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Albert Dock, Liverpool

On the first conference day, the Director of the National Museums Liverpool, David Fleming, welcomed us and introduced the Keynote speakers. The first speaker was Professor Phil Redmond, Chairman of National Museums Liverpool. He spoke about his ideas of culture and entrepreneurship. After this, Professor Stijn Reijnders, Associate Professor of Cultural Heritage from the Erasmus University Rotterdam presented his work: “Collecting the Contemporary in the Imagined City”, before we heard the presentation from Hillary Burrage, Director British Urban Regeneration Association. She referred about “Culture: Civic Badge or Serious Business ? “. After a common discussion on these presentations, three project members (Helen Robinson, National Museums Liverpool; Ioanna Touloupi, Volos; Elisabeth Tietmeyer, Museum of European Cultures, Berlin State Museums) spoke about Collaborative Best Practices. The conference part of the day closed with a presentation of the local project from Liverpool “The Secret Life of Smithdown”. In the evening, we had the opportunity to visit the Smithdown Road and had a warm welcome in the “Oomoo Café“, which is actively involved in the local project. A Dinner in the famous Chinese restaurant “Yuet Ben” and a drink at the “Alma de Cuba” (set inside the magnificent conversion of the former St. Peter’s Catholic Church, an eclectic mix of Cuban, Hispanic and Latin American influences) were a perfect ending of our first conference day in Liverpool.

On the second day, Annemarie de Wildt from the Amsterdam Historical Museum, Zvjezdana Antoš from the Ethnographical Museum Zagreb and Teresa Macià Bigórra from the Barcelona City Museum spoke about their local projects executed in the framework of ECEC. After this, Zvjezdana Antoš, Elisabeth Tietmeyer and Monika Schmidt (Institute of Social Education, Luxemburg) presented the products of the ECEC project: DVD, publication and the website. Gianenrico Bernasconi, scientific apprentice within the Museum of European Cultures, and Christine Gibbons, Oral History curator from the National Museums Liverpool spoke about their experiences from the International Exchange of young professionals. Renée Kistemaker from the Amsterdam Historical Museum and Günter Chodzinski, advisor and coordinator of European projects, evaluated the ECEC project. On the basis of these results, all project members met in workshops and discussed the results also in the final plenary session.

Paul Spies, Director from the Amsterdam Historical Museum, referred about “Conclusions and plans for the future” and thus he had the very last (official) word on the ECEC project.

We informally concluded our ECEC project with a wonderful dinner in the specific atmosphere of the World Museum Liverpool.

Liverpool 07/10

Final ECEC Conference

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