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

14 Photos

 

Let's have a coffee - in the Zagreb Ethnographic Museum

The immediate reason for choosing this subject was that coffeehouses and cafés, as places of coffee consumption, offer an interesting perspective for studying contemporary life of urban dwellers and their lifestyles. Since the subject matter is very interesting, we decided to observe it from a broader perspective, i.e. to approach it from a culturological point of view and present through several thematic units.

In the first thematic unit, entitled The Story of Coffee, we presented the history of coffee from cultivation to production, described how coffee arrived in Europe and spread across the globe and showed local peculiarities such as the ritual of preparation and drinking Ethiopian, Arabic and Turkish coffee. Considered a luxury product in the 19^th century, coffee was served only in aristocratic and rich bourgeois families. At the beginning of the 20^th century, with the establishment of the Franck factory and the beginning of production of coffee substitute, “white coffee” entered the daily life of urban and rural dwellers. In the next part of the exhibition, entitled From Coffeehouse to Café, we used the reconstruction of authentic ambience and the film “Corso Coffeehouse” to present the interesting history of coffeehouses, which dates back to the mid-18th century and persists to the present day. Besides coffeehouses, cafés became popular meeting-points of Zagrebers of all generations since the 1970s. In the part of the exhibition entitled Views of Zagreb Entrepreneurs on the Culture of Coffee Consumption, we showcased the film Let’s Have a Coffee! which highlights the importance of innovativeness and creativity in the development of the business concept and business offer of Zagreb café owners.

The last part of the exhibition - Coffee as a Stimulus for Socialising - features artistic work resulting from investigation of the social relevance of coffee and expressed in conceptual artistic language. The famous multimedia artist Dalibor Martinis presented his performance Coffee with President Dalibor Martinis, young artist Maja Rožman served her Beverage for Artists, while Jasenka Bulj and Vanja Zarić presented their photography project called Kavica-Coffee. The special value of this project is the cooperation with the Museums of Zagreb - the Zagreb City Museum and the Museum of Arts and Crafts, as well as with the Croatian Film Archive and Imagine IC of Amsterdam. Diverse activities related to the culture of coffee consumption (art performances, lectures, workshops and coffee promotions) will be organised during the exhibition.

Let’s have a coffee (poster pdf) / Pictures in the Gallery

LET’S HAVE A COFFEE  -  8 May - 17 October 2010

Zagreb Ethnographic Museu, Trg Mažuranića 1, 10000 Zagreb/Croatia

Tel.  00385 (1) 4826 220; Fax  00385 (1) 4880320   emz@emz.hr; www.emz.hr

Opening hour: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday     10 a.m. - 6 p.m.; Friday, Saturday, Sunday  10 a.m. - 1 p.m. Closed on Mondays

Project manager and exhibition author: Zvjezdana Antoš, M.Sc., Senior Curator

Exhibition design: Nikolina Jelavić Mitrović

Exhibition collaborators: Marija Živković, Mirjana Randić, Bojan Mucko, Željka Kolveshi, Marina Bagarić

Museum of the City of Volos (pdf)

(pdf) Exhibition Berlin

A look at the exhibition, by Ute Franz-Scarciglia, Copyright MEK.

Another look at the exhibition, by Ute Franz-Scarciglia, Copyright MEK.

The Amsterdam Historical Museum is presenting several objects from their “Buurtwinkels” (neighbourhoodshops) project.

The Museum Europäischer Kulturen is presenting objects from the exhibition “Doner, Delivery and Design” and objects from new entrepreneurs in Berlin

Follow the link to flickR in “media” .

On the second day, we discussed some administrative project matters. In the afternoon, we visited several new entrepreneurs in the districts Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg:

Efendi Optik: Ilyaz-Alf Akman

Lederladen: Selim and Claudia Özyiyin

M75: Fashion shop who sells the label annaMare by Anna Cafetzakis

N A Design: Asiye Kara

In the evening we had our final common dinner in a Morrocan restaurant (Baraka). The third day let some more time to discuss organisational and administrative questions.

Berlin 12/09

16 Photos

 

Copyrights © Ethnographic Museum Zagreb, Croatia, 2009. Photographs by Oleg Moskaljov

Let’s Have a Coffee

Views of Zagreb Entrepreneurs on the Culture of Coffee Consumption

Coffeehouses have an interesting history, dating back to the late 17^th century in many European cities. The first coffeehouse in Zagreb was established in 1749. The coffeehouses of Zagreb were modelled after West European, especially Viennese, coffeehouses, which was reflected primarily in their interior design, but also in the coffee offer. Since coffeehouses were associated with the bourgeois social class, they were being gradually closed by authorities during the socialist regime and used for other purposes. The decay of coffeehouses opened the way to the rise of a new form of space for coffee consumption - the café. It is therefore not surprising that cafés emerged among the first forms of private entrepreneurship at the time of socialism in the late 1970s. Many authors consider that, as opposed to the coffeehouse, which is a product of the bourgeois culture of European cities, cafés are autochthonous Croatian forms of sociability. They are not associated to the bourgeois social class, but to the urban space. Since the 1980s, cafés have developed into popular meeting-points of Zagrebers of all generations, especially the young.

In terms of history, the cafés of Zagreb can be observed from the aspect of institutions, their owners and their customers. To obtain relevant data about the culture of coffee consumption, the research was conducted by application of the interview method. We singled out the most interesting examples to illustrate the subject matter. It this, we found it important to capture opinions of entrepreneurs (café owners and coffee distributors) about the coffee consumption culture, their business innovativeness and creativity, their stories of success and failure, good and bad coffee, their approach to staff and customers. Since coffee plays a great social role in Croatia, we also found it very important to hear the opinions of their customers, to find out which is their favourite café and why, whether having a coffee is part of their lifestyle and what matters more to them - the quality of the coffee or everything else.

(All photos Copyrights © Ethnographic Museum Zagreb, Croatia, 2009. Photographs by Oleg Moskaljov)

Interview November 10 and November 19,  2009

„NO LOGO-JUST TASTE!”

Nik Orosi has been the owner of the „Elis” café in Zagreb’s popular Ilica street for three years. His life is dedicated to working with coffee and he has won numerous awards both in Croatia and abroad. He launched his own business after education at a barista academy in Italy, but he stresses that he learned most in some Scandinavian countries. He wanted to apply the knowledge acquired in his private business and offer his customers the best coffee worldwide. This is why the beverage card of his café contains nothing but coffee (various aromas and types of coffee served as beverage). Design is also extremely important to him, because he thinks that an exquisitely designed interior will attract a different clientele, people having money. He has organised his business in such way that he orders and buys coffee in London by himself, runs his own roastery and works as a distributor for a brand of (catering and household) coffee machines. He believes it is necessary to educate people about coffee, which is why he organises trainings for coffee aficionados (how to brew a good espresso at home) and waiter courses from the initial level to the barista level. He also supplies certain cafes in Zagreb with his coffee. Nik has his own web site and a blog where he wants to educate people about coffee and also tackle some of his problems.

„Coffee is the most important thing to me, this is why my favourite motto is: „Coffee is not only a physiological experience, but also aesthetic, social and intellectual”. My regular customers are coffee connoisseurs, they care about the taste, just like me. „No logo-just taste!”, this is what I offer in my café, as opposed to other cafés in Zagreb!”

Whereas migrational events present themselves dynamically and are subject to great changes, efforts towards a large-scale regulation of migrational movements have increased globally. Hence, industrial nations have particularly implemented new regulation and control mechanisms. In doing so, restrictive migrational policies have been established in regards to securing and controlling borders.

This international conference focussed on correlations of international migration, politics and labour and discussed questions of the formation and regulation of labour migration in modern societies, of the feminization of migration and labour against the background of the global labour market, of varied forms and consequences of female labour in the migrational context in various global regions, of structures, in regards social and labour policies, as well as of the relations between the global labour market and re-migration.

Among  presentations about for instance the global labour market, migration and international labour mobility and woman migrants, the coordinator of the European project “Entrepreneurial Cultures in European Cities” (ECEC) from Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum AHM) and the Luxemburgish project partner (Institut de Formation Sociale IFS) presented the  project and the eciec.eu-website, which is an element of special interest in the project’s framework. The lecture was part of a workshop whose purpose was to present to the audience special projects, that have both a theoretical conception and practically aspects regarding the everyday life of a certain target group. In our case, the new entrepreneurs with  migration background (as well as customers, politicians…) represent this target group. After our lecture, the workshop left  room for a discussion. We  took the chance to start a discussion about the project’s aim and the use of a website as appropriated method to reach a target group.  The feedback that we got from the participants was very interesting and useful. It was important for us in order to improve our way of working and planning future steps. The perception of people from outside the project can open new horizons and contribute to new points of view and thus contribute to a more successful project working.

Monika Schmidt, Institut de Formation Sociale (IFS)