CULT – RURALPromotion of a Cultural Area Common to European Rural

Communities

PRISMA Centre for Development Studies

Euracademy Association

Fouli PapageorgiouLouiza KarapidakiAphrodite Sorotou

Co-organisers & associate partners

PRISMA Centre for Development Studies

www.prismanet.gr

Euracademy Associationwww.euracademy.org

Museum of Cretan Ethnologywww.cretanethnologymuseum.

gr

Folklore museum of Komotinialex.eled.duth.gr/laografiko/

mu.htm

Other Greek ethnographic museums are also potential associate partners

Concepts

Conceptual triangle

CONTEMPORARY CULTURALCAPITAL

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

RURALCULTURALHERITAGE

Culture

“the totality of the knowledge and practices both intellectual and material of each of the particular groups of a society, and of a society itself as a whole.”

Guillaumin (1988)

• Lifestyles• Beliefs• Ethics and aesthetics• Use of land and its natural

resources• Habits and customs• Architecture• Arts (Fine, applied,

performing)• Songs• Myths• Rituals• Festivities

• Rural areas participate in global culture and keep their distinct character

or

• Rural areas are gradually losing their identities and distinctiveness due to national, global and other pressures

Cultural heritage & sustainable development

Cultural heritage

• Source of identity• Input to contemporary rural

culture

Sustainable development

Resource which:• Brings economic benefits• Capitalises on the lessons

that rural heritage brings to comunities

rural heritage represents a driving force for sustainable development

Background

Rural is:

a stretch of inland or coastal countryside, including small towns and villages, where the main part of the area is used for: 

• agriculture, forestry, aquaculture and fisheries, 

• economic and cultural activities of country-dwellers (crafts, industry, services, etc), 

• non-urban recreation and leisure areas [or natural reserves],  other purposes, such as for housing.

Council of Europe

Cultural heritage aspects depend on the type of human activities practised in an area

Greece is rich in rural cultural heritage values

Existence of over 60 ethnographical museums in the country

Themes

Traditional bio-climatic architecture

•

Gesture and speech: everyday communication in rural areas

• Everyday relations• Trade relations• Gift exchanges• Marriage and baptism expressions and gestures• Dances• Songs• Fairy tales• Body movement • Games

Rural cultural landscapes and water: from the aesthetics to the

function • The rural landscape is a

vast and complex cultural object fashioned by humankind and nature over the centuries.

• Rural landscape and the element of water

• Water has movement, it experiences seasonal changes and affects all living entities

• Water as inspiration and as a source for living

Rural routes: a cultural dimension

• Tendency to approach rural cultural heritage from a a multidimensional perspective

• Choose a specific rural activity that relates to movement from one place to the other:

• stock-breeding• trade• travelling and pilgrimage

• Greek examples: Travelling pottery maker (Crete), resin agriculture (Euboia), fishermen (moving fishermen of Prespa), tradesmen, stock-breeders, woodcutters, hunters, sponge collectors, painters, carriage driver etc

Inside - Outside

• Life and activities inside the house• Life and activities outside the house

Methodology

• Desktop study

• Fieldwork / in-situ research

• Evaluation and interpretation