Promoting and valorising European Cultural Heritage are the objectives of Michael Culture Association (MCA) which motivated its participation in the WE-Hope project. By safeguarding the intangible heritage of testimonies and enhancing them with a dedicated digital tool, the ambitions of WE-Hope correspond to the values and experience of MCA.
MCA was created in 2007 with the aim of promoting digital cultural content and making it available to all. Through the Michael website and Museu, the european aggregator for museums for the Europeana platform, MCA has continuously made heritage data accessible to everyone. Moreover, MCA other pillar of activity is the valorization of the use of digital content for societal challenges such as Education, Inclusion.... We do advocate for recognition of Culture as a pillar of sustainable development of societies and its values.
Consequently, we are involved in several European projects which place heritage at the heart of their challenges. Whether it is to support inclusion and participation, fight against the illicit trafficking of works of art, to enhance, enrich and reuse cultural heritage, or even to share it with young people and / or an impeded public, all these projects use technological innovations and new media to serve their objectives. We are now aware that the possibilities offered by the development of new information and communication technologies are huge and must be let at the service of everyone, but also at the service of the preservation and sharing the diversity of our common heritage.
And what better legacy than our memories? This intangible and diverse heritage which it is imperative today to save under penalty of seeing it disappear forever! It is for this reason that MCA got involved in the WE-Hope project, a project with incredible values that are worth communicating to as many people as possible. This project fits perfectly with MCA's missions to preserve and promote cultural diversity to make societies more sustainable and inclusive.
Thanks to the WE-Hope testimonial platform, implemented by NTUA, the intangible heritage of these fragile people who have suffered all kinds of trauma linked to various crises (war, illness, exile, etc.) can be saved and especially highlighted. Nowadays, it is more than imperative to make everyone aware of what these people have gone through, the situation that impacted them, still impacts them today and the situations in which they will find themselves tomorrow if nothing is done in the way to help them. The aim of transmitting their memory, a heritage of incomparable richness, is to awaken consciences in the face of the challenge of memory loss and therefore of human life. It is our duty to highlight this imperative and the urgency of collecting testimonies.
Within the project, MCA will be responsible for the communication and dissemination plan both for the project itself and for activities organized throughout the three that last WE-Hope. This will involve managing the website, managing the project's presence on social networks, promoting and enhancing new testimonials collected by partners, and also events organized in the near future, but still uncertain, once the Covid-19 health crisis passed.
MCA is proud to be partner of this project with values full of hope and happiness, we hope that this will make it possible to evolve consciences and alert the world both to the horrors that these people are going through and to the wealth of their cultural heritage which we must welcome with open arms and collect for the purpose of safeguarding, and valorize the richness of cultural diversity. It is only in this way that our perception of these fragile people can change and that real modifications can be undertaken from a social point of view. Let’s hope!