 As not a bird of Nemo yet, we are the network of European Museum Organisations, connecting national museum associations as well as individual museums and interest groups from 40 countries. Being an ever-growing network so far, we count over 19 members. Nemo represents over 30,000 museums across Europe towards policy makers on national and EU level. Furthermore, we share knowledge and train museum professionals through our learning exchanges, our training courses and our webinars, which are free of charge for our members. Usually, we host feature four webinars per year, facilitated by different museum experts in Europe about diverse topics in a museum field. We are glad that the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 is in full scheme, but one aspect that seems to be forgotten is difficult heritage. Therefore, we are very glad to welcome Jonathan Eaton and Miriam Lakti from the non-profit organisation Cultural Heritage Without Borders Albania today. They will present us their dialogue-based based approach to museum planning at sites associated with a difficult path by showing different methods for setting up a dialogue engaging different stakeholders. Jonathan Eaton and Miriam Lakti will talk about the challenges they have to face while preserving the old walls of a former political prison and forced neighbour camp in north-central Albania and their efforts to develop the site and establish a museum. You can ask questions during the webinar through our chat, and we will forward them to our speakers. Soon after the webinar, you will find the video on our YouTube channel where you can also watch all the previous videos and our previous webinars. But now I give the word to Jonathan Eaton and Miriam Lakti. Thank you very much. Hello everyone. I hope you can all hear us. This is Miriam Lakti speaking, and here is my colleague Jonathan Eaton. We are very glad to be having this opportunity to speak together about our work, and thank you very much to everyone that found some time to listen to us. And I see we have representatives from different countries already, and that is very, very nice for us. We both work for an NGO called Cultural Heritage Without Borders that is dedicated to rescuing and preserving tangible and intangible cultural heritage affected by conflict, neglect, or human and natural disasters. Our vision is that everyone is able to exercise the right to enjoy, have access, and participate in cultural heritage. We have been working for more than 20 years in the Balkans and as well other areas of the world. And we work with cultural heritage as an active force for reconciliation, peace building, and social and economical development. This webinar will be about the process we are currently working on, which consists in turning a museum into a museum of former communist prison and forced labor camp that is called SPATCH and is located in Albania. Through this webinar we will be able to tell you more about the context of the site, but as well to speak together about the techniques we have been using. And as you may wonder from the title, we have based our practice on the dialogue concept. And as well later on we will be able to tell you to which results this dialogue based approach led to and also to discuss with you on our current challenges and the opportunities that lie ahead of us with the site of SPATCH. To start with, I would say that SPATCH is a site that reminds us that we humans are capable of the worst as well. SPATCH is a site that represents a trauma not only for those who have been suffering there, but for an entire country that's now struggles to deal with its difficult past. In the second half of the 20th century, a harsh Stalinist dictatorship. And yet today Albania doesn't have a site that helps society to physically locate the trauma and a site that ultimately helps society to turn this trauma into resilience. We will be speaking about SPATCH as a site as well that represents an example of contested heritage. And therefore in our case, as an example of, let's say, an example that doesn't lead everyone to agree, for instance, on saving it from its complete destruction or to turn it into a functional site of memory. And even when people do agree, the modalities, the steps and the finalities are not the same. Therefore, the question that we ask to ourselves all along the process are how we can facilitate this process and move forward through the tensions between different situations, interests and opinions. And for this, we can recommend that the dialogue based approach is the only way to serve in a sustained way a diverse array of social and political goals that are associated to sites like SPATCH. But also we believe that every society everywhere in the world has its black spots, places that remind us of shameful episodes in the history of a country, or simply put, difficult stories. These places and efforts to work with them can enable people to come together and make civic choices that install, restore or sustain democracy and human rights. Also, when you will be hearing from us about this project, you will hear a typical example of memorization, the so-called memorization project. And we feel that it's very important to say right away that the ability for this projects to bring positive change doesn't depend only on the goals of the supposed end product, but this positive change will depend very much also from the process through which these places, these memorials are created. And we will make some time to speak about these processes that we have been following so far and the techniques and the tools that we have been utilizing. Also, we are very happy that we have so many listeners for this webinar and we believe that most of you are practitioners, researchers or passionate coming from the museum and heritage sectors. We thank you in advance for your comments, questions and thoughts because we value a lot your expertise and we hope that we will be able as well to integrate some of your feedback in our process since these are all ongoing efforts. When it comes to our site, Spatch, this is one of the typical images you can find about the site. The site that is located in the mountains of northern Albania. Albania is in the western Balkan region, right at the heart of nowadays Europe. The prism was placed near one of the biggest copper mines in the country so that prisoners could be used as free working forces and work in the mines under very difficult conditions. For many of the survivors from Spatch, this is, geographically speaking, the westernmost Gulag type of facility. Like I said, located in the very heart of Europe, of today's Europe. And it's interesting to notice that the sites started to work as a prison in 68 at a time, for instance when France was dealing with the famous May 68 riots. In Albania, the harsh communist rule lasted from 1944 to 1990 and out of a 2 million inhabitants population, 43,000 people were imprisoned, sent to internment camps or executed. That is to say that one out of 50 persons is concerned by this. Practically speaking, every family in the country has connections or is related to persecution phenomena. From 60 to 1990, Spatch functioned as a reclusion space for many intellectuals that were convicted because of their political opinions. As such, Spatch was and still is considered as the cornerstone of the whole system of persecution in communist Albania. But despite having been listed as a national monument from 2007, only a little part of the former camp remains today. And that is only one of the main challenges we are trying to address in our work. Firstly, the deterioration of the site. Spatch has been abandoned from 1990 and since then, many buildings have been destroyed. Objects also have been lost. And once on site, you cannot see but few traces of life in the prison. A major factor for degradation have been the looting of the site for metals that have been sold for scrap. And mostly this has been happening because of the nearby populations, which are among the poorest populations in the country nowadays. A second challenge for us is the destruction of the site. The destruction of the mines. As I explained before, the raison d'etre of the whole prison was the mining activity. Nowadays, all the galleries where political prisoners have worked as slaves have been destroyed or have auto-collapsed because of the abandonment. In addition, the recent decision-making from the national institution have excluded the mining area from the protected area of the monument, leaving the monument incomplete or partially meaningless. Also, difficulties have risen when recently a private company has started activity, the mining activity in the same places where the prisoners used to work until the 1990s. Lastly, the other big challenge for us was that Spatsch is also an object of a big paradox because everyone agrees in Albania on its importance, but for a long time no one has acted in order to preserve it. And to a large extent, the site remains still the site, an object of heated political and historical discussion and tensions that have prevented further action to safeguard it. In this difficult context and with the multiplicity of voices and interests on Spatsch, we have chosen to base our work on the facilitated dialogue approach. As you may know, dialogue comes from the Greek words dia and logos that literally mean to be speaking through speech, through words and through reason. As such, dialogue is a mode of communication which invites people with varied experiences and often differing perspectives to engage in open-ended discussions. A process like a dialogue requires participants to move beyond the surface assumptions that inform their beliefs. Dialogues are very important because they are a knowledge that there are different ways of knowing, different ways of experiencing something and a different perception of a subject. Also, one of the other big advantages with this concept is that dialogues grant equal value to the insights drawn from personal experience and the knowledge gained from study. In our approach, we prefer to pay special attention to the minor voices, namely those of former persecuted persons that are connected to Spatsch and local inhabitants and providing them space and the opportunity to be speaking alongside with the public institutions and the experts when it comes to discussing the future of the site. This has led to encouraging results because overall, we have remarked a better understanding of a site, its history and contemporary sequences and this from all the stakeholders involved in the dialogue process. But also, it has resulted in better energize, if I may say, stakeholders and potential donors that start to pay attention finally to the value of the work with Spatsch. And overall, thanks to this kind of technique, we have initiated a change in mentality, especially on the level of the government institutions, about being more inclusive, of course, but and about the approach of dealing with communist heritage and Albania's difficult history in general. The process, step by step, consisted in a series of workshops with the same group of people that you see here in this slide, that were carefully chosen from the very beginning in order to provide a multiplicity of points of view during the dialogues. And the process has consisted in combining techniques from the facilitated dialogue to visioning techniques as well. With this combination of nice elements, we have organized three workshops, start with the first workshop on a collective documentation and analysis of the site today. A process that consisted in getting to know or to rediscover the sites for those that were once in the site or the ones that are working in the government institutions, but also for our younger participants, those that are born after the 90s and that practically know nothing at all or just a little about communist Albania and life under communist Albania. We were able to do during this workshop a collective discussion and a collective process of sharing memories and impressions which were then informed different practical proposals when it comes to the future of the site. But what was very interesting for this first workshop was to carve a specific space for former persecuted persons and direct witnesses of Latin spots to speak their voices and to tell their stories about the site. Actually, an encounter that was very much valued by all the participants and that pointed to the creation of different multiple narratives, actually. Then, this process helped the participants start to use different techniques like nine maps, like identification of different stories, places or corners around the site that have the potential to be memorialized or to become part of the different narratives for the site. Once this first step of the analysis completed, we proceeded to the second workshop which involved a bit more of visioning techniques in order to come up collectively with a set of defined values that would lead to the different choices of memorialization. Collectively, again, participants identified keywords and the key statements for the site in order to come up with different, let's say, tools and descriptions for what is a shared vision of the future of the site. It's important to notice once again that once entering in the dialogue stages, every participant or every representative of stakeholder had his or her own opinion about the future of the site. At this point, at the end of a workshop people had somehow a better collective understanding, a better shared, let's say, idea of the future of the site. That led to a further stage which was to define collectively, again, and I'm insisting on purpose on the word collective. Collectively, we defined the key objectives that would then lead to our third and final which was the coming up with different proposals and concrete steps ahead. As like I told you a bit earlier, one of the biggest weaknesses of the site was for its main stakeholders to take action in order to preserve it. In concrete terms, three main objectives under PIM, the roadmap that has been shared and discussed for SPAT, firstly speaking, education, interpretation, and public engagement as a way for the site to deploy its potential beyond its physical location and to impact the overall system in Albania. Secondly, the focus was on buildings and infrastructure as a way to provide safer visiting conditions and improved understanding of the site, its people, and its stories. Thirdly, the emphasis was put on the legal framework, the management, and the strategic approach with the aim of providing a clearer framework for the establishment in situ of an institution of national and international relevance and the investment needed for this to become a reality. This action plan that was collectively discussed, agreed, and coordinated has been serving as a roadmap to very different stakeholders in order to coordinate their efforts for SPAT. For instance, after the conclusion of the action plan, one of the partner in the organization for the first time installed interpretation panels on site to help guide the almost 3,000 visitors a year that are visiting the site already. While for us at CSWB, we were able to comply with some of the recommendations from the action plan by completing the first in situ interventions for consolidation works in order to preserve the remaining buildings. An intervention that was needed, actually it was the first intervention of this kind for more than two decades. In parallel to these first interventions that you can see here in the images, we used again a dialogue-based approach to engage with future key audiences of the site. And at this point, I'm giving the floor to Jonathan for more insights on the continuation of this process. Thank you, man. So what I wanted to highlight before getting into the next section, which is kind of bringing us up to the present in terms of this process, was that this one of the first things that Mirion said, which is that positive change depends on the process as much as the end goal. And this is what we're trying to really highlight here is that in a way, the outcome for this site, the idea that it would be a museum in some form, was set back in 2007, but that didn't help anything happen or actually occur on the ground there. And so what we wanted to do is, okay, we have this sort of general goal in mind that something should happen on that site. It's an important site. But we didn't want to set in stone exactly what that would be because we wanted to have the chance to develop that along with a very broad, diverse group of stakeholders. So that actually what comes out of that process is then owned jointly by all of us. It's not something that we've just created and imposed on that site, but something that we've done together. So I'm going to go into the next stage here. As Mirion was mentioning, once we came up with this joint action plan, we started following some of the steps of that. And one of the ways for us to really get into much greater depth of understanding as far as what the needs are on that site and then how to really implement some of these next steps in terms of making the site safe for visitors, in terms of interpreting it for them, was to try to do a couple of in-depth focus group sessions. And so I'm just going to describe that process briefly. So far, we've done a total of six. Each session involved three parts, basically. Each group went with us and a guide and had a tour of the site, given by someone who knows it intimately. It was either a child there during that period living in the neighboring villages or was a former prisoner who was a political prisoner in Spodge, and they had a tour through their eyes. This before and after was accompanied by a questionnaire to kind of see what their thoughts were in a sort of quantitative way in terms of the tour, their impressions of the site. But then the meat of this activity was really long, somewhere around an hour, up to an hour and a half maximum, so not too long, but a longer in-depth discussion. And the idea there was to go really into detail. The idea was that these people that came on this focus group would not have been there before. They were getting their first impressions of this site that many of them had heard of in various ways. And then seeing, okay, what do you feel is needed here? How did you feel at this site? And then trying to use those impressions to guide what the main messages and the main directions of the site would be when it's developed further. So of these six groups, we tried to again get a diverse number of backgrounds and opinions, but also people that we felt would have specific either professional or personal interest in this site as such. So our first focus group session was with a group of history teachers, primarily from high schools coming from different parts of Albania. They are of course interested in the site as a possible place where they could take their students that are in high school and thinking about how to teach this very difficult part of history through relevant physical examples. Another group was foreign tourists. Many times in Albania, a lot of sites are developed primarily for foreign tourists. We did not want this to be the case with SPOTCH, but we were acknowledging of course that foreign tourists would be a very large part of the audience group at SPOTCH prison. And of course for Albania, for those coming from Western Europe, you know, who grew up during the Cold War when Albania was a closed country, there are a lot of people that are curious about the country's communist period history and want to learn more about that. Another group was museum professionals. So ones who people who have experience in a variety of different institutions around the country and could share their professional expertise. Another group was tour operators, people who lead tours both for foreigners also for locals. We can kind of give this eye of okay what's needed in terms of how groups might make their way through the sites, what's needed in terms of services and safety. And the other two groups were both with university students and we wanted to have two groups with university students partially because those are also people, all of them that had been born since 1990 and have no direct experience with the communist period in Albania. And they actually gave a really great perspective. One of the groups was from students who are in cultural heritage management, so this is their field in terms of looking at heritage sites and thinking what to do. And they brought that experience with them. The other group of students came from a very diverse set of backgrounds and their their perspective was especially one of okay you know someone with coming to this site with no necessarily prior professional interest and no personal knowledge of the communist period in Albania from you know from their own life because they're too young you know how do they experience a site like swap prison. And so what we learned from that was really really interesting as far as where to go next in terms of developing this site. So I have a couple of the conclusions here. The first group of them here I've called Who's Story, Who's Site and this really gets to to some of the deeper questions behind this. So when we have a site that that represents a very painful history both for you know direct a direct painful history for the people that experienced it and their family members but also represents in a way the painful histories of families all over the country whether or not loved ones of theirs were in spotch but that suffered in other ways under the communist regime. We thought okay so so who is actually who's being represented at spotch prison whose story is it and and what really came out of those focus group discussions very very clearly was that it is everyone's and each person has their own story of persecution and there are also their own stories of resistance of the people that survived it in various ways of people that whose families did not give up on them despite facing great pressure to do so of others who were actually managing to create literature poetry songs art even in illegal ways during their time in prison you know all these stories of resistance that accompany those stories of persecution and suffering at this site so so what we really discovered was that in in every case it's the stories that are the most important above all else and those personal stories and that it doesn't belong to any one set of personal stories but but the multiplicity of them together and so one one key conclusion that came out there was that in in many times when we when we work with heritage we're focusing on the physical fabric and we're focusing on preserving that and here in spotch the idea was that okay anything that we do to conserve and preserve the physical fabric of this place it's it's secondary to preserving that those stories you know the the physical place itself it becomes as murion was mentioning earlier it becomes this physical and tangible moment and and location where where these stories can come out and and can really be felt as something real and lived but the value of the site is in the stories themselves more so than its physical fabric and so the other thing that's that's really that comes out of that then is this connection to the lived experience so at that site what people and this came through the focus groups as well having that to or with a former prisoner what people really need to experience there is is that direct connection with with a witness and at the moment there are still living witnesses to that period but of course as time moves on the direct witnesses will will pass on and and we need to be very active in collecting observing those stories in connection to the site so this brings us to another really important element of this this former prison which is connected to pass to the present and this is something that we all we feel working with the site that that there are definitely legacies of the the previous of Albania's difficult past today in the country um some of them more obvious some of them less so and this site really helps to really can and should be a way to try to make connections between um what happened in the past and today and that's not to say that the same exact thing is happening but that's to say that even in society today which is much more open we still need to be thinking about human rights thinking about these issues that were that were very present in the past and and teaching and learning how to defend our rights today and and we were really impressed that this is something that even without opting came up within the focus group sessions we of course have many many interesting quotes from that time but i wanted to highlight one in particular which is that one of the university students in one of the focus groups said she was saying even in the very harsh conditions of communist albania there were courageous people that took the initiative to come out against that regime because their rights were not being respected regardless that they were in those conditions they still believed and had hope and this gives us the strength today in the moment that rights are being violated not to stay silent and and this to us was really powerful this is something that just from a very short tour and a brief introduction to that site this is what one of the participants of the focus groups this was her reflection on that experience and and this you know this showed us all of these things in a nutshell you know that that it's about the personal stories connected to that place it's about those stories of resistance as much as it is about persecution and it's about that that connection today and so this is a direct giving us the strength today not to stay silent when rights are being violated and that was very powerful so through all this then this this has really helped us see spotch as a site of conscience and not only a site of memory and and I want to kind of tease out a bit the what kind of I feel this difference is between side of side of memory inside of conscious conscience and this is something also that working with the international coalition of sites of conscience which is a global network has kind of helped us see how this works as well so in many ways a site of memory is a place where that that has a really you know a powerful connection to history to personal or collective memories it's a place that tells us that we should not forget that we should always remember the difference that we feel with a site of conscience is that it certainly is a place that that has a deep connection to memory it's asking us not to forget but it's taking us one step further and it's saying okay not only should we not forget but we need to take action so it's demanding that we take responsibility for resisting oppression it's demanding that that instead of just remembering we also take the next step and and we act in order to to guard against oppression and to protect human rights so we felt that that's a really that that is actually what what this site means to us and we felt that that was what the site meant to those who participated in the focus group sessions as well so what this gave us actually was okay for spotch as a side of conscience we actually got a two-fold mission for the site that came out of that so one which is which was a very clear thing even from before the process many felt that it should honor the memory of those who suffered under the harsh conditions of the prison so so honoring their memory remembering the suffering and the persecution that happened there the second is is what we feel really came out of this process which is to provide visitors with a human focused civic education that helps them understand how oppression arises in society and impels them to take positive action as individuals and as members of society so this is taking that next step okay a spotch we can remember and we should honor those who suffered there but how best can we honor their memory and that's to really tell us to be good citizens and to take action to make sure that that kind of oppression doesn't start to creep into society again so with that we came up with kind of a sort of a main slogan or a mantra that that came out of this process which is that taking action is more than a choice it is a duty and this is guiding the the next steps for the the site as well so what we've been able to do actually coming up with you know through the whole dialogues process process that Mirian discussed and then through this process of focus groups which the consultation is still ongoing but even through what we've managed so far we've come up with a rough sort of concept for the site so how do we unlock dialogue and this keyword again action through a spotch prison and this follows in many ways the structure that was laid out in the action plan that that came from the dialogues process before I'm not going to go through every one of these points there's a lot of them there but you know the basic idea and the sort of the main components is that how do we then take this very very large process project this very large process and and we respond directly to the needs that were identified on that site and by the people that were coming from very different backgrounds and working with us in order to break this into manageable steps and make it a reality and the key all along has for us has been that we we don't want to leave people behind we want to engage in with multiple voices throughout and we want to be able to increase the activity and the visitorship there as we as we try to build this site up and so all of these actions are geared towards that towards being able to increase visitorship in a way that supports those main missions for the site so we have improving the visitor experience there through itineraries through some basic amounts of orientation and interpretation through safety and security on site establishing needed services at the moment there's nothing there's you know no toilets or or running water this sort of thing so you know so basic visitor center setting up various experiences where people can connect directly to to firsthand witnesses and then kind of in this key objective too which is turning memory into action this is going more into programs so okay how can we then maybe establish a training center for history teachers or or have a a school on on memory and human rights these sorts of activities that can really activate the site for for this reason for for memory and as a site of conscience so one other yeah one of the points I want to just go into is just these these different ways that we can sort of activate the site and get more and more people experiencing it in in different sorts of ways this is actually another quote from from the focus group the one with foreign tourists talking about one of the a young man actually who was only you know a few years old when his family was living nearby the prison and one of the last houses going up to the prison and and they saw many prisoners going by the family members of prisoners going by and helps help them out on their on their long trek to visit the family members in in prison and and he gave a tour for this group of foreign tourists and one of them remarked that it was remarkable having this man whose father worked at the prison who spent his life becoming a witness to give the tour he was authentic his life is bearing witness to what his family was involved in whether by wish or not during those years and and this tour is it is very open and and this is not a person who was a prisoner there but a person who whose family was touched deeply by that prison and and by what was happening there and and this shows the power of that of that direct connection the photo there is actually a one of our university students that was participating in the dialogues discussing with the former prisoner who has been very active in telling his story he he shares with young people whenever he has the chance and he is a remarkable person as well he he harbors no hate in his heart but he he just wants to share his story and he wants such things to never happen again and that's that's his goal and so this is really something that kind of shaped our view as people coming and working with a lot of different types of heritage sites many of which are are sort of beautiful heritage and we're focusing on this kind of physical preservation of beautiful heritage you know this this very visceral connection to the story of the place with something very strong for us so so there's many different ways of kind of you know looking at this sort of visitor experience on the site i'm just going to go very briefly one is of course a survivor's tour talking directly with people who want to share their stories and many many people do want to share their stories the other of course is with very little staff on site perhaps digital media also you know ways to to get people sort of interactive a bit you know tried to trying to find and decipher what what are the things that some of the prisoners were writing on the walls some of the ways that they kept hope alive you know even from listing the names of italian pop stars to to drawing pictures to kind of marking telling the games that they were playing on the walls so different ways of really kind of bringing the site to life for for visitors so with that i'm just like to highlight a couple of conclusions we're drawing really close to the the end of our our talk of course we can we're very very happy to continue and staying a few minutes and answering any questions you might have but just to go through some of the things that we've learned so far spot prison is still very much facing the challenges that it has been facing we're in the midst of the process now what we've shared with you are our is our approach and our experience until now but it's very much something ongoing and so from your perspective i'm sure that we can learn many things as well as we as we go on and i hope that you will follow the process and and see where we we can end up with this the end so first of the conclusions we wanted to share is this idea of engaging early and often with a wide range of actors so as miriam pointed out to the dialogues process we had this these these different stakeholders and different actors coming from very different perspectives different points of view different parts of the country different socio-conversed strata different education and background and and that has enriched the process a lot it's been important to continue engaging with them as well and follow up and and to make sure that once they're in that process if they want to stay involved which many of them do then then they are given the opportunity to continue to stay involved the second thing is is divine defining the vision very carefully and what i mean by carefully is is mostly in in full consultation and cooperation with the people that you've been working with and and this means that also to allow it to be flexible and and to keep in mind that the process is the key here and that and that following this process that is as open as possible and as inclusive as possible is going to give the best possible result in terms of a site that can feel owned by everyone and and in service of that that key mission the other thing is the small steps are key so you know in terms of listening enabling participation making connections there this this is really again it's in the process and so the more that that you can engage on a one-to-one basis with those people that really care about that site the better and again it's not about just opening a museum on site but it's about that process of getting there together the set the second to last thing here commemoration is insufficient civic engagement is necessary and we've seen in in many cases okay well what is is needed is certainly commemoration is certainly remembering these these stories of suffering but that's not all that society needs in order to heal and in order to build a better society and a better democracy what we need is engagement civic engagement and this sense of responsibility as well and the last thing is that this is not only an approach for sites of conscience or difficult heritage sites so i'm sure many of you are are working at museums or your researchers and you're not dealing with a site that has been a former prison or forced labor camp or anything like that i'm sure some of you are but those of you who are not you should know that that dialogue and and working with difficult heritage is is really something for every every site in every museum and one thing that that we've learned is that actually you know this idea of having a civic mission and and creating this sense of civic duty in in visitors is something that can be done actually at any place and these histories that are perhaps a bit difficult to tell are something that can be found even in any museum collection as well so this is about all i had to say i don't know if neary you would like to add anything or if anyone had any questions i would maybe just ask at that for all the process that we follow we've produced extensive documentations and reports that is all public and then can be found online at our organizations the website cswp.org and yeah you can use it you can see if it works for you and for your site because these are all elements that are very very helpful especially in cases that are similar to ours when we didn't know where to start from and as we pointed out during the webinar try dialogue as a starting point try to work as early as possible with what are going to be your future key audiences and that it that will lead on serve to very very nice results and acceptable results from a wider rate of stakeholder so this would be one of the very practical actually advices we would make based on our experience with dispatch prison and thanks to all the people actually that are following us from a bit everywhere i see from france belgium to russia so thank you very much we really hope that this was helpful for you in your work in your life and yeah and if you have any other questions even after the seminar you know please be feel free to contact us as miran said look us up online as well and follow where we're going another question who do you pick there's one question from ria who i think is who do you how do you pick who will participate in your focus group that's a very good question so the idea i mean the the exact people that that we that were participating it depended a bit on their interest and how we could who we could get to help organize together with us we decided in advance the the types of backgrounds that we thought might be helpful for example history teachers university students etc and then once we had decided kind of okay these are sort of uh background groups that we want to be able to focus on then we looked at ways to to make that happen so for example with the history teachers one we worked together with the association of history teachers uh in albania and and they kind of put out a call and we went together with them yeah and when we first started the dialogues i guess it was a bit easier to select the the participants in the dialogues process and basically those participants were those were those that were excluded from public institutions actually in the making of their concept for spatchet so it was people that were active intellectuals in promoting the case of spatch it was local inhabitants unfortunately you know bania nowadays and i guess i'll be i guess i'll be it's not the only country but people local inhabitants are are most of the time excluded from from this heritage making processes and we felt that this is very important because they are among the first beneficiaries of of of those positive changes and developments and also additionally we worked with um the we were we had a very strong age criteria because as we mentioned to you we have now half of the society which is under 30 years old that doesn't have a direct connection to or direct experience lived experience of the communist period and this is crucial for us because we yeah the dialogue consists also in combining the different perspectives from people that had lived through the time and people like nowadays students who barely believe that this was really happening sometimes i just refer to those suffering and trauma as pure science fiction so this is really unfortunate but this is the way things are right now in albania we have another question here what is the state's attitude towards this site oh yeah that's another very good question as jonathan mentioned this the site was declared monument 2007 so 11 years ago until now very few actors actually were able to to to commit and then to do interventions on site that improve the situation there as far as i know only two organizations a partner organization from scota in albina and us um their attitude is positive in the sense that they do not like let's say uh tend obstacles to people that want to want to um save spots but on the other hand we have some reserves because from a legal point of view there are so many tools and so many um let's say um instruments that can still be used in order to provide this clear framework of intervention for spots but unfortunately that is not happening because because of many questions um first of all albanian institutions are poor institutions when it comes to financial financial commitment it's a bit difficult secondly there is a problem of um capacities um these are these questions like spots are relatively new topics of discussion and new let's say new areas of expertise for albina therefore yeah we are all kind of struggling to find the best possible approach thirdly um as i mentioned to you a private mining company has started to work in those exact um let's say mines where prisoners were were working a lot i don't know so there is this let's say a superposition of the economic immediate economic interest to the long-term cultural interest that benefits actually the the society and the country up to now in albina always the final the short term gain financial gain is always revealing on cultural let's say um concerns so yeah on many levels yeah we would like the institutions to be more more involved and more you know acting but but it's this is the situation we have to deal yeah thank you katarina it sounds like a very interesting project you're doing in scopia also mm-hmm yeah just in a nutshell about the state i mean yeah it's spots prison is not a priority and that's clear but um but you know at least the institutions involved are are willing to cooperate and and you know interested in what we're doing here is just writing the uh the website in the chat window for any of you that would like to visit our organization's website as well so the one on the screen is the uh small blog that we've been maintaining it tells a bit about spots in particular and it's uh and the project that we've been working on there and then the one that he sent in the chat window just now is the the organization's overall website maybe another similarity between this case and other cases that like spots in the world or at least in the Balkans and Eastern Europe um like i said sometimes it's difficult where to make the step on which which direction to take and um when discussing with a former persecuted person in spots and when asking about the complexity of of dealing with sites like spots he was very frank and he was saying i believe there is an expression in English which goes uh like how do you eat an elephant where do you start actually and then he was saying it's simple you just cut it down to you know pieces that you can handle and as john mentioned those smaller i mean defining dividing the bigger problem complex problem into smaller more manageable tasks actually it's really a very very helpful way to to move forward with this kind of project i don't know if you share the same experience as asking for this maybe we can also add that as future as next steps for now for spots we are currently doing a lot of fundraising work to be able to provide that financial support that could help us initiate the implementation of the concept that Jonathan mentioned and we are doing that in different ways either by answering to call for proposals with different partners all around the globe we are also structuring a network of important let's say diplomats in Albania that are trying to help us in making our messages pass across in a better way actually to towards the institutions that are responsible for spots and yeah it's ongoing process it's it's also for us very important to keep the site as active as possible therefore we are organizing as much as we can from promotional activities bringing groups of interested people on site continuing with focus groups as a way to you know to provide to make the site be relevant until we have the possibility to start working on different things other other things on site is there any other question for sure we can keep talking about this for hours and hours but how do in visa silva says how do you deal with opposing views between your participants in the dialogue i'll be very short about this and actually the the whole essence of dialogue is is for the participants in the data to feel in somehow discomfort sometimes actually because of the opposing views so i would say a successful dialogue discussion is has also entails this kind of awkward moments but for those awkward moments moderation is very very useful and yeah we managed somehow to you know to make discussions constructive although there were opposing views and it's there are definite techniques and tools actually that that can be used for effective moderation and through the help of the international conditional sites of conscience we have developed as well a toolkit on on how to organize dialogue based events or activities with a very strong focus on moderation tips and techniques and this is a document as well that you can find online at our website yeah the idea of course being that um yeah opposing views don't necessarily need to be dealt with in in the sense that they don't necessarily need to be resolved they don't need to to two people with opposing views don't necessarily through this process have to agree on a viewpoint but the key is that they see the other person's viewpoint as valid from that point of view and that's what you try to work towards with with dialogue do you organize commemoration events uh we we have not organized commemoration events but some other organizations have done that um and uh and so that is something that you know every year there's an event to to commemorate the revolts of spotch which happened in 1973 and was one of the major moments of sort of anti-communist revolt and resistance during that period of history and and so yeah so there are from time to time at least annually events commemoration events held there who are the participants of these events the vast majority comes from people that were either uh suffering in this uh prisons or these types of sites they're family members but more and more we are starting to see young people journalists writers that are becoming interested in the these questions dealing with the past it's a very recent topic for the whole country and one of the efforts is actually to make this question relevant to all parts of the society and not just the those that are victims basically of the communist uh terror so yeah this commemoration events and the fact that the interest on them is growing really helps uh put this question forward and to make this cause relevant for everyone who's gonna add and write our emails here in the window in case you'd like to contact us but so in relation to the commemoration activities it's very interesting that for this kind of sites like spots who are just starting to become let's say functional sites of memory it's always very useful to have during the year events that mark the site in a way and then this commemoration events is very important because then you draw the attention from important persons if I may say from from the high up officials of the government to foreign donors to embassies to you know people that are interested in the cause so it's very important to have let's say a commemoration activity or at least one day that would say in the year in order to have this group effect actually coming together for a specific day to commemorate the site or its history yeah and this is all related to activating the site so the more events that that can be happening there and the greater variety events the better so you know annual commemorations are one thing tours with with school groups are another and then you know the idea being to sort of activate this site through as many different types of activities as possible that all are you know appropriate in terms of the commemoration that also the civic civic responsibility so interesting to notice that this kind of sites and work with this kind of sites does not exclude let's say the official views or the unofficial views are thinking about the activities on this side so these are powerful enough actually to host different types of activities different types of approaches so I wouldn't I mean a priori an official like in our case doesn't exclude the official let's say discourse of these types of sites. Ardit has another interesting question are Albanians ready to accept the inconvenient past and the difficult heritage um yeah another another great question I would say that I don't know if they're ready to accept it or not but I think Albanians are ready not to deny anymore block what the past was I mean be it for its positive effects or negative effects so I think it's very important for us as a society and I'm speaking as an Albanian as a young person that has very little very little experience of that period it's for us very important to start considering all the different shades of gray all the nuances of the discussion and to develop a specific let's say critical now attitude towards actually what the information that have been circulating etc and the most importantly like John Jonathan said actually it's important for us to acknowledge that we all individually have a kind of a role into you know stopping these mechanisms that may lead again to to the worst possible experiences so I think that's one of the main questions actually to deal with when we work with this type of site yeah sure yeah Dorina says do you plan to collaborate with public universities this is something that we we have been doing actually although more directly with the students themselves than so informally I would say rather than formally as an organization we we actually have formal collaboration with universities through other programs we have such as the regional restoration camps but for for spotch we we've made as you saw in the presentation we've made a point of really including university students in what we do and what we would like to do actually is is do even more of that and as we start to implement some of the steps that were in the concept I think it'd be really really important to have university students as some of the ones implementing those and in terms of collecting oral histories in terms of doing research in terms of being a part of creating that site I think yeah universities would be really really key and in order also to give a relevant experience to to the next generation of professionals that are going to be working with these issues so so yeah the answer I guess is a bit of yes we've been collaborating but not really so formally and we would like to do more in the future especially this time of activities that deal with with activism and memory projects I think this is very crucial for us it's very crucial that university students actually help us with those aspects besides the one that John mentioned in order to give it really this pro activism and this kind of will for the site to move forward I think we can only manage so that with young students actually and young people in general okay thank you everybody I think we'll we'll go ahead and wrap it up with that um like we mentioned feel free to email us check out our website and uh and please be in touch if you have any other any other questions thanks thank you very much we hope it was helpful for you