30 ideas to create your events for the 2024 European Heritage Days

Registrations for the 2024 European Heritage Days are open: it’s time to design your events!

This year, if you wish, you have the possibility to rely on 2 themes:

• Heritage of routes, networks and connections

• Maritime heritage

Events responding to the themes of the year are highlighted on the DRAC website and on the European Heritage Days website of the Ministry of Culture.

Register your event for the European Heritage Days in the Grand Est region: https://openagenda.com/fr/jep-2024-grand-est

Here are some examples of events you could create:

The following suggestions and ideas might inspire you to participate and facilitate the theme "Itineraries, Networks and Connections", which offers the opportunity to discover new stories and interpretations hidden in familiar places. Most of these ideas involve setting up some form of partnership, which in itself allows for the development of new networks!

1. Find and organize walks along "forgotten" routes - old sections of old railway lines, old trails or roads.

2. Does your city sometimes welcome artists who come to share their theater, music or circus shows? Have they been doing it for a long time? Create an archive of photographs and memorabilia from these shows, or research their history and the locations they pass through.

3. Organize a route through several local heritage sites, on a theme of your choice, following a "treasure hunt" map, and provide participants with quiz sheets to help them explore what they find there. Look to make new connections between the objects, buildings and stories you find along the way.

4. Organize "explorations" - "discovery of the source" - of local rivers and the legacy of their use as routes and means of communication with other people.

5. Invite local historical societies and heritage groups to offer guided tours that highlight a place's transnational histories or the important international figures who lived, worked, or visited there.

6. Is there an important event in travel history linked to your city, for example the opening of a new train station or tram, or even a larger scale event, such as the first international flight in Europe ? Design an exhibit about the influence this event had on where you live.

7. Many industries, old and current, have common ties due to trade, immigrant labor, use of technology and innovation, and their international struggle for better conditions. In collaboration with unions or industrial heritage sites, organize a workshop that explores the shared history of workers in other parts of the world.

8. Explore the rights of way or publicly accessible countryside in your area, and the stories of how these places evolved.

9. Explore the natural landscapes, fauna and flora that share these places with us. Animals also have their own routes and paths through the countryside.

10. Work with your local museum to identify the most traveled objects and help trace the journey they took to get here.

11. Host a mapping workshop with your local library, studying old editions of your city's maps. By comparing them, you'll be able to see how the city has grown and changed over the years, and you'll be able to update the collection by drawing new versions together.

12. Host a stargazing workshop with local experts and explore the connections you can make by looking at things from a different perspective.

13. Organize tour guide training for young people to give them the opportunity to tell the stories that matter to them about their neighborhood or city

14. Organize a tree identification workshop and raise awareness that old trees are both natural and cultural monuments. Trees also provide a gateway to understanding ecological networks and connections in local ecosystems.

15. Host a market for local artisans, both traditional and current, to help them connect and share their work with new people.

16. Work with a local theater group to put on shows based on the history of a significant local road or a journey through the history of your town or region, which asks people to visit multiple locations on a road .

17. Have there been cases of significant emigration from your community or population movements towards it as part of the creation of industries or jobs? You could research and map the routes they took, and see what you can find out about the communities they left from and settled.

18. Work with a local train or bus station, tram network or port authority to open their doors for a day and tell their story and how they connect different parts of your city, or even reach distant parts of the world.

19. All certified Council of Europe cultural routes start with networks based on common themes that connect more than three Council of Europe member countries. Explore a theme you could develop by linking your heritage to heritage sites and partners in other countries.

20. What do you know about underground networks? Does your city have underground transportation networks? How has this shaped your perception of the city and influenced your choices about how you get around it? Explore historical maps at your local library to see how underground networks shaped the city.

21. Using a statue, birthplace, or museum object, identify travelers in your city and create maps to track where they went and why.

22. Work with a local church or place of worship of all faiths practiced in your area to trace the paths of religious figures, real or figurative, who have played an important role in the community.

23. If you have one, work with your existing "sister city" to create an exhibit about what they have in common and why they are "twinned."

24. Work with diasporic and migrant communities and provide them with the opportunity to share personal stories, based on a chosen theme, about events and objects meaningful to them.

25. Encourage young sports fans to trace the ways in which a particular sport has connections to other countries.

26. Find the European cultural route closest to you to discover the rich and diverse heritage of Europe, as well as the living heritage from the places it passes through.

27. Choose a location and examine the interactions between the people and community that meet there. Consider how the place itself has contributed to local history and how it might continue to do so.

28. Create a map or inventory of the significant cultural heritage of the area where you live. This map could be displayed in a public building or be the subject of a mural. A smaller version could be printed and distributed as a local leaflet to encourage people to explore their surroundings in a new way.

29. Towns located near borders could host folk dance clubs or traditional music groups for exchanges with the nearest cross-border town. What is shared and what is unique in their traditional representations?

30. Digital technologies play an increasing role as a tool for the interpretation and dissemination of multiple forms of heritage. Bring together a group of community members and specialists, including historians, heritage managers, data scientists and information technology specialists, to develop new ideas together, based on the needs of your city.

Register your event for the European Heritage Days in the Grand Est region: https://openagenda.com/fr/jep-2024-grand-est

Image AlexisToureau - Colmar station