A possible context: 2018 - European Year of Cultural Heritage

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“We also assured these high-level representatives from the EU Institutions that the civil society networks and organisations active in the field of heritage stand ready to contribute to the implementation of the European Year of Cultural Heritage in 2018 with creativity and energy (….) We therefore hope (…) to continue our discussion on the ways in which we can ensure that the European Year of Cultural Heritage will serve as a platform for connecting and amplifying many excellent heritage initiatives – local, regional, national and European – which have already been developed across Europe.

At a time when the European Union is confronted with a wide range of political, economic and social challenges, and at a time when the entire European project is threatened by alarming forms of extremism and Euroscepticism, the decision to declare 2018 as the European Year of Cultural Heritage has a very special meaning and significance, both for the European Union Institutions and Member States and for Europe’s communities and citizens”.

(Sneška Quaedvlieg-Mihailović in a special message sent to the wide network of Europa Nostra)

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European Years provide an opportunity to campaign for a specific issues of European interest, raise awareness and change attitudes and perceptions. 

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An outline of The Bridges of Europe project

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The Reflection Group “EU & Cultural Heritage” during its meeting in Luxembourg (Sept, 2015) developed a concept note entitled “Sharing Heritage”. The European Commission is the most prominent body of EU that is entitled to render the proper importance to a cultural theme of such fundamental significance. Though economy and politics are the indispensable base, - culture in its strategic power has undeniable power of dividing or uniting, if we choose to learn our future by the best examples of our predecessors.

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The Idea of Europe is an ongoing project of bringing peoples and cultures of Europe together.  The bridges are equally powerful metaphor of peace as well as of power of cultural diversity regarded as richness. 

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Exploring the biographies of famous Europeans, we can enhance understanding of the European idea. Some of these biographies are so essentially European that they inspire constant identifying with processes of European integration. The greatness of certain of these personalities coming from the transitional part of Europe will help these countries and their cultures to see Europe as their natural unity.  

 

The Bridges of Europe is inherently cross-border project as it is centred on directly and most explicitly shared identities in the phenomenon of famous creative personalities that are the greatest builders of European coherence though not always recognized as such.
Exploring the biographies of the greatest shared personalities in Europe would be like discovering and consolidating the bridges between the past and the present of European-ess. 

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Their areas of activity and their achievements are covering all the imaginable areas of human endeavour, from science and art to politics… 

We have to take up the seemi9ngly delicate questions of affiliation and belonging, be it cultural, national or political, proving that adoption of certain great figures of European history simultaneously into two or more cultures or national frameworks may or should be understood benevolently as noble sharing and not, as political profits often suggest, as reasons for conflict or further divisions. 

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As no culture exists without owing some of its specificity, at least in interpretations of borrowed elements, from the different others, so there can hardly be any significant heritage which is reducible to a sole culture.  Heritage must be affirmed in its noble capacity of connecting and sharing, while leaving to the science and its professions to deal with proportions of the parts in their composite character, contributions and lives.

Some additional points about the Project

 
1.    The aim of the project is defined as the virtual museum of Europe 
2.    The notion of bridge, the concept of bridging is a powerful metaphor able to raise interest and underline the understanding of European identity: as unity produced by linkage and gathering, as a constant exchange, sharing, in brief, - unity of diversity;
3.    The advantage of accessing the problem through the metaphor of bridges is the following: (a) effectiveness of metaphor, (b) accentuation of positive values
4.    The bridges appear parallel to presenting the values as real or represented, - an attractive material which serves as a permanent reminder of their metaphorical and symbolic power; 
5.    The use of this imaginary museum of Europe would be: access, promotion, affirmation and communication of values that form the basis of belonging to Europe, of identifying with the overall image of Europe, of understanding what Europe-ness may mean.
6.    The system remains opened but maintained and managed, i.e. with a controlled access;
7.    The site should contain the “meeting point on a bridge”, an interface towards public where conciliate contributions towards constant defining of what European identity is, could be exchanged. Bridges were in history places of great events and their metaphor may work for the project in this sense too.