonging or notbelonging have been discussed and theorized in various fields with diverse parallel and/or overlapping conceptualizations. These include, for example, identity, placemaking, displacement, and their representational, intersectional, and fluid nature. In recent years, several scholars have aimed to discuss the topics framed by the above mentioned concepts and …

Tolerance, Empathy, and Inclusion

AbstractIn this chapter, the authors analyze the artifacts in which the students explore the key attitudes of cultural literacy within the CLLP: Tolerance, empathy, and inclusion. The chapter introduces each attitude with critical discussion of its meanings, connections, and relations to other key concepts of cultural literacy, such as diversity, equality, and democracy. The authors explore how the program addresses these attitudes and the cultural texts it includes. The analysis of the artifacts reveals the variety of ways in which children give meanings to tolerance, empathy, and inclusion, such as helping others. In this meaning-making process, the students draw from their own experience…

Developing EU Heritage Diplomacy : Notions of Cultural Diplomacy, Cultural Heritage, and Intercultural Dialogue among EU Officials and European Heritage Practitioners

The European Commission has recently identified cultural heritage as a focus area for EU cultural diplomacy. The article explores EU cultural diplomacy that deals with cultural heritage and develops the concept of heritage diplomacy based on a critical discourse analysis of interviews with EU officials and heritage practitioners working at sites awarded with the European Heritage Label. What do these actors mean by cultural diplomacy and how do they understand the role and potential of cultural heritage for it and with what effects? The analysis indicates that heritage diplomacy means different things for EU officials and heritage practitioners. Their discourses on the uses of cultural heri…

Virtual Space and the Contention over Representations of the City

The European Capital of Culture (ECOC) is one of the longest running cultural initiatives of the European Union (EU). The EU annually designates one or more cities with this much-competed-for city brand. In various cities the ECOC designation has caused tensions and disagreements over the decision-making process, funding of cultural events, and the use of urban space. These disputes have also generated urban activism that uses various platforms to contest ECOC policies: public discussions in the local media, Internet sites and blogs, as well as alternative events and activities organised by the citizens themselves. This chapter investigates the conflict related to the ECOC designation of Tu…

The Intersections of Sexuality and Religion in the Anti-Interculturalist Rhetoric in Finnish Internet Discussion on Muslim Homosexuals in Amsterdam

In recent decades, Europe has faced the rise of nationalist populist movements objecting to increased immigration, cultural pluralisation, and interculturalism in European societies. Public discussion on interculturalism have often focused on the encounters of – and the wrangles with – migrants and local people and their diverse values. The members of anti-immigrant movements commonly object to cultural pluralism and intercultural practices and foster ‘traditional’, ‘Western’, and ‘national’ values. The discourse influenced by conservative ideologies also often embraces traces of xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny. In this paper, we ask how and why interculturalism is opposed in populist …

Founding myths of EU Europe and the workings of power in the EU heritage and history initiatives

Along with the European Union’s (EU) increased interest in a common European culture and past, narration as a means to create and communicate about them has gained new momentum. By applying the Discourse-Mythological Approach, I explore how the EU narrates the story of the origins of EU Europe in two recent EU heritage/history initiatives. The analysis brought out three storylines in the mythmaking of EU Europe. While the first storyline emphasizes temporal continuity, shared cultural roots, and preservation and transmission of a common legacy, the second focuses on the idea of a break and a rebirth of a civic/political community. The third storyline highlighting founding figures and key he…

Identity politics of the European Capital of Culture initiative and the audience reception of cultural events compared

The European Capital of Culture (ECOC) is one of the EU’s longest running cultural initiatives. It has an identity political focus: The designation as an ECOC requires cities to plan cultural events which foster and bring to the fore local, regional, and European cultures and identities, and moreover, present the local culture as European. How are these identity political aims mediated to the audiences of the ECOC events? The article investigates the reception of cultural events in three recent ECOCs – Pecs2010, Tallinn2011, and Turku2011 – on the basis of a questionnaire study conducted among the audiences. With the methods of statistical and discourse analysis, the article explores how th…

Rhetoric of unity and cultural diversity in the making of European cultural identity

The fundamental aim of the cultural policy of the European Union (EU) is to emphasize the obvious cultural diversity of Europe, while looking for some underlying common elements which unify the various cultures in Europe. Through these common elements, the EU policy produces ‘an imagined cultural community’ of Europe which is ‘united in diversity’, as one of the slogans of the Union states. This discourse characterizes various documents which are essential to the EU cultural policy, such as the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Agenda for Culture and the EU’s decision on the European Capital of Culture program. In addition, the discourse is applied to the production of cultural events in Europ…

Learning cultural literacy through creative practices in schools cultural and multimodal approaches to meaning-making

Introduction: Cultural Literacy and Creativity -- A Sociocultural Approach to Children’s Visual Creations -- Multimodality: Art as a Meaning-Making Process -- Tolerance, Empathy, and Inclusion -- Living Together -- Social Responsibility -- Belonging and Home -- Cultural Literacy During COVID-19 -- Conclusions: Cultural Literacy in Action -- Index. This open access book discusses how cultural literacy can be taught and learned through creative practices. It approaches cultural literacy as a dialogic social process based on learning and gaining knowledge through emphatic, tolerant, and inclusive interaction. The book focuses on meaning-making in children and young people’s visual and multimod…

Introduction: Time and Spatial and Social Turns in Architectural Research

Affective Rhetoric and ‘Sticky Concepts’ in European Education Policy Documents

Concepts carry not only meanings but also affective associations and cultural connotations. In this chapter, we elaborate on the affective dimensions of European education policy documents. Many of the conceptual densities discussed in this book form affective peaks or rhetorical pinnacles that transmit the idea of intercultural dialogue—and the values attached to it—more effectively than the definitions of the concept alone are able to do. Drawing on theories of affect, we trace the affective transmission of ideals and values in the education policy documents and examine what kind of affects and affective connotations ‘stick’ to the concept of intercultural dialogue. We suggest affective r…

Politics of tangibility, intangibility, and place in the making of a European cultural heritage in EU heritage policy

The EU has recently launched several initiatives that aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The notion of a European cultural heritage in EU policy discourse is extremely abstract, referring to various ideas and values detached from physical locations or places. Nevertheless the EU initiatives put the abstract policy discourse into practice and concretize its notions about a European cultural heritage. A common strategy in this practice is ‘placing heritage’ – affixing the idea of a European cultural heritage to certain places in order to turn them into specific European heritage sites. The materialisation of a European cultural heritage and the production of physic…

Politics of belonging in Brussels’ European Quarter

The European Union (EU) has been criticised for a lack of imageries and sites of memory that nation-states have traditionally utilised in their identity-building. The EU, along with other actors, has responded to this iconographic deficit with memory and heritage initiatives and branding campaigns. This article explores how this deficit is dealt with in the European Quarter in Brussels by enlivening it through cultural regeneration and creating narratives that link Europe’s and the EU’s past with the present. The article utilises hermeneutic phenomenological approach combining observation and interpretation of diverse place-making practices, such as monuments, memorials, public artworks, hi…

Discourses on governing diversity in Europe: Critical analysis of the White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue

International audience; The White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue, published in 2008 by the Council of Europe, is one of the first European level attempts to provide a common guideline for diversity politics in Europe. It introduces the idea of ‘intercultural dialogue’ as a new focus and a method of governing diversity. Our paper aims to investigate the explicit and implicit meanings included in the idea of ‘intercultural dialogue’ and how the idea is rhetorically operationalized as a policy in the White Paper. The investigation is conducted with a lexical and semantic analysis of the text in the White Paper and a discourse analysis of its rhetoric, in order to explore how the ‘intercultura…

The Influence of Cultural Competence on the Interpretations of Territorial Identities in European Capitals of Culture

Abstract The EU’s cultural initiative ‘the European Capital of Culture’ (ECOC) includes high identity political aims. It requires the designated cities to introduce and foster local, regional, and European cultural identities. In addition, the cities have used the designation as an opportunity to promote national cultural identity. Audiences of the ECOC events recognize and interpret different kinds of representations of territorial cultural identities from what the cities have to offer in culture. However, the contents of these interpretations vary drastically in the ECOCs. The article discusses whether the competence of interpreting the representations of territorial cultural identities i…

Data and Methods: A Conceptual Approach to Intercultural Dialogue

In this chapter, we discuss the constructivist perspective on concepts and explain how we utilize this in our analysis of concepts used by the Council of Europe and the European Union in their education policy documents. In this perspective, political language and administrative documents not only describe the reality of administrated issues but also participate in their construction and meaning-making. The authors emphasize the performativity of language and discuss its significance for political rhetoric. Besides the theoretical and methodological frameworks, we describe the data and elaborate on the genre of education policy documents. We also provide an overview of the development, cont…

Explorations of Linkages Between Intercultural Dialogue, Art, and Empathy

AbstractIn the 2000s, European societies have transformed quickly due to the networked global economy, deepening a European integration process, forced and voluntary movement of people to and within Europe, and influence of social media on culture, communication, and society. Europe has become an increasingly diverse and pluricultural continent where many people simultaneously identify with multiple different cultural and social groups. In such “super-diversified” (Vertovec in New complexities of cohesion in Britain: Super-diversity, transnationalism and civil-integration, Communities and Local Government Publications, Wetherby, 2007) European societies diversity itself is broad, multidimen…

Materiaalisuus ja paikka eurooppalaisen kulttuuriperinnön tuottamisessa

Kulttuuriperinnöksi nimetyt kohteet ovat kollektiivisen muistin tihentymiä ja yhteisöjen menneisyyden ymmärryksen ja identiteettien rakentumisen tiloja. Muisti, menneisyyden tulkinnat ja identiteetit eivät kiinnity kulttuuriperintöön kuitenkaan automaattisesti tai itsestään: niiden hahmottaminen ja merkityksellistäminen kulttuuriperinnön avulla on aktiivinen teko, jolla on myös aktiivisia tekijöitä. Kulttuuriperinnön yhteisöllisyyteen ja kollektiivisiin identiteetteihin liittyvät merkitykset jäsentyvät usein territoriaalisina. Merkitykset kiinnitetään todellisiin tai kuviteltuihin paikkoihin, alueisiin ja niihin paikantuviin yhteisöihin, joilla on todelliset tai kuvitellut territoriaaliset …

Miten tiede on vastannut yhteiskunnallisiin haasteisiin?

Suomen Akatemia järjesti sidosryhmilleen ”Tiede ja tutkimus tulevaisuuden menestystekijöinä: Tieteen tila” -tilaisuuden Helsingissä 14.10.2022. Tilaisuuteen kutsuttua kahta tutkijaa pyydettiin pohtimaan puheessaan oman alansa näkökulmasta, miten tiede on vastannut yhteiskunnallisiin haasteisiin. Tämä teksti on puheeni, jossa pohdin tieteen vaikuttavuutta taiteen ja kulttuurin tutkimuksen näkökulmasta. nonPeerReviewed

Dissonant Heritages and Memories in Contemporary Europe

Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union

Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union: The European Heritage Label provides an interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which European cultural heritage is created, communicated, and governed via the new European Heritage Label scheme. Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted across ten countries at sites that have been awarded with the European Heritage Label, the authors of the book approach heritage as an entangled social, spatial, temporal, discursive, narrative, performative, and embodied process. Recognising that heritage is inherently political and used by diverse actors as a tool for re-imagining communities, identities, and borders, and for gene…

Politics of Cultural Marking in Mini-Europe: Anchoring European Cultural Identity in a Theme Park

Mini-Europe—a theme park in Brussels morally supported by the European Commission and the European Parliament—consists of around 350 models of different buildings and heritage sites from all the member states of the European Union. In addition the park includes an exhibition named the Spirit of Europe. The article explores how the European cultural identity is constructed and ‘sold’ in Mini-Europe, and how history, geography and local and regional traditions are intertwined into a politics of cultural marking, an ideology of European integration and a creation of shared symbols. European cultural identity has often been generated through appeals to an ancient or classical past, which is pro…

Constructing social Europe through European cultural heritage

The political and economic crises of the recent decades as well as the new changes brought on by globalization and digitalization have contributed to exacerbate social inequalities and injustice and revealed different social realities in Europe. The EU increasingly deals with social issues in its cultural and heritage policy. In this article, we explore the construction of this social dimension and advance the concept of 'social Europe' by exploring its cultural aspect based on our analysis of a recent EU heritage action, the European Heritage Label. In this action, the narrations of the European past and the attempts to foster common cultural heritage in Europe function as building blocks …

Uses of the concept in contemporary research

The EU'S Explicit and Implicit Heritage Politics

During the past couple of decades, heritage has become topical in a new way in Europe as the concept has been utilized for political purposes in the EU cultural policy. The EU currently administrates or supports three initiatives – the European Heritage Days, the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage, and the European Heritage Label – that address the fostering of the transnational European cultural heritage. The article discusses the explicit and implicit heritage politics included in these initiatives. In order to understand the constructive and generative nature of the EU heritage politics, it is approached in the article as a discursive meaning-making process consisting of several …

Negations and negativity as linguistic devices in policy discourse of intercultural cities

International audience; Intercultural cities – a joint initiative launched in 2008 by the European Commission and the Council of Europe – aims to develop a model supporting intercultural integration within diversified urban communities. This article examines, using methods of applied linguistics and discourse analysis, how intercultural urban policy is linguistically produced in the initiative. The examination indicates that the intercultural urban policy in the initiative is ‘negative politics’: the policy rhetoric commonly outlines the content of interculturalism by describing what is not included in it and what the policy is not about. The language used in the intercultural urban policy …

Temporary Architecture as a Means in Urban Regeneration

Poly-space

Europe’s Peat Fire: Intangible Heritage and the Crusades for Identity

Dissonances of ethnic nationalism have in Western cultural policy long been concealed by the universalist discourses of the international treaties on material heritage protection, as framed by the expansive heritage conservation apparatuses of the European nation states. Originally inspired by the 19th century romantic spirit of conservation, they became in the 20th century part of the modern, state-apparatus. Yet parallel with the European enlargements and new kinds of memory debates on the Holocaust and postcolonialism, these authorized heritage regimes have received more and more competition from a transnational counter-discourse on intangible cultural heritage. Like the earlier transfor…

European Capital of Culture Designation as an Initiator of Urban Transformation in the Post-socialist Countries

Since 1985, the EU has designated cities as European Capital of Culture (ECOC) for 1 year at a time. Various ECOCs have used the designation as a tool to revive the city space. The cultural initiatives, such as the ECOC designation, are the EU's political instruments, whose significance has increased during the recent decades, and through which the EU aims to influence various political objectives, such as the unity of the Union and economic growth. These particular objectives were brought into the focus of the ECOC initiative during the Eastern enlargement of the Union. Since 2007, various Central and Eastern European cities have aimed to regenerate their economy through large construction…

Introduction : Ethnography with a Twist

Arvot ja affektit kulttuurienvälisen vuoropuhelun kehystäjinä eurooppalaisissa koulutuspoliittisissa asiakirjoissa

2000-luvulla kulttuurienvälinen vuoropuhelu on syrjäyttänyt monikulttuurisuuden käsitteen eurooppalaisissa moninaisuuspolitiikkaa käsittelevissä asiakirjoissa. Artikkelimme tarkastelee kulttuurien välisen vuoropuhelun ilmenemistä eurooppalaisissa koulutuspoliittisissa asiakirjoissa keskittyen erityisesti arvoihin ja niiden välittämiin tunteisiin ja tuntemuksiin. nonPeerReviewed

Bridging Art and Mathematics: Introduction

There is a long history of interdisciplinary discussions on the relations between science, mathematics, geometry, art, aesthetics, and artistic praxes. These discussions remain active and pertinent today: the aforementioned relations are explored in various scientific communities, journals, and at conferences. Globally, numerous scholars and artists share a common interest in combining creative thinking, intellectual curiosity, and aesthetic sensibility in their work. Various experts working in different scientific and technological fields are inspired by phenomena that combine mathematical and artistic qualities. Respectively, several contemporary artists, graphic designers, craftsmen, and…

Notre Dame ja eurooppalainen kulttuuriperintö

Notre Damen katedraalin palo aiheutti surua sekä lupauksen jälleenrakentamisesta. Mitä tällöin itse asiassa surraan ja mitä oikeastaan ollaan rakentamassa uudelleen? nonPeerReviewed

Belonging and Home

AbstractIn this chapter, the authors discuss artifacts in which children explore belonging and home. The chapter defines the sense of belonging as a core feature of humanity and living together. The feeling of having a home and being at home is both an intimate and a socially shared aspect of belonging. The children expressed belonging to a wide range of spaces in their artifacts. This spatial span extends from macro to micro scale and indicates belonging based on spaces, social relations, and materiality. Even very young children can see and depict their belonging as multiple and including spatial and social dimensions. The analyzed artifacts reveal both concrete and symbolic approaches to…

Helsingin nonfiguratiivisista presidenttimonumenteista käydyn julkisen keskustelun diskurssianalyyttista tarkastelua

Challenges and Solutions in Ethnographic Research

Challenges and Solutions in Ethnographic Research: Ethnography with a Twist seeks to rethink ethnography ‘outside the box’ of its previous tradition and to develop ethnographic methods by critically discussing the process, ethics, impact and knowledge production in ethnographic research. This interdisciplinary edited volume argues for a ‘twist’ that supports openness, courage, and creativity to develop and test innovative and unconventional ways of thinking and doing ethnography. ‘Ethnography with a twist’ means both an intentional aim to conduct ethnographic research with novel approaches and methods but also sensitivity to recognize and creativity to utilize different kinds of ‘twist mome…

Cultural activism as a counter-discourse to the European Capital of Culture programme: The case of Turku 2011

Each year the European Union designates one or more cities with the competed-for city brand of European Capital of Culture (ECOC). In several recent ECOCs, such as in Turku, Finland, the management and organisation of the events have caused tension among the citizens regarding decision-making, financing and power over use of the urban space. The focus of the article is on analysis of the discursive dynamics of local activists and their project ‘Turku – European Capital of Subculture 2011’. By emphasising the cultural analysis of activism, the article indicates how the counter-discourse of the activists was produced through cultural production. The project produced a strong movement culture…

Keiden perinteitä tulisi vaalia?

Scholarly discussion as engineering the meanings of a European cultural heritage

The vague concept of a European cultural heritage is frequently referred to – but rarely explicitly defined – in scholarly discussion. The use of the concept in academia constructs a European cultural heritage as a category in research and explicitly and implicitly produces its focuses and outlines. Thus, the use of the concept can be considered as scholarly engineering of a European cultural heritage. To be able to have a scholarly discussion about a European cultural heritage, the meanings and uses of the concept need to be clarified. This article examines the meanings and uses of the concept in recent scholarly articles published in various disciplines. In the study, the concept analysi…

Poly-space : Creating new concepts through reflexive team ethnography

In this chapter, we outline the development process of the concept of poly-space – which conceptualizes the entanglement of multiple moments and different spatial, temporal, affective and cognitive experiences in one physical place, the heritage site. The concept was conceived based on the experiences that members of the EUROHERIT project gained while conducting ethnographic fieldwork at 11 heritage sites awarded with the European Heritage Label by the European Commission. We argue that collaborative interpretive reflexivity – a form of affective sharing among researchers that goes beyond traditional conceptualizations of team ethnography – was the key aspect contributing to and enabling ou…

The ‘European Significance’ of Heritage:

Kulttuuriympäristö kuvissa ja mielikuvissa

Tässä TAHITI-lehden numerossa jatketaan Jyväskylän yliopistossa 12–13 helmikuuta 2015 järjestettyjen kuudensien taidehistorian päivien teeman – kulttuuriympäristön – käsittelyä. Kulttuuriympäristö: käsitteet, keinot ja konkretia -konferenssin esitelmissä kulttuuriympäristöä lähestyttiin monipuolisesti erilaisista näkökulmista ja moninaisten aineistojen avulla. Esitelmien lähestymistapojen ja aiheiden kirjo voidaan jäsentää kahdeksi – joskin monin tavoin toisensa leikkaavaksi – temaattiseksi kokonaisuudeksi. Konferenssiesitelmien pohjalta kootussa lehden edellisessä teemanumerossa (TAHITI04/2015) kulttuuriympäristöä tarkasteltiin erityisesti kulttuuriympäristö- ja kulttuuriperintöhallinnon, …

"""Fluidity and flexibility of """"belonging"""": Uses of the concept in contemporary research"""

Studies framing “belonging” as a key focus and a central concept of research have increased significantly in the 2000s. This article explores the dimensions of belonging as a scholarly concept. The investigation is based on a qualitative content analysis of articles published in academic journals covering a large number of different disciplines. The article poses and answers the following research questions: How is belonging understood and used in contemporary research? What added value does the concept bring to scholarly discussions? In the analysis, five topoi of conceptualizing belonging – spatiality, intersectionality, multiplicity, materiality, and non-belonging – were identified. Afte…

Pop-Up Architecture as Urban Regeneration

Recent ideas in urban planning, conceptualized e.g., as New Urbanism, emphasize the humane point of view of the city. The focus of these ideas is on the citizens and their experiences of feeling comfortable and at home in the urban space; people´s possibilities of spending leisure time in the city centre; and enabling the encounter of different people in the city space in order to bring the inner city to life. To revitalize the less used, unused, or decayed city spaces by using them as venues for diverse cultural activities is a part of these ideas. The means of urban regeneration often rely on ambitious and permanent transformations of the urban space, such as constructing cultural infrast…

Conceptualisation of heritage diplomacy in scholarship

Heritage diplomacy is a recent concept and a new area of interest in the expanding scope of diplomacy. The concept is explored with various epistemological foci and theoretical frameworks in Western scholarship. It is often used to describe joint international projects or government initiatives abroad for preserving tangible cultural heritage. Several recent studies link heritage diplomacy to attempts to develop reciprocal relations between countries, regions, and/or communities through cultural heritage based on dialogue. This article contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship on heritage diplomacy by clarifying the concept, including its inherent notions of cultural heritage and approac…

Tukku uusia ja joukko tuttuja näkökulmia julkiseen taiteeseen

Arvio: Machineries of Public Art. From Durable to Transient, from Site-bound to Mobile 2013. Toim. Johanna Ruohonen ja Asta Kihlman. Turun yliopiston taiteiden tutkimuksen julkaisuja. UTU: Turun yliopisto, 172 s.

Transnational Heritage in the Making. Strategies for Narrating Cultural Heritage as European in the Intergovernmental Initiative of the European Heritage Label

The idea of a transnational cultural heritage has become topical in Europe because of the new EU heritage initiatives, such as the European Heritage Label scheme. Even though the scheme is administered at the European level, its implementation is transferred to heritage agents in the countries participating in the initiative. How do the heritage agents narrate the labeled heritage sites as European? Using the method of narrative analysis, this article identifies six key strategies of making sense of a European cultural heritage. Even though the scheme includes certain frameworks in which the heritage agents have to interpret and narrate the sites as European, it enables them to interpret th…

Policy Brief: Developing Education Policies in Europe to Enhance Cultural Literacy

Europe needs education policies that seek to advance intercultural dialogue in a way which reflects the super-diversity of today’s Europe, support respect for diversity and difference, and enable the growth of young people’s identities. The DIALLS project seeks to respond to these needs by developing the concept and idea of cultural literacy and creating a Cultural Literacy Learning Programme for young people. For DIALLS, cultural literacy means a social practice that is inherently dialogic and based on learning and gaining knowledge through empathetic, tolerant and inclusive interaction with others. DIALLS’ qualitative content and concept analysis of European and national education policy …

EUROHERIT Policy Brief: Optimizing Communication, Multilingualism, and Networking in the EHL

Efficient communication is important for the sustainability of cultural heritage schemes. Being a rather new action, the European Heritage Label (EHL) struggles with issues of visibility and wider recognition among European citizens, in part resulting from modest communication of the diverse actors within the action. To both increase the visibility of the EHL and promote efficient audience engagement, with an emphasis on multilingual representation of Europe’s diverse cultural heritage, we recommend concrete measures to improve coordinated communication among the EHL actors. Our recommendations consist of three thematic areas: communication, multilingualism, and networking.

Bibliography of Cultural Texts

EUROHERIT Policy Brief I: Increasing the Benefits and Transparency of the European Heritage Label

The European Heritage Label (EHL) is the EU’s flagship heritage action. It focuses on promoting the European significance of the cultural heritage and a sense of belonging among the European citizenry. The nature of the action and its proclaimed aims in identity politics necessitate wide public engagement, openness, and transparency. Compared to the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) action and the UNESCO Heritage Lists, the EHL application process has poor transparency, as the applications of the labeled sites are not made public or accessible to other heritage professionals, managers, policymakers, researchers, or public audiences. To increase the transparency of the EU heritage policy in…

Extending heritage diplomacy : a dialogic approach to cultural heritage

Heritage diplomacy is a recent concept and a new area of interest in the expanding field of diplomacy. The EU has recently emphasized the role of cultural heritage in its external relations to respond to global challenges and crises within, at, and beyond its borders. This use of cultural heritage runs the risk of underlining Eurocentric notions of heritage and expertise. Principles of democracy, dialogue, and inclusion form the basis of building trust and long-term cultural relations through heritage diplomacy, in EU external and internal relations. These relations should be perceived as deeply entangled.

Cultural and multimodal analysis of students cultural artefacts