The Cultural Routes Training Seminar in Vilnius

ASCE president, Mrs Lidija Pliberšek, will be a guest speaker at the Cultural Routes Training Seminar in Vilnius, Lithuania, taking place on 19 and 20 June, 2024.

The Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, in cooperation with the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe (EPA) and the European Institute of Cultural Routes is organising a Cultural Routes Training Seminar for National Stakeholders.

The event will take place on 19 and 20 June, 2024, in Vilnius, Lithuania.

ASCE president, Mrs Lidija Pliberšek, will attend the event as one of the distinguished guest speakers. She will present the European Cemeteries Route as an example of Cultural Routes good practice.

The program will cover following topics:

• Context: the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe programme
• Workshop: Presentation of Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe in Lithuania
• Defining a Cultural Route
• Tools for the governance of cultural routes
• Cultural routes – sustainable tourism, local development, and social participation
• Cultural Routes in practice
• Cultural routes communication and branding
• Roadmap for “Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe” in Lithuania

You can find the preliminary program of the seminar HERE.

ASCE president at the Cultural Route Certificate Ceremony

ASCE president, Mrs Lidija Pliberšek, attended the Cultural Route Certificate Ceremony at the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia.

On Tuesday, September 12, 2023, a ceremonial event was held in the small hall of the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, at which the director of the European Institute of Cultural Routes, Stefano Dominioni, from Luxembourg, handed over the Council of Europe Cultural Route Certificate to the Women Writers Route.

On this occasion, the gathered were address by:

• dr. Andreja Rihter, president of the Cultural Tourist Association of the Women Writers Route,
• Tamara Vonta, president of the Committee for Culture of the Slovenian National Assembly and Head of the Delegation of the Slovenian National Assembly in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
• Špela Spanžel, director general of the Directorate for Cultural Heritage of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture,
• M.Sc. Urška Klakočar Zupančič, president of the Slovenian National Assembly.

At the invitation of the organizers, M.Sc. Lidija Pliberšek, President of the Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe, which manages the European Cemeteries Route project, attended the event. 

The official part of the ceremony was followed by an informal social gathering where the guests had the opportunity to exchange valuable experiences, insights, and perspectives on cultural routes in Slovenia and their interconnectedness.

Webinar "Heritage and cultural tourism for Historic Cemeteries: an international Teaching Project"

You are invited to join the webinar on 30 March 2023, at 5 p.m.

About the webinar

The webinar entitled "Heritage and cultural tourism for Historic Cemeteries: an international Teaching Project" is being organised within the framework of the "Terza missione" project "Whisper: rediscovering cemeteries as cultural sites of the territory" (in Italian "Sottovoce: riscoprire i cimiteri come siti culturali del territorio”) by the University of Turin - Department of Humanistic Studies. You can find the flyer (in Italian) HERE.

The discussion will be based on the experiences of the participants in the first year of the Teaching Project on the theme of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe. Hopefully, this will also be an opportunity to enrich the project with new perspectives for the future.

How to participate?

The webinar will take place on 30 March 2023, at 5 p.m., and you can join it by following this link: https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=m51cb6057b67eb3377336e96d36a2a0be.

It will be possible to participate in the discussion speaking English.

Final event of the FAB Routes project

On November 29, 2022, the final event of the project "FAB Routes: Digital Skills to Promote EU Cultural Routes" will be held in the city of Forlì, Italy.

Invitation to the event

On behalf of the ATRIUM route of the Council of Europe we would like to inform you that on November 29, 2022, from 9.30 to 12.30, the final event of the FAB Routes project will be held in the Hall of Constellations ("Sala delle Costellazioni") in the former aeronautical college, today Morgagni Classical High School ("Liceo Classico Morgagni") in Viale Roma 2, Forlì, Italy. 

The event will include the inauguration of the Council of Europe Routes exhibition and the presentation of the project results. A guided tour to the dissonant heritage present in the city centre of Forlì is also scheduled. 

About the FAB Routes project

"FAB Routes: Digital Skills to Promote EU Cultural Routes" is a KA202 - Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training project, co-funded by the Erasmus + programme under the Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices call.

The general objective of the project is to design a new training methodology and educational module aimed at fostering and enriching the knowledge and transversal competences of the staff members and operators of the EU Cultural Routes (CRs) recognized by the Council of Europe, in order to improve CRs management and promotion in the field of sustainable and cultural tourism.

You can find more about the project HERE.

European Cemeteries Route successfully evaluated as a Cultural Route

To retain the label of a Cultural Route of the Council of Europe, European Cemeteries Route has been evaluated in the framework of a three-year evaluation-cycle by European Institute of Cultural Routes.

About European Cemeteries Route

European Cemeteries Route is a project established by ASCE in 2010. It refers to cemeteries as places of life, settings that, as urban spaces, are directly linked to the history and culture of the community they belong to and where we will find many of our references.

Members of the route organize guided tours, events and other activities at the cemeteries, with the aim of informing visitors and making them aware of the important cultural heritage reflected in cemeteries.

European Cemeteries Route as a Cultural Route

European Cemeteries Route has been a certified "Cultural Route of the Council of Europe” since 2010.

Every three years, the Governing Board of the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe (EPA) meets to renew this certification to networks, such as the European Cemeteries Route.

The final step of this year's thorough, more than 6-month long evaluation process took place on 5 and 6 May 2022, in Luxembourg, where European Cemeteries Route successfully passed the evaluation and, by meeting all the required criteria, obtained the right to further use the label Cultural Route of the Council of Europe.

You can find the details about the evaluation process HERE.

Importance of the regular evaluation process

Throughout the last ten years, European Cemeteries Route has been evaluated 3 times. Always with success and observed as one of the routes that performs really well.

In many ways it may be seen as leading developer for the sector of cultural tourism.Yet again each time it went through the evaluation process, we have learned that there are possible improvements and unexploited potentials, such us:

• improvements in our work,
• improvements in the government networking,
• improvements in the research and cooperation with the academic sector,
• possibilities in cultural crossroads concept.

You can find more about the improvements and plans that European Cemeteries Route will work on in the future HERE.