About us
The idea for the creation of an association maintaining the ideology and methodology of the Euromed Heritage II project ‘Mediterranean Voices – Oral history and cultural practice in Mediterranean cities’ came about during the final two consortium meetings of that project in Istanbul and Valetta. As noted in the minutes of the meeting in Valetta on 5th February 2006, there was an overwhelming consensus to create a formal structure to take the work and outputs produced during the Mediterranean Voices project forward into the future and for that structure to continue to be based in London Metropolitan University.
The project itself brought together a network of academics and activists in an exploration of tourism and heritage across the Mediterranean and their relationship to different sources of identity, citizenship and market conditions. In particular, the main objective of the project was to record personal memories telling of the routine pleasures and difficulties of sharing urban space in several cities of the Mediterranean. The collaborating teams therefore had to look critically at heritage as a political/cultural category: what becomes of heritage, how it gets selected, what gets left out, and the consequences for the neighbourhoods, for urban planning and for cultural tourism.
The main output of the Mediterranean Voices project is an on-line multi-media database, fully searchable in all the nine languages of the project, making the material accessible to both specialist and general publics. Additionally multiple exhibitions and events have been carried out in each of the participating cities. With its focus on the neglected urban heritage of the Mediterranean, and the muted voices of its neighbourhoods, the project is also working with local user groups to support innovative and inclusive approaches to the teaching of local history and to cultural and spatial policy.
The Mediterranean Voices project itself was limited to a 45.5 month contract with the European Commission. Therefore, the main aim of creating a Med-Voices Association (MVA) is to provide a sustainable structure allowing the ideas and approach of the project to continue.
Considering this background it is envisaged that the activities used to realise the objectives of the association would include:
- To continue the maintenance and expansion of the Med-Voices website;
- To develop the materials derived from the Med-Voices project;
- To sustain a network which will function as a forum for the discussion and development of ideas ;
- To use the association as a platform for further collaborative projects and funding applications.