Call for applications: Grants for international projects on European remembrance

crossposted from Balkans List

Call for applications: Grants for international projects on European remembrance
Period of grant: April to October 2010
Closing date for sending project outlines: October 26th 2009

Geschichtswerkstatt Europa is a programme set up by the Foundation "Remembrance,
Responsibility, Future" (EVZ), which supports international projects addressing the issue of the culture of memory and remembrance in Europe. Its aim is to strengthen dialogue between young Europeans comparing the differences and similarities in historical
perceptions of the collective experience of oppression in the 20th century at a national, regional and local level.

The Institute for Applied History is responsible for project support in cooperation with the European University Viadrina. The Institute provides advice and support on project ideas, from sketching the initial outline to completing the application and accounting
procedures. It will also organise a meeting in Frankfurt (Oder) in spring 2010, where project content and method can be discussed and individual participants can network.

Call for applications 2010: Paths of Remembrance

Twentieth-century Europe has been marked by dictatorship, war, forced labour and genocide. This has resulted in not only millions of deaths but also enforced
migration, which has become stored in the collective memory as deportation, flight, evacuation, displacement, emigration, repatriation, dispossession, etc.

The challenge facing survivors and their descendants is that memories of these acts of violence are often connected with places very far removed from their current lives. The geographical distance is intensified by the cultural distance which is created as
those places are inhabited nowadays by different people whose memories relate to other, equally distant places.

With the fall of the Iron Curtain it has become increasingly possible to return to these places, to visit and study them. The connection between the past and the present,
indeed, between one place and another, has been established since then by way of journeys, narration, symbols and rituals. The Paths of Remembrance thus taken help to recollect routes of forced migration and to reduce the distance that eventuated from it.

In the programme year 2010, within the framework of Geschichtswerkstatt Europa, the Foundation EVZ will be funding international teams as they collaborate on analysis of one or more Paths of Remembrance of particular relevance today. This means that the subject
of project work needs to have the potential to create understanding, reconciliation and/or
conflict for the societies concerned.

The project work can involve field work related to tracing routes, memorial sites, museums and memorials, as well as analysis and compilation of oral and written statements. In addition to empirical study, the projects of Geschichtswerkstatt Europa should establish the wider public awareness needed to encourage dialogue over European cultures of
remembrance.

Funding

Geschichtswerkstatt Europa funds international projects involving students, graduates, young academics, journalists, artists and other members of civilian society between 18 and 35 years of age, who collectively set out to retrace a Path of Remembrance between
April and October 2010.

The projects will be planned and carried out by the applicant together with a partner from another Central or East European country or Israel. Presentation and discussion of the project should aim to reach a wider audience. It is expected that the project will result
in a joint contribution to the Geschichtswerkstatt Europa internet platform in the form of text, photos or video.

Projects can be financed in one of two ways: Institutions planning a project with more than
4 participants are eligible for grants for travel, accommodation, materials and communication up to a maximum of 15,000 Euros. International teams of between 2 and 4
people without any attachment to an institution can claim a maximum of 2,500 Euros per
person to carry out the entire project.

Outlines

Each project team is required to submit a plan which answers the following questions:

1. Which international team will be carrying out the project?
2. What is the key issue via which the Paths of Memory are to be
retraced?
3. What steps have been planned for implementing this issue? What
methods will be used?
4. What form will communication between the project partners take?
5. In what form will the project results be compiled and presented to
a wider audience?
6. What costs will be involved in carrying out the project?

A project outline can be submitted between September 1st and October 26st, 2009, via the online form at Geschichtswerkstatt Europa. In November 2009, a jury of experts will decide on the projects that will be invited to apply for funding.

Geschichtswerkstatt Europa is a programme of the foundation „Remembrance, Responsibility and Future“ addressing the issue of European remembrance. The Institute for Applied History coordinates the funding of projects in cooperation with the European University Viadrina. The International Forum is organised by the Global and European Studies Institute at the University of Leipzig.

Geschichtswerkstatt Europa

Institut für angewandte Geschichte e.V.
Große Scharrnstraße 59
15230 Frankfurt an der Oder

Mail: europa(at)instytut.net
Web: www.geschichtswerkstatt-europa.org