The richness and diversity of European culture is a sure way to address and overcome deficits in European citizens’ identification with the European Union.
Résumé
The richness and diversity of European culture is a sure way to address and overcome deficits in European citizens’ identification with the European Union.
CHANCE’s prime objectives are:
i) to address this “cultural deficit” in the contemporary European imaginary by foregrounding historical and shared creative practices in the evolving representations of Europe in contemporary artistic expressions;
ii) to demonstrate how a culturally complex European identity has always been immanently present in the diversity of our common heritage and propose a better knowledge of cultural Europeanization in the making;
iii) to renew a non-elitist cultural narrative of Europe that speaks to Europeans of different languages, cultures, religions and origins beyond national borders and proposes an enhanced cultural inter-comprehension among Europeans, especially the young;
iv) to propose and produce new teaching materials for formal and informal education.
These objectives will be effectively achieved via CHANCE’s flagship, the Handbook of European Culture: a suite of informal and formal educative outputs (printed book, mobile applications, graphic novel, digitally archived workshop papers and video recordings). Awareness and dissemination of these outputs will be greatly enhanced by the presence of EURONEWS as a full partner in our consortium. E- NeW’s existing internet and social media presence will thus be reinforced, while CHANCE’s projects will be further publicised by a dedicated platform on the EURONEWS website.
1.1 Objectives
• In responding to the European Commission Call Contemporary histories of Europe in artistic and creative practices, we aim to provide a European vision of culture as a socially inclusive dynamic force in a co-created handbook.
• We shall investigate the contemporary artistic and creative practices literature, cinema, music, the visual arts and dance through five work packages developed jointly by consortium members and stakeholders.
• These WPs will identify and assess the contribution of such practices to the representation of Europe, European identity and Europeanisation. In their collective undertaking the WPs will also map the tensions between positive and negative depictions of Europe and the European Union, and promote affirmative prospects and practices for a culturally cohesive Europe.
• The research and cultural initiatives will be brought together in the formal handbook, this will be developed alongside and integrated with a multiple platform of pedagogical materials to be disseminated and used in informal and formal education in the EU and neighbouring countries.
1.2 Relation to the work programme
In the light of recent destabilizing events relating to European cohesion, it is now more than ever necessary to revisit the way we have recounted, both positively and negatively, our common heritage. The consortium will seek to promote a comprehensive vision of Europe through analysing and developing an inclusive narrative of evolving European culture. It will do so by investigating and working together with contemporary innovative artistic and creative practitioners who take into account changing societal, historical and cultural contexts. The production of a handbook and its novel technological extensions (digital platform, apps, graphic novels) together with performance symposia (corporeal, visual, and musical) will facilitate pedagogical strategies employing innovative dissemination techniques. The project will thus open up new ways of thinking culturally about European identity.
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This proposal version was submitted by Gregory LEE on 31/01/2017 09:39:47 Brussels Local Time. Issued by the Participant Portal Submission Service.
The project will address the full scope of the programme by investigating creative and artistic practices through five work packages that i) seek to understand the role that literature, cinema, music, visual arts and dance has played in the making of Europe, and that ii) explore with stakeholders the ways in which these practices can help facilitate a new and more inclusive understanding of European identity and of Europeanisation. These work packages will thus be co-creative meeting places for the Europe-wide intellectual resources and inter-disciplinary expertise of the Europe in a Networked World (E-NeW) consortium. All members of our intersectorial (academic and non-academic) consortium and the involved stakeholders work out of a comparative and cross-cultural studies perspective on Europe in the post-colonial, globalized age. The consortium consists of members drawn from three regions: northern Europe, post-2004 EU, and southern Europe and will take a geographically inclusively broad view of the complex formation of Europe drawn together in a shared cultural repertoire. The dissemination of the project will greatly benefit from the membership of Lyon-based Euronews, the most-watched news channel in Europe and a full multimedia platform, it is available in eight of the EU’s languages (English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish) and also in Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian and Ukrainian.
Referring to the development vectors indicated in the Europe 2020 Strategy and the initiatives of the European Commission concerning young Europeans and education (Youth on the Move, EU Youth Strategy) we shall put special emphasis on three areas of inquiry:
• The ways in which young creative practitioners are engaging with European artistic traditions in a non-elitist fashion.
• The challenges and possibilities opened up by new technology in terms of cultural and artistic practices, from the democratisation of both production and consumption of artistic and cultural products to the dangers of generic results.
• The ways in which recent migrations are shaping a new sense of what Europe means. There is now a great multiplicity of diverse stakeholders producing a greater number of concurrent images of Europe and European identity. As a response to the discourses which prioritize historical differences, we seek to see the ways in which these differences can contribute to the invention of the common future of innovative and creative Europe.
The question of curation will be specifically addressed in the work package on the visual arts led by Naples which already has a lengthy experience in European-funded projects on museology and migration (MeLa: http://www.mela-project.polimi.it), the role and use of language in representations of Europe will be addressed across several workshops and in the innovative nature of the projects deliverables which will seek to overcome language barriers in lo-verbal, verbal-light, and verbal zero communication of a common European cultural identity (music and dance performance, mobile apps, Graphic novels), issues of translation will be at the core of the agenda of the work package on Literature which will be led by Cyprus which has held several writing and translation symposia and issues of cross-border (both physical and linguistic) literary communication. Globally, the project will contribute to future digitalization and archiving of
contemporary cultural practices through our recording and of performances and symposia. 3
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This proposal version was submitted by Gregory LEE on 31/01/2017 09:39:47 Brussels Local Time. Issued by the Participant Portal Submission Service.
In the effort to reformulate the telling of Europe’s story and to advance our informal education agenda, alongside the use of digital technologies, we shall also call on experienced partners in public media and the arts such as Euronews and the Fire Theatre (Sofia). These partners will be involved at an early stage of the project to contribute to the efficient uptake of research results.
1.3 Concept and methodology (a) Concept
Crisis of identity
Evolving representations of Europe through cultural and artistic expression and shared narrative can enhance the relationships that Europeans citizens have with each other and with the European Union. Indeed, a thus far overly neglected means of responding to the recent “refugee crisis”, the sancturization of national borders, and the spreading of xenophobic and racist ideologies is to restore confidence in Europe by deploying its most valued and cherished asset, its culture.
Crisis of European culture.
Culturally speaking the present crisis manifests itself in a paradoxical mix of contradictory perceptions. Europeanisation is associated with the threat of uniformity that is distantly sanctioned by officials working in steel and glass buildings. More importantly, cultural uniformity emerges as a natural by-product of the market economy so that cultural production seems to be concentrated around a handful of players while patterns of homogeneous cultural consumption are imposed all across the continent and beyond.
We are well aware that the claim of universality that sustained European culture and the arts for centuries is no longer tenable. The construction of such a pretence of “universality” was the product of a local history that gave European culture and artistic practices a great sense of self-reliance. It happens however that this idea of universality depended on an aggressive policy of expansive imposition on the rest of the planet. The geopolitics of the contemporary world now calls for the pressing need to provincialize Europe. This does not imply, of course, a refusal to celebrate its great scientific, cultural and artistic achievements, but it also requires that we recognise the importance (and complementarity) of the accomplishments achieved elsewhere, both yesterday and today.
The traditional European canon has lost its capacity to reignite new artistic trends. More than a reservoir of ideas, affects, emotions, techniques, and ways of making sense of oneself and the world it has increasingly become an exclusive asset for the luxury industry or even a means of divide and exclude. Cultural institutions increasingly fail to adapt to the diverse cultural universe of contemporary Europe and the potential of European cultural heritage and artistic tradition is not used efficiently to address the needs and demands of new audiences and consumers. Instead of playing a key role in enhancing social cohesion and contributing to intercultural dialogue, the European cultural narrative
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This proposal version was submitted by Gregory LEE on 31/01/2017 09:39:47 Brussels Local Time. Issued by the Participant Portal Submission Service.
often reproduces the “great divide” of the split between high and low and widens the gap between communities and peoples of the E.U. How can European culture and its arts, with their multiple locations and heterogeneous composition, adapt to a world that actively rejects its past hegemony? What does it mean to be a creator of culture working in today’s Europe? What are the challenges posed by internal diversities within Europe itself, and their response to felt external pressures? How can the composite mix of European culture open to the world without losing a sense of itself, of its past and its future? Is it possible to integrate the multiplicity of diversity that is all too obvious in the streets of the continent to new artistic and cultural practices for the twenty-first century?
Our solution
This research project aims to regain a sense of poise in the European project of integration within its intrinsic diversity. We will do that by investigating the most valuable of European assets: its cultural resources. We want to actively contribute to the European project by tracing a landscape of the vitality that distinguishes some of the most representative of its artistic practices: literature, visual arts, music, dance and cinema and how they represent Europe and help in constructing an image of the continent for the years to come. Long before the dream of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman took concrete shape in European institutions and before the practical advantages of the Schengen Space, Europe was already constituted as a cultural landscape in which stories, images, sounds, ideas and artistic techniques travelled freely across national borders and diverse languages, inspiring all sorts of creative responses and creating shared cultural and artistic resources. In many ways, these common cultural and artistic exchanges are at the very core of how Europe makes sense of itself.
CHANCE aims to investigate precisely the way in which a new European culture is taking shape in what is widely perceived as a landscape of crisis. The challenges we face today suggest how we might think about and use the cultural diversity of Europe to build a sustainable inclusive society instead of it being used as an excuse for separation. Creativity born in the multicultural European space supported by the core European values of democracy, equality, dignity, solidarity, and cooperation have great promise and potential to address the crisis of identity we are witnessing. We insist that such values are best represented, explored and felt through the experiences provides by the arts and cultural practices leading to new forms of solidarity. In close cooperation with stakeholders, the project aspires to draw directly on the creative sector and the arts, to study the ways in which youth consume and reshape the European canon, to adopt new technologies and practices not bound by national borders, and to subsequently transform of this vast data into contemporary educational tools.
(b) Methodology
The proposed research project recognizes that culture plays a more important role than ever in Europe. As observed by CulturalBase “the entire cultural ecosystem has changed” in the wake of cultural digitization and globalization. This has “radically altered – and at the same time, intensified – the
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This proposal version was submitted by Gregory LEE on 31/01/2017 09:39:47 Brussels Local Time. Issued by the Participant Portal Submission Service.
relationship between cultural identity, cultural heritage and cultural expression” (http://culturalbase.eu/description/). These observations structure the project’s central aim to regain a sense of stability in an increasingly diverse Europe through a focus on three distinct imperatives:
1. Stakeholder consideration
2. Co-creation and public accountability
3. Disseminating, synthesising and innovating
Initial preparation and methodologies
The E-NeW network (e-ne.world) was established in June 2015 at an initial, exploratory workshop in Frankfurt. In July 2015 the research network, via its French Member the IETT (www.iett.eu) successfully bid for a French National Research Agency (ANR-MRSEI)** grant to finance preparatory work towards the mounting of this H2020 project. The E-NeW network members are:
• Institut d'Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 (France)
• Centro Studi Postcoloniali e di Genere, Università degli Studi di Napoli – L’Orientale (Italy)
• Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus (Cyprus)
• Centre for Concurrences in Colonial & Postcolonial Studies, Linnaeus University (Sweden)
• Research Platform Gender Studies: Identities - Discourses – Transformations, Innsbruck University (Austria)
• Centre for Postcolonial Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London (UK)
E-NeW’s CHANCE project practitioner-members are drawn from the arts and media world and provide a wealth of expertise and long, extensive track-records of bringing European culture and arts to the public. They are:
• Fire Theatre Foundation - https://www.facebook.com/firetheatrefoundation/ (Bulgaria)
• Euronews (France) http://www.euronews.com/about (France)
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