ERIH
Cultural route
ERIH NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2023

Welcome to the ERIH newsletter in October. We look back at this year's edition of the WORK it OUT dance event and the award-winning Industrial Heritage Summer School in Berlin and introduce two new Anchor Points in Poland and Germany. Furthermore, we celebrate the highlight topic "Industrial Heritage" at the recent conference of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe. The last part is dedicated to new features on the ERIH website.

The topics at a glance:

  • ERIH Event: WORK it OUT - the dance event 2023 in figures
  • ERIH Event: Award-winning Summer School "Industrial Heritage x Sustainability".
  • ERIH Members: Two new Anchor Points in Germany and Poland
  • ERIH Cooperation: Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe - Advisory Forum on "Industrial Heritage"
  • ERIH Cooperation: Benefits of NEMO membership for our members
  • ERIH Website: New outfit and new content
  • ERIH Calendar: Save the date
Hamburg (D). Museum of Work
ERIH Event: WORK it OUT - the dance event 2023 in figures

At the 6th edition of our pan-European dance event WORK it OUT, we had again almost 3,000 children and young people dancing at 32 sites in eleven countries. The event idea emerged in the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 to encourage young people with their interests - music, dance, social media - to embrace industrial heritage and explore its sites. Since 2020, an event studio has broadcast a main live stream, this year from the Hansa coking plant in Dortmund, Germany. Once again, the presenter was the popular German TV star Suri Abbassi. And as before, all participating sites joined in the WORK-it-OUT competition, providing the site teams with a week's time to collect as many likes as possible for their dance videos on the ERIH Facebook and Instagram channels.

Congratulations to this year's winners: 1st prize goes to the Samuño Valley Mining Ecomuseum in Ciaño near Langreo, Spain, followed in 2nd place by the Gondomar Municipal Museum of Filigree | The Filigree Route in Valbom, Portugal. Coming in 3rd is the PJSC "North Mining and Processing Plant" Open Air Museum of Mining Equipment in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine.
And in 2024 the dance returns - on 8 September 2024. Save the date!
ERIH dance event WORK it OUT
Playlist with the videos of the participating sites

ERIH Event: Award winning Summer School "Industrial Heritage x Sustainability"

We are proud to announce that the first edition of our European Industrial Heritage Summer School "Industrial Heritage x Sustainability" has been honoured with the Best Practices Award 2023 of the Cultural Route of the Council of Europe. The intense 14-day programme explored the question of whether and how industrial heritage sites can credibly become places of good practice in sustainability. The Summer School took place in Berlin from 5 to 20 August 2023, was designed for students from various disciplines and combined interdisciplinary knowledge transfer with hands-on project work. Exciting visits to different industrial heritage sites in Berlin and meetings with experienced colleagues wrapped up the schedule.

In discussions with international industrial heritage experts such as TICCIH President Dr. Miles Oglethorpe (Scotland), ERIH Vice President Dr. Adam Hajduga (Poland) and Fulbright scholar Donna Graves (USA), seventeen students from eleven countries developed their own projects.

The Summer School is a programme of ERIH in cooperation with the Berlin Centre for Industrial Heritage (bzi) and the University of Applied Sciences Berlin (HTW Berlin). Thanks to an ERIH scholarship, registration fees were kept low. One extraordinary outcome of our first Summer School is the new ERIH Young Professionals Network, which is going to be presented on the ERIH Annual Conference in November 2023 and intends to provide special network opportunities for students and young professionals.
Industrial Heritage Summer School

ERIH Members: Two new Anchor Points in Germany and Poland

"A beacon of industrial heritage" is the title of one of the guided tours at the new ERIH Anchor Point Sayner Hütte Iron Works in Bendorf not far from Koblenz in the very west of Germany, and this claim is not an exaggeration. After all, the extensive refurbishment and restoration work has turned the more than 250-year-old industrial monument into a vibrant cultural venue - thanks to augmented reality, light and sound installations and a broad range of cultural events such as concerts, trade fairs and exhibitions. Another highlight is the Art Casting Gallery opened in May 2023.
Bendorf (D). Sayner Hütte Iron Works

The Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź, Poland, another recently declared ERIH Anchor Point, uses operational equipment and machines to recreate in exciting detail some 200 years of the city's everyday working life and textile history. The authentic setting is a 19th century building complex: Ludwik Geyer's "White Factory", one of the first centres of the textile industry in Poland, complemented by the Cultural Park of the city of Łódź, which combines historic wooden houses and other typical buildings of the region in the manner of an open-air museum.
Łódź (PL). Central Museum of Textiles

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ERIH Cooperation: Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe - Advisory Forum on "Industrial Heritage"

"Cultural Routes: Social and Creative Dimensions of Cultural Heritage in a Post-Industrial Context" was the theme of the 12th Annual Advisory Forum on Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe with more than 300 participants, mainly composed of representatives of the 47 certified Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe, of which ERIH is one.

"In Europe, before 1800, the Industrial Revolution heralded the most profound change in the history of mankind," stated keynote speaker and ERIH President Prof Dr Meinrad Maria Grewenig (D), going on to explain to what extent the industrial heritage continues to shape Europe's cultural identity to this day. To ensure that "our children and grandchildren can also embrace this heritage", ERIH, he emphasised, consistently takes a visitor's perspective. "Industrial heritage sites provide today's major source of cultural exploration. I strongly believe that the potentials and dimensions of industrial heritage are far from exhausted".

The venue for the conference was the ERIH Anchor Point EC1 Łódź - City of Culture in Poland, an old 19th-century power plant that, like many of the city's significant industrial compounds, has since been revitalised for cultural and educational purposes. ERIH showed the presentation "Change with an Impact", a travelling exhibition on regional routes of industrial heritage. We are very grateful for the appreciation the theme received in the context of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe and about the second Cultural Routes Best Practice Award for ERIH.
12th Annual Advisory Forum

ERIH Cooperation: Benefits of NEMO membership for our members

In the last newsletter we already shared that ERIH is now a member of NEMO (Network of European Museum Organisations). This marks an important step in our continuous effort to create strong partnerships and promote our goals. This membership opens up great opportunities for us and our members to exchange ideas and create synergies in the work of ERIH and NEMO.

The topic areas covered by NEMO's working groups – Learning/Education, Advocacy, Digitization, Sustainability, and Climate Change – are of great importance to our ERIH sites.

If you are a representative of an ERIH member and would like to actively participate in the dialogue with NEMO, we strongly encourage you to contact the ERIH office under info@erih.net. NEMO also offers free webinars on current topics on a regular basis. If you are interested, you can easily register for them via NEMO's website. In this context we would like to point out that ERIH members receive an exclusive 20% discount on the NEMO Annual Conference registration fee.

We are excited about the possibilities that this partnership with NEMO opens up for us and look forward to a productive collaboration.
NEMO - Network of European Museum Organisations

ERIH Website: New outfit and new content

More shades of red, more drive, more distinction: After the successful relaunch of the website, ERIH presents itself with a new logo and a fresher colour scheme. The "ERIH" lettering in the cogwheel motif now appears more dynamic and lucid. The redesign adds new accents to the established appearance of the brand without changing the website structure. For feedback on the relaunch, please send an email to webmaster@erih.net.

Also new on the website is an article on the history of the chemical industry. It starts with the need for chemical cleaning and bleaching agents in the context of the mechanisation of English textile production and ends with a particularly striking example of the two faces of the industry: as a weapon in the fight against hunger and at the same time massively involved in the production of bombs and munitions.
On the history of the chemical industry

ERIH Calendar: Save the date

Bilbao is getting closer: on 8-10 November 2023, the ERIH Annual Conference and the General Assembly of the ERIH association will take place in the Basque metropolis in northern Spain. Those who cannot come in person are cordially invited to participate (for free) online. The programme, registration and further information can be downloaded from the ERIH website.
ERIH Conference 2023


Other events dealing with industrial heritage (tourism)