CG Winter School on “Intangible Cultural Heritage: Methodological Challenges and Opportunities”
08 January 2025
How can we improve, deepen and enlarge methods addressing cultural heritage? This was the main question and topic of the international Winter School organised on 9-10 December 2024 by Beate Peter (University of Groningen) in cooperation with the Heritage Working Group.
Workshops and lectures of the winter school that took place on the campus of the University of Groningen for Master and PhD students as well as professionals, addressed the questions of developing and discussing new methods for the identification, capture and archiving of intangible cultural heritage. By interactively participating, the group engaged first-hand with issues related to the identification, acknowledgement, collection and interpretation of intangible cultural heritage. The programme aimed at experiencing a number of different methods, using different senses.
In doing so, the participants engaged in methods of social sciences by undertaking interviews and experiencing into photographs and objects as sources (Dr Lisa Williams, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, at the Department of Criminology, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester). The future of collecting and how museums will be shaped in 1.000 years was addressed by an interactive workshop questioning tasks of displaying, archiving or even ignoring cultural heritage (Dr Shanade Barnabas, Dr Mayada Madbouly, Dr Manuela Ritondale).
A sound walk asked the question how heritage can sound (Dr Stacey Copeland, Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage & Identity in the Research Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen). Creative methods addressing historical sources like a city map was undertaken by a performance-lecture that challenged individual and academic research processes (Michiel Teeuw, artist & researcher in Groningen).
Questions of intangible university heritage by combining the experienced and classical academic methods were discussed by working on questions related to academic language, research methods and university life (Dr Bernadette Biedermann, art historian and museologist researcher at University Museums, University of Graz). Moreover, an ephemeral art performance brought to life again by highlighting the value of how networks work (Dr Annemarie Kok, art historian, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen).
The multidimensionality of methods used like talks, lectures and interactive performances completed the winter school as an interactive exploration of creative methods researching cultural heritage. A publication of the outcomes of this winter school is in progress.