 Hello and welcome to NEMO's webinar, collect, curate and communicate, sharing a transnational history of Europe. My name is Elizabeth and I am the policy officer at NEMO. As the network for museums in Europe, our main activities include advocating for museums at the European level, providing training opportunities, providing a platform for museums to exchange and learn from each other, and helping museums to cooperate across borders. We are happy to have you with us online today from across Europe and the world as we present today's webinar, facilitated by Blandine Smilonsky and Raluca Nyamu of the House of European History. Blandine has been at the museum since 2015 and currently coordinates the Communications and Partnerships Department. She also developed and implemented a cultural programming for diverse audiences as a member of the learning department. Since 2021, Raluca has worked as a curator and project manager for touring exhibitions at the House of European History. Previously, she was the head of Education and Communication Department at the National Museum of Art of Romania. This webinar will give an overview of the House of European History's endeavor to tell a European story. Together, we will hear how the museum accommodates such diversity and how it contributes to an inclusive understanding of the past and as a result, inclusive societies today. At the end of the webinar, you will have the opportunity to ask questions in the Q&A round using the chat function. Or if you prefer, you can join us on stage to ask your questions. Simply indicate this preference in the chat. So without further ado, I will hand this over to Raluca and Blandine to get started. Thank you very much a little bit and thank you to all the colleagues in Nemo who are giving us this opportunity today to share a bit our experience, to unpack some of our work as a European museum. We will do that in a twofold manner. I will start giving you hopefully some insightful information on our approach to collecting, to curating and to communicating history in a European way. And then I will hand over to my colleague Raluca who is going to present a special project of ours which we are starting to implement now and which is really a concrete way in which we try to implement this European mission of ours and that is our touring exhibition project. So this is a little bit how we are going to organize our talk this morning for about 15 minutes each. And then we are happy, like Elizabeth said, to answer questions both on the museum's work and approach as a whole and more specifically on the touring exhibition project we'll present. I would like actually to start before I had just prepared also the title again but Elizabeth mentioned it. She also reminded you what will be the focus of our talk, what are the main questions we are trying to address with our presentation about accommodating diversity, presenting history in a transnational way and how do we address this idea of diversity and inclusion through our approach to contents and also through outreach. Just to get us started and thinking a little bit about a lot of very important concepts for us as museum professionals, which I guess many of you are as well, I wanted to just put on the screen for a few seconds this definition of what a museum is, which actually many of you may know that there's been a very long process of trying to come up with a definition of a museum and that was a process organized by ICOM. And actually a few weeks before I started to prepare for this webinar I received one more ICOM email about the definition issue where it seemed like there's been already some kind of voting and the process is nearing to its end. And so I just, I don't know how official yet that definition is. I don't think it's completely finished but I thought it's interesting just to put it in front of our eyes and I highlighted that sentence which has really a lot of the keywords of what we are trying to come to terms with also Nemo as an organization and us, the House of Japan History and very much actually all of us as contemporary museums, as museums of the 21st century. We share this common goal I think to be open to the public, accessible and inclusive to foster diversity and sustainability. And then my question really for today is how do we do that as a European museum, as a museum with this special mission being European by nature by which I mean European in its governance, European in its outreach and European in its content approach. So that was just for preparing ourselves. Then I will go without spending too much time on it because of course you can also visit our websites and there are lots of resources you can use to discover the house. I list a few of them at the end, but still a few facts which you should have in mind about the House of European History. We are open for the visitors since May 2017. So we are still quite a young museum, I would say. We already received around 600,000 visitors. So I think I don't need to go back to the reality of the past two years, which has been again something shared by all museums worldwide, only to say that for us it came of course only after a couple of years of existence. So it's been especially hard on our visitors numbers. We are a museum under the auspices of the European Parliament, which means that we are academically independent in terms of developing our contents, but we are administered by the European Parliament, so by a political institution. We are a free museum. I thought that's important to mention here as well if we are thinking of a very basic and direct way to be accessible to the public, to be open to the public. We have a permanent exhibition on recent European history. That's also important to say because it's not directly in the name of our museum. We are mainly dealing with recent history of the continent, and that is again something which we very much use also in how to make our contents relevant for as broad an audience as possible, because our narrative line goes all the way to the present day. And then a few of the projects we have. We have temporary exhibitions. We have a touring exhibition project you will learn more about soon. We have an online collection and development. We have a virtual tour that will soon be online, and I should have added here public programs and special projects, which are the tools we try to implement to reach out to as broad a public as possible, also going beyond what would be our natural audience or most easy to reach. Also to go without spending too much time but still mentioning a few key elements from our mission statement, which we really try to use as a roadmap, as a compass in every work we do, in every activity we implement. So we aim to become a leading museum on transnational phenomena which have shaped the continent. This idea of transnational history is really a sort of a theoretical pillar behind our work, starting simply from this idea that a lot of what has happened in history has happened actually at a transnational level, although we have a framing of certain of those events and phenomena, which very often is within a national limits because of education programs, etc. We try to provide a forum for learning, reflection and debate. That's the three keywords we use in terms of how do we communicate history, open to audiences from all generations and backgrounds. That's of course a very broad scope and it's not enough to state it. You have also to of course reflect on how to break this down into concrete audiences and how you address all those groups. And finally, we want to document and preserve European memories of shared historical events and raise awareness about their variety and diversity. So this is really where we come to the core of what we want to do, accommodating this diversity, taking that other level from the national to the transnational creating an awareness of similarities, differences, things we share, things that divide us also as Europeans in a way that is as accessible as possible through museum displays and various projects. Then I just listed in a bit less wordy way than what we have in the mission. More concretely, the challenges the House of European History had to face when it was created, when the project was launched and even more when the team appointed for this project started to work and the solutions we came up with and we started to implement and keep implementing throughout the work. So I touched upon that already. We want to tell a transnational history of Europe and certainly not a sum of national histories that became quite clear really from the inception of that project when a committee of experts worked already on what would that House of European History look like. Of course again we very much live into our 27 present day national realities be it where we live or where we're born and in our context this means 27 different national histories which are more often than not competing or at least diverging and that's only to talk about the reality within Europe but you also of course have also the question of Europe and its relation to the rest of the world, Europe and the region, the neighboring countries etc. So this was definitely a challenge, move away from this idea of sum of national histories. Then we also evolve in an environment which considers the 24 official languages of the European Union as of equal status. That was very much a story reality for us to deal with and definitely a challenge therefore. Another very striking characteristic of our museum project when it was born was the lack of a collection which is pretty unusual for a history museum to be first a project, an idea but without a collection to exhibit, to build on. And finally this idea that we are a museum in Brussels, we have a building physically located in Brussels but we want to reach to the whole of Europe. So the solutions that were adopted and that very much became what makes, what gives this museum its unique added value I would say. Well that was in terms of content approach to set clear criteria for the stories and the objects exhibited. We'll come back to that in the next slide. And very much this academic independence which I mentioned already which we really have to safeguard and which the institution will belong to, safeguard for us as really a guarantee for being legitimate to tell what we tell, to present the history as we present it. We created a permanent exhibition which is multilingual so when you come to the House of Open History you do not find the exhibition text, you do not find the identification of the objects and all the narration or the interpretation on the walls or in the showcases but in a tablet, in a multilingual tablet where you choose your language. And of course this is only apparently a technical problem which we overcome with a technical solution because of course languages reflect a lot of the sensitivities they evoke associations etc. So it really means something to provide our visitors with a whole experience of European history in their own language. Objects, the lack of collection, that is I'll come back to it as well but that resulted in well two parallel developments actually one being that we started to build our own collection the team appointed already in 2012 and that grew afterwards did a huge work and a unique collecting effort throughout Europe but also that meant that our permanent exhibition was built and still largely relies on loans from other institutions in Europe from national history museums to local regional museums or even private collections. And reaching out to the whole of Europe well that's that had lots of implications but I would I would mention one which again became very familiar to many of our museums with the start of the pandemics which worked for us really as a as a as a sort of stimulus to go virtual to go online and to develop our digital strategy in order to be able to also talk to people who would not necessarily come and visit the museum in Gossels. So this this was a little bit presenting that as a as a list but now I'll go back maybe in more detail with a couple more examples to the the sort of triptych we want to use to title this this webinar as well. So collecting I mentioned something very interesting and quite unique which took place roughly between 2012 and 2015 which are all those visits I found the back the figures here 200 visit 250 visits in nearly 30 countries to source an evidence like they would say and I'm talking here of my colleagues who were there at the very beginning of the project mostly museum curators and historians from from all over Europe going to small and big museums capital cities and little cities really everywhere around Europe sometimes storage facilities not necessarily collections that were exhibited to find those objects that would help us tell our message and especially to bring them into relation with each other objects coming from different collections so I if you if you if you're interested to read our the book we published about the making of of a museum creating the house of open history you have for instance a very short easy to read article from my colleague Christine Dupont who tells about a visit to a small city in Bulgaria where she was taken around the city by one local museum curator who organized for her a collecting action among citizens of the city about tourism during the communist period and some of the objects she was able to get and this way are exhibited in our section about mobility and tourism in the 50s and the 60s in Europe so that's just one one story to illustrate that that process collecting is of course about looking for the for the right objects that tell the right method but it's also a lot of procedures you know that so collecting in a pan-european fashion meant also means also because we are this is not over addressing a variety of professional standards backgrounds and mentalities and yeah overcoming a lot of different ways to to to manage collections to have objects traveling etc so this is also a huge endeavor for our team and that involves not only curators definitely not but many other departments of our museum to to address that and finally the the the essence of what we are looking at in those with this collecting efforts are of course object of museum quality complementary to one another and with an European dimension what we mean by that can be two things either they by themselves tell you tell something about a European event or phenomenon but that can be also when they are placed next to other objects that they take on this other meaning and they are sort of Europeanized in their in their meaning I just have one slide here that shows you one specific showcase from our permanent exhibition which can illustrate that there there would have been many many different examples I could have taken I just took this one and that is our section on Europe in the 19th century the political transformations that Europe went through in that in that century and the way the the ideas of the of the French revolution spread throughout the continent and encouraged and triggered revolutionary movements in several regions of Europe and what you see here are for instance objects the plates or the the the glasses objects from different countries featuring national heroes or even just national symbols and that is a way to show how to build national identities that would claim more autonomy within a largely imperial ruled Europe how those national figures were convoked were used were mobilized to build national identities and that was definitely a process happening in many different parts of the continent so as you see few objects with a very national of a very national nature featuring the national heroes and you see that's called the gamma you see Garibaldi wrote together put next to one another juxtaposed in a way but to to to create this broader narrative so that was one one concrete example when we talk about curating which I already also mentioned a bit when talking about collecting but there are three criteria which have been sort of put out stated like this when the whole curation process started for building the permanent exhibition of the House of Japan history what would be the main elements we would check the the the the history that we were going to include in our in our exhibition that should be there for everything we mentioned and that is the fact that the process event or development should originate in Europe have spread across Europe and be still of relevance today so these are sort of metal like methodological elements but they and of course they're a bit rigid and and this is why I call them something purely methodological but they are here really to help us answer a key question which is given the choice to give very little room to the national narratives or to the remembrance around it how do you still create a sense of belonging how do you still make your contents relevant and and touch touch upon people's yes emotions or also intellectual expectations with transnational content with an exhibition about the broader the wider phenomenons and that the the answers to to to that very much are well I mentioned it already the connection to the present it's one of the criteria you see here starting from from the present time or at least looking for the links with the present time and of course being a museum of recent history helps you do that it's also a question of trying to create an eye-opening experience for the visitor by showing by making him or her realize that something that happened in a specific context he or she is familiar with actually has echoes or has links with things happening elsewhere as well it's also the the the constant effort not to create a theological exhibition an exhibition that would show the european union the european project to call it mobility as the combination of the history of the of the continent and I've got a slide at us just with a few objects talking about this history of the european union european his integration history has as it called and and how we try not to do that and then one more element to talk about this making our our contents accessible inclusive and and compelling for people while moving away from a more traditional frame of of exhibiting history and that's the memory idea I mentioned it already when I mentioned the mission this idea of shared european memories so we try very much not to show only what happened in the past but also very much how it's remembered so it's not only and how it's been remembered because remembrance also has a history of itself so it's not only how did the holocaust happen but how was it then remembered in various european countries how did those countries come to term with that painful memory and and very often responsibility it's it's not only what happened during the communist dictatorships in the part of europe but it's also when after the soviet of the the collapse of the soviet union how where european memories reunited how did they meet each other or or not in a in a post-1989 context i have to end actually here because otherwise i'm taking too much time from my colleague holoca these were just a few objects talking about something very specific for our museum which is collecting about european integration history and i just wanted to show here how but i'm not going into to go into the details of the objects but how we try to strike this balance between appraisal and criticism between a project that was met with a lot of support and also a lot of a lot of criticism through time and i was going to also end with something a bit more about the communicating aspect um of our work on transnational history but i mentioned already the multilingual idea the idea of multiple perspectives which also appear in our um in our mission that is really a strength of our museum we believe to provide a space which is safe to address certain issues which at more national more regional more national or more local level can be very sensitive and still painful and finally this active learning approach which you see here for instance in example it's it's the the school resources we prepare for students that come to our museum and that is very much taking this starting from this idea of questioning the past to understand the the present and finally the collaboration the the we try to be as open as possible to what our visitors think of our museum but also what other institutions other organizations and to react upon upon that i will i had here but i think that's more for when you want to know more use the resources we have all the audio files of our cabinet exhibition content on our website we have a magazine which gives stories on our objects we have a lot of content on our website on our youtube channel and we have publications we have a guidebook catalogs for our temporary exhibitions and this book i mentioned about the making of our exhibition and lots of projects going on where we try to experiment with some outreach participatory approaches to to to museum work and one very remarkable one which is our touring exhibition project and i will now give you the floor sorry for going beyond the time i gave myself and over to you for this very interesting presentation about our museum is the perfect background for what we are going to talk next um all exactly from the beginning of reflecting about a museum of europe the the thinkers thought about touring exhibition as a very nice way and effective way to spread the information about this museum in europe but it was possible to have a strategy about touring exhibition only last year when we have developed this general strategy about touring exhibitions in general and this is the first study case fake for real that was a temporary exhibition in the house of european history in brussels is going to be adapted is going to be a tour in europe starting with next year i'm going to present you a little bit the concept of this exhibition and also some details about the practicality of this project if you as representatives of museums in europe are interested to host this exhibition we are very open to this we have just started the campaign of finding a host museums in europe so after this webinar we can stay in touch and talk about the details if you are interested to be such a museum first of all as i've told you we are adapting the concept of the temporary exhibition with the same title that took place in brussels last year the content is about one introduction and 16 case studies that cover six topics of significant fakes and forgeries throughout european history the case studies are putting chronological order but also grouped according of types of forgeries which reflect the aspirations and anxieties of specific epochs it starts with medieval times and finishes with current issues as blondine mentioned we are trying all the time to be in contact with our visitors to find the most relevant information and objects and stories in order for the contemporary visitors to be interested in and to have a nice experience visiting our exhibitions the aims of the exhibitions first of all it addressed one of the current most discussed subjects fake news disinformation and puts it in a broad historical context as blondine mentioned we are part of european parliament and now the digicom of the european parliament is developing a strategy against disinformation because we passed the pandemic we have started to be to have the same issues about the war in europe so this subject unfortunately remains one very relevant topic for european history nowadays the exhibition should foster critical thinking and accentuate the need of fact-checking it should rise awareness of the relevance of expertise and encourage visitors to seek out reliable source of information the narrative of the exhibition the most important thing is that we are surrounded all the time by this information and fake news but we are not condemned to be deceived this is the starting point then each era fakes what it values the most this is one of the main conclusion of the narrative of the exhibition although certain types of fakes existed all throughout human history counterfeit money art forgery fake documents each area experienced particular types of fakes we have put a lot of questions about fakes and forgeries in europe during the history what have been the mechanism behind significant forgeries and hoaxes in history and the exhibition tries to have some answers about this how could some fake news claim validity for a very long time and how were they exposed in the end can we defend ourselves from the massive false information how to defend the role of experts in the word in which catchy loudly expressed statements become viral in the media and again this subject is really significant nowadays in the era of internet sorry i can't yeah it's this one the objectives of the narrative to show that fake news has a long-standing tradition in history it is not something new the visitors will be surprised to find very old cases to allow the visitors to reflect on the human tendency to believe in certain untrue statements to rise awareness of the need for critical thinking and fact fact checking to underline the role of experts who are so often undetermined in today's word here you have the structure of the exhibition as you can see there are six topics and for each the curator Iwana Urbanec together with Andrea Mork and Simina Bandika founded very relevant stories that are presented in a very accessible way and that start with the fake and the forgeries in religion the first item then understanding the word is about invention of printing that allowed the humanity to bring the truth but also a lot of fake stories and we are talking here about written stories in books but also about some photos contemporary photos then uniting and dividing is about ethnic and national identities in the 80th and 90th century about the patriotic fakes and the genuine historical discoveries fighting war is mainly about the second world war is about the choices of whom to trust and about the crimes covered up by the totalitarian regimes fake unfortunately is about profit one of the main reason for producing forgeries during the history the last section the era of false truth is consists only in interactive games for children and adults as well where the visitors can test themselves if they can discover what is fake and what is truth and in this way trying to understand the psychological way of being tended to believe fake in certain situation as about the planning of the touring exhibition we are aiming to reach the visitors that are not able to come in Brussels and to visit physically our exhibitions here that's why we are thinking about nine European countries members of the European Union ideally from the northern part to southeastern Europe we have started to identify these visitors that are not coming in Brussels analyzing our surveys with the real physical visitors in Brussels as about the time frame of the training exhibition the first one will be in autumn 2023 and the last one will start in December 2026 we intend to have the exhibition three months minimum to each destination as about the target group we are focusing on urban citizens from secondary school students to educated adults aged between 30 45 years old but as you know this is only the focus group but we are aiming to to reach many more groups of visitors sorry it's about fake for real in Brussels even if the pandemic struck us all we had the great visibility and enthusiastic feedback from the media talking about fake news and talking about this complex process of believing fakes even if the reality is totally different indeed the exhibition had a very important echoes in media satisfaction of our visitors most of whom were visiting HH for the first time public events and educational programs addressed to schools and teachers all this is despite the challenges of mandatory bookings smaller groups visiting the museum absence of tourists and no guided tours because of the pandemic the training exhibition will be a turnkey exhibition that means that the house of european history will provide the hosting venues all the physical assets required so it will be a whole exhibition with all the design all the panels all the text translated in local languages for our museum hosts it will be a condensed exhibition with approximately 60 objects from the house of european history's collection multimedia games and mechanical interactives if you are interested in hosting this exhibition here you have my contact details and i hope the exhibition will be interested for historical museums national library museums literature museums media museums and we are interested to find out who is interested in this project and to develop discussions about how we can materialize it in a touring exhibition in your country thank you thank you both so much for this wonderful presentation this dive into the background of the house of european history and of course the temporary exhibition which is set to travel so exciting i actually i failed to mention in my introduction that i actually had the pleasure of visiting house of european history not too long ago while this temporary exhibition was ongoing and it was really a wonderful experience so i can only personally recommend to the participants here that if you do find it in your country or perhaps even in your museum it's certainly worthwhile for a visit but yeah i would like to open up the floor of course for questions you can either type your questions into the chat or if you'd like you can indicate in the chat that you would like to come on stage with us and we can address your questions live all together i did have a couple questions myself though listening along through the presentation initially one question that came up for the first half of the presentation when we were focusing on the house of european history as an institution itself um blandine you mentioned the mission statement of the museum and i was wondering if you had any further detail on how that came about how it was developed and whether this is something that's you know somewhat set in stone or if it is something that is revisited revisited and reiterated um if that's you know part of the process as time goes on the mission statement yes so this is sorry this is there's it's currently a text um quite a long one that's features on our website when you go under about us you find a paragraph on our vision and then a mission which has several paragraphs where we try to to to say uh all what we are about in a few sentences that was developed actually just after the museum opened once the team was really established and uh we entered this really phase of operation so it was really a collective effort from the team the the people working on the on the team of the house of history and then directly with our academic committee which is um actually an error or a there was first a committee of experts actually when the idea of the museum was launched um historians museum professionals from different european countries that was the the key element of course to be as pan european as possible um they they wrote a document called the conceptual basis where the main lines the main elements on which the museum would be built featured so there was for instance a concrete example to have a museum not only of europe understood strictly as the countries of the union but really the continent and europe as a project that was already in there but also the idea to focus on recent history the the mandate for the temporary exhibitions to go look into um to deepen or or explore other parts of history um and so i would say the mission takes both from this conceptual basis uh which existed already a few years before the museum opened and from all the process of of creating the museum of building the museum and just after the opening we we tried to to pose a little bit and to reflect and to to to say okay how can we best capture all what has been put in place in those few years and very much looking where we want to go where where we are heading at and that's where to answer the the second part of your question this is definitely so it was written by the team it was approved by our academic committee or amended and approved by our academic committee but also our hierarchy in the european parliament but this is definitely something for instance we've been looking at it again recently as we've conducted um focus with the help of an external company focus groups and surveys among people to to look into the image of the house of open history the the the knowledge people have of the museum but also they're what they think the museum is if they haven't visited it and and what it what is their experience actually once they visit it and that makes us think that there there may be better ways to to to formulate certain of our goals and and and part of our mission because this mission statement is clearly for external people to try and understand what the what the museum is that's wonderful so not only is it somewhat of a living document but also it was very collective creative process and i mean also from my limited experience after a museum i also got the notion that the staff there is also quite diverse you know you have a wonderful representation across europe and so i imagine that there are a lot of you know backgrounds and experiences that are brought to the table which is great um oh sorry go ahead yeah no i should have mentioned it probably but this of course the the european nature of the museum uh starts starts or is is is also relying very much on the different nationalities of the staff right and i mentioned that brings in a lot of um that enriches very much our work because uh yeah everybody brings different trainings different so and and that is definitely in the recruitment of the museum team a criterion yeah absolutely and i think that um folds in very well to uh question from xavier um here which is about the content and um whether uh within your exhibitions whether the content is exactly the same in all languages and uh he's asking if you can describe the process of creating the texts choosing the angles and especially on some of the touchy subjects um you know with uh with some of the more sensitive histories uh that are that is shared across europe um there's the suspicion that um there's a lot of competing points of views on certain historical events and um so of course yes challenging this question is almost uh it's it's it's so there is so much in it you know i i almost wanted to give you the book that we have on on creating the house and well it's it's actually a very thick book so i'm not sure you was uh uh no matter how interested in the in the museum you are um so text exactly does really the the text writing process we have uh we are lucky to be able to count on um i would say almost an army of translators because we work with the director at general for translation at the european parliament because you know that all the workings of the european parliaments also happen in 24 languages so they are uh the colleagues uh we work with for uh translating uh all our exhibition texts the working language to to create the initial briefs and exhibition texts uh when we when we curate uh the exhibition is is english so there is you still need to start from a from a yeah from a common basis because there's a lot that's when there's a lot of discussion of course of what to include what to leave out uh how to present this or that but then there is a lot of back and forth between the translators and the curators again who master a lot of different languages so that's what comes back in the other languages translated by i would say um experts but more more technical experts experts in the field of translation not experts in the field of history necessarily some of them combine both but that's not the majority that there is then again a process of checking against the initial messages the initial concepts that were brought in uh if that was preserved if that is still there so this is a very very um uh delicate delicate i don't know if you say that in english but uh process but this is really the heart of uh uh yeah curating an exhibition uh european white that really touches on the other yeah the essence of of that and the touchy subjects well there is even first a first layer is i remember um our previous director uh who who was the the one leading the team pre-opening uh taiyava from gal was always saying that another team would have done another exhibition so definitely there were a lot of choices to make starting from the very broad ones of whether to go for chronological exhibition or a thematic exhibition or how to mix both etc and what what so what to include what not to include they were i told you a set of criteria that were that were chosen and uh trying to stick to as much as possible and the touchy subjects i would say there the the the attention was very much on showing the different perspectives uh trying to really include uh to to always make the visitor aware that um of course there there are the facts but there are also on the one hand the experiences of people that lived through those uh the periods uh and so very often quite differently whether they were from different regions of europe or different social backgrounds etc uh and also uh how they've been perceived interpreted and ultimately remembered um so trying to keep that uh that multi perspective approach and it's not easy and it's and we have to redo it all the time we have to think again to look again at what we presented to the visitors and how to make it even more multi perspective is a constant concern of course yeah you know i think that is um equally challenging as it is important uh to be able to create that you know transparency when discussing some of the more sensitive topics and uh yeah it gives space a balanced space for different perspectives and also the facts as you said um because that you know leaves room to have a discussion which can be so important these kinds of things and to like like for instance we have a i mean there would be few examples to take but there i remember there was a discussion on the the interwar period as it's called apple serri and how to present uh this period which can be seen as a personal period of authoritarianism raising throughout europe but also a period for if you look at central and eastern europe it's the period of of democratic blossoming and of modernity uh really uh um yeah developing in those newly independent countries etc so how do you that that's just one example uh what kind of uh choices you make and then it comes down to to again to objects to text to cinematography also that you that you try to accommodate um those different realities or the other different ways the reality of of one decade or two decades uh was was lived through by by different people of europe yeah absolutely um so let's see we have a very uh straightforward question here um whether there's already an established relationship between your museum and your piano yes absolutely there we they we identified them from the beginning as a important player and and potentially partner for our museum there was already there were already links uh in the making period when the before the opening you saw the i saw i showed a photo with a display of a world war one postcard i didn't comment on it but uh showing postcards from soldiers hiding from the front from all over europe and beyond that for instance was um sourced through the you may remember that european i had a big collecting campaign around the the centenary of world war one so we worked with them to source some of our objects and mainly those and mainly those those postcards uh we had one uh collecting action at the museum when european organized their migration the collecting campaign on migration some years ago and we are actually now working uh to prepare an online version of our poster exhibition which is currently uh on display at the house of repent history european has those very nice online exhibitions and we'll do so we'll do a shorter version of our physical exhibition in brussels for the european website and yeah we're we're looking at more more possibilities for cooperation so definitely yeah it's wonderful um so we have another question that relates uh to um to the text to the translation um which uh yeah of course um as you said before i mean it sounds like um quite an endeavor uh quite a procedure um with back and forth of these uh with these translations um which seems to have been very successful so far um but the question is um you know evaluating uh the risk of um text which can be very dense um to the point where you know it's still legible um has has there been much trouble density of our text yeah i mean it's it's um conciseness is all the time we we have very strict uh guidelines when we write exhibition text of course to be to be short to be to the point but that's i think that's the the the reality of uh of anybody who writes uh texts for exhibition in our in our case well i think that there is a thing which is that the static point would be would be still the object itself uh and and that that helps you to really focus i would say um in and then there is a there is a big work of starting from a body of text and and and working through the concepts working through the phrasing to try to to to really get to just to the to the essence of it so again uh this is uh yeah the talent of copy writers and people who are who write this kind of text um we actually feel well this is i don't know i don't have the person asking the question uh had the opportunity to come to the museum to go through the exhibition to to we try also to do something we call content layering so we try to give a different entry point in the content you could go directly to uh to and that layering uh happens through a categorization of text uh you know section text all the way to uh object text you can and and also mixing audio and written um and you could start from the object you could go directly to the the text about the object or you can be more interested uh in those intro texts which really try to give uh a sense of of what the period uh or what the phenomenon address um is about so there is these are some of the things we try to to to use throughout our exhibition to like you say make it uh we seem to have um lost both of our presenters suddenly they will be back in just a moment here we are i was gone for a while sorry totally fine um yeah you know this this was also something that i reflected on um as i went through the permanent exhibition at house of european history um not only did i feel that it was very um possible you know as an individual to make my choices of how i wanted to experience it um but you know the use of of audio and everything um yeah many opportunities as you were saying with this content layering and um also what you said earlier about this procedure back and forth with the with the expertise on the historical side versus the translation side i mean sounds like a long process but definitely worthwhile if you want to be able to you know get the story across in a lot of different ways a lot of different opportunities um we we have another question here um related to the fact or um yeah this this individual stating who it's sherry i'm sorry if i'm pronouncing that incorrectly um says that the house of european history is not as known as it could be in greece and um wonders whether there are plans in the works to expand you know communication strategies and you know um uh you know propping up uh this museum and um also specifically mentions um fake for real as a traveling exhibition that this could be a way forward so is there are there plans to branch off of this touring exhibition uh case study pilot approach um and develop the communication strategy of the museum yeah i mean this brings us back nicely to the project of touring exhibition which we've uh we wanted to present to you in this uh in this webinar because we do realize that we have um a problem uh getting known really across europe uh because um that's a very ambitious goal of course uh to and we are uh okay i i said we're likely to be part of a bigger institution that also supports us resource wise in many ways but ultimately we're we're um a museum team of 50 60 60 people and uh there's only a certain amount of workforce we can we can put in our communication uh and when you think of the the the scope of trying to address to the whole of europe and and to talk to all europeans that that makes it very very challenging uh we we try to very much to to rely on um what we call multipliers organizations institutions that could help us have this national outreach this outreach in in in in other in countries which uh which we countries necessarily have just relying on our own forces so for instance if you talk about schools uh we work with organizations like uh europe cleo the european association of history educators or it winning which is a an initiative of the commission um that's that's some of the yeah these are the the ways we try to to overcome this this challenge we have this difficulty we have to be uh to be a european museum and we are we really hope that our digital strategy which we start implementing with the online collection with the virtual tour uh we have also an ongoing project on the history of waste in europe where we start working with co-creating really content uh with other museums and yeah and the touring exhibition uh that is really a big project for us in for the coming years it's become really a priority this is why it's really crucial for us that you hear this uh this message uh that you share it tomorrow we saw also in the chat some uh some suggestions uh that were made to us uh to contact some uh some networks um because definitely it's uh it will be this fake for real exhibition is really uh can really bring to your to your countries and to your museums what we try to do by uh by uh yeah with this idea of transnational history which is even even more a shared history and it is there in this temporary exhibition very much so when you if you if you if you see fake for really really get to understand what the house of open history is about i think yes i mean not only a shared history but um uh quite a shared challenge that we all have and i think that really makes a difference when you are facing you know such um such a challenge is that to know that it's something collectively face something that that we're all working on in europe and beyond facing you know disinformation and whatnot um somewhat branching off of that um maybe i asked uh raluka specifically um i have a question from a colleague of mine here in in the nemo office um you know about setting up a transnational touring exhibition um you know if you can give us a bit more information on you know what the what the barriers for entry of such a thing in terms of being a partner for that being a host museum is this applicable to smaller museums do you already have an idea of of you know what's going to be required i mean of course i'm sure it's extensive but um you know some a little kick of course uh first of all as i i i told you before we intend to reach some countries from the baltic states to poland romainia bulgaria gris spain italy but we are not very fixed in this list the idea is just to reach the visitors that uh are not usually coming in brussels to visit our museums then of course we prefer to collaborate with the big museums in big cities but again this is not a very fixed idea is just the the opportunity to address to a white audience not necessarily in a very small museum but we are also interested for example in european cultural capitals in europe because during these events the audience could be really white on the other side of course we just want to collaborate with museums or centers that have museum functions where we have conservation conditions for example for our objects where there is a learning department or at least one or two educators that could implement the learning methodology because we intend to develop such a methodology and to meet our colleagues from other museums to share it and to try together to find the best way to have educational programs in the exhibitions because the learning aims of this exhibition are really important for us so we are very open but each case is different so a discussion is is very important to to take place and we can share our needs and we should meet also the needs of the host museum so we should find somewhere in the middle in order to aim to to focus on our aims but on the other side also to meet the needs of the other museums wonderful so i'm hearing case by case basis but also targeting you know countries where you haven't seen as many visitors and then potentially also areas where you're going to have a wider audience and of course prioritizing you know an education department or learning goals within the museum so but of course as you said case by case open to discussion great well in case unless we have other questions coming in since we are already a bit over time i think i would end with this last statement here in the chat that we have that i'm just going to read from Javier again apologies if the name is incorrectly pronounced um house of european history has gone to the top of my list of places to visit as soon as possible what an interesting and challenging way to propose multi-layered and poly vocal narratives congratulations so um yeah i think uh this is a good place to end unless um either of our speakers would like to have a last word oh okay well um thank you all so much uh for your attention here today um very interesting and um hoping to hear more about this case study touring exhibition wishing you all the best and a lot of success thank you very much thank you so much bye bye