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

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.

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.

"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

"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".

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.

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

Video 'Explore Europe's Industrial Heritage with ERIH'