Abstracts

Underneath the veneer of bucolic nostalgia, open-air museums have enormous potentials in addressing one of the all-pervading individual and societal traumas of our times – the trauma of human disconnect, estrangement and alienation from the rest of nature.

Rooted in the qualities and values of pre-industrial societies, these museums carry the seeds of a critique of, resistance to or protest against industrialized agriculture, intensifying urbanization and capitalist globalization. Their names evoke both the memories and the promises of open air and free land. Positioned right at the intersection of nature and culture, they are uniquely placed to uncover and confront the exploitative paradigms that have lead to declining biodiversity, the destruction of arable land, and the explosively changing climate.

With land and extensive cultural landscapes at their disposal, open air museums can, likewise, be at the forefront of experimenting with concrete and tangible alternative methods and productive practices, functioning as platforms for their communities in learning with and from nature and its capacities for replenishment and regeneration.

Small and large, urban and rural, European museums of very different types are exploring new ways of using their grounds and buildings as resources for a societal critique and for developing new, planetary ethics.

We regard the museum, among other public institutions, as an institution of social construction, for ages. A social construction which therefore inescapably reflects the special and unique fabric of any society and nation. Beside the many centuries old history museums, which would explain and present various historical narratives through a selected number of materials, artefacts, and various historical objects, the trauma museums concentrate on short time memories, imbedded in the mind of a few generations, and usually focus on emotions as places not only of memory, but remembrance. What are the dilemmas of trauma museums in Hungary from the perspective of a curator and director? How we can handle the political, social, and individual requirements of the public?

It's important to note that in the past two years, international discussions on Ukrainian cultural heritage have been centered on survival and protection rather than development. This is due to the ongoing war of Russia against Ukraine. During this war, Ukrainian museums are being targeted by missiles and artillery, falling under occupation, experiencing looting, and even facing violence toward museum staff. The destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage and the misrepresentation of Ukrainian history and cultural heritage and history of national minorities and indigenous people of Ukraine are part of this war. Russian museums have become a tool for the Russian government's propaganda and military objectives, actively participating in the erasure of Ukrainian identity and history. The Russian government has created a regulatory, organizational, and financial basis for the militarization of museums and their inclusion in the process of ensuring the goals of war inside the Russian Federation, in the Ukrainian temporarily occupied territories, as well as abroad. The Russian government directly employs Russian museums to validate and legitimize actions exhibiting indications of genocide.

Ukrainian museums must resist such aggression in all its manifestations. Museums play a crucial role in preserving identity and memory, despite the challenging conditions. They are not only preserving heritage but also actively engaging with Ukrainian society and taking on responsibilities to help navigate through the impact of war.

The experience of the Russian-Ukrainian war has also highlighted the inadequacy of existing heritage protection laws in modern warfare situations if the aggressor country cynically disregards laws, norms, and values while there are no levers of influence on it. It is worth realizing that this is not only a problem for Ukraine and Russia’s neighbors; it is a challenge to global security.

Based on examples from Den Gamle By, Julie Rokkjær Birch, director since April 2024, offers a presentation for reflection and inspiration regarding the importance of museums for difficult subjects.

The cultural, social and political dimensions, and the tasks of the museum institution have in recent decades been subject to radical rethinking. On August 24th 2022, in the framework of the 26th ICOM General Conference held in Prague, the ICOM Extraordinary General Assembly approved a new museum definition, which was expanded with the terms inclusion, diversity and sustainability. It happened in recognition of the fact that new users and stakeholders have become part of museum spaces and new curatorial practices have been developed and put to the test.

My talk to day aims to kindle reflection on and promote further thoughts about how historical museums – open air museums in particular – are able to deal with difficult topics and how they are part of, and contribute to society and social change by including themes and items that are controversial even in present day society. Such as stories about pregnancy and abortion, colonialism, dementia, physical punishment, pornography, homelessness, LGBT issues and many other matters.

The interesting notion for us working in Den Gamle By is that people, who would never approach such topics in real life conversations, meet them without fear when they are a part of a diverse museum experience. The prejudice one might have concerning so called ’difficult topics’ does not stand a chance, because these topics play a natural part in the proud museum totality that is “Den Gamle By” – a world famous attraction and a history that belongs to all of us. The museum uses its ‘common feeling of home’ as a main frame of Danish history to portray the development of our welfare society, open-mindedness, gender equality and non-authoritarian thinking. Consequently, Den Gamle By can be defined as an agent of change relating to ongoing societal challenges, that define us today and shape tomorrow. The total experience of Den Gamle By is highly renowned and a lovely day out – but it is also indeed a safe place for unsafe stories – an experience that enhances pride over prejudice.

Beamish is an open air museum which brings the history of North East England to life at its 1820s Pockerley, 1900s Town, 1900s Pit Village, 1940s Farm, 1950s Town and Farm exhibit areas. Our collections, ranging from agricultural tools, small domestic items to working tram cars, have mainly been donated by local people who live and work in the region which gives us a unique connection to the communities around us. Beamish has a strong track record of actively involving community members with the museum through development of exhibits, volunteering and learning programmes and in recent years this has developed to include delivering health and wellbeing programmes for older adults and people living with dementia, programming which engages young people with issues around climate change and activity to engage marginalised communities and ensure their voices are heard within the museum. This work has not come without its challenges, both internal and external, and this talk will reflect on this work and share learning from our experiences.

This paper challenges us to think deeper about nostalgia and its relationship to our sites. It explores the role nostalgia plays in open-air museums: where, when and how do visitors experience nostalgia, and for what? It asks whether we might consider nostalgia to be a progressive and future-looking emotion, not just one that thinks ‘it was better back then’. After all, if we can imagine the past as ‘the good old days’, surely we can harness this imagination for the benefit of the present (and future). How might we understand what our visitors are feeling and what they might be feeling nostalgic for?

The relationship of open-air museums to nostalgia has always been close: Beamish’s founding director, Frank Atkinson, suggested nostalgia was ‘the sugar on the pill’ for visitors, and later marketing posters promised ‘simply acres of nostalgia’ for people to enjoy. Since the heritage debates of the 1980s, however, critics in both the museum and academic sectors have maligned nostalgia as a pastiche of history and a regressive emotion. Specifically, open-air museums have been accused of portraying a sanitised version of history that encourages an unquestioning nostalgia for the time periods they display.

However, nostalgia is as much rooted in the present as it is in the past: in order to feel nostalgic for something in the past, it is often necessary to feel its corresponding lack in the present. Nostalgia therefore offers us an opportunity to understand the contemporary anxieties felt by our visitors. Through this understanding, we are better equipped to harness the progressive potential of nostalgia, in both the present and in imaginations of the future.

Located in North East England, Beamish is surrounded by mining villages, where for many people the cultural trauma of the Miners’ Strike of 1984-5 and deindustrialisation is still very much felt. The museum has areas which tell the story of mining in the region, but these are set in the earlier 20th century, a time when the industry was flourishing. Approximately 50% of visitors are from the local area; feelings of nostalgia about the mining industry experienced at Beamish are therefore complex, reflecting emotions about the industry’s past, the communities’ present and the area’s future.

Finally, the paper asks whether nostalgia is an exclusionary emotion for our visitors. If the story of your past is one of struggle, trauma or exclusion, how do you relate to the pasts on display in open-air museums? How might our projects of recovery and inclusion work to create a more representative nostalgia?

This paper is drawn from my ongoing PhD research with Beamish and Durham University on the prospective possibilities of nostalgia in open-air museums; case studies from this work will be drawn upon to illustrate the questions outlined above.

In May 2021, a Soviet-period kolkhoz apartment house was opened at the Estonian Open Air Museum. The four-flat silica-brick residential building of this type, erected in the 1960s for workers on collective farms, has become a kind of landmark, symbolizing the Soviet era in Estonian history. The news of building this house aroused contrary opinions. On the one hand, it was considered a violation of the museum’s village landscape with an „ugly“ house from an abhorrent period. On the other hand, it was emphasized that the museum's role is also to deal with complex history.

The house tells the stories of four families from the years 1967, 1978, 1993, and 2019. At times, one of the flats provokes distaste as it shows the dark side of life in the first years of the Republic of Estonia after regaining independence. It highlights generally hidden characters and thought-provoking topics: dissolution of kolkhozes, hardships of the transition period, unemployment, poverty, and alcoholism.

I will discuss the challenges of exhibiting the politically despised history as well as social problems from the recent past, using the example of the apartment house from the Soviet period.

In my lecture, I am looking for the answer to how open-air museums can become community museums, how the voice of the community(s) can appear in addition to the curator's voice. How do we represent those people and groups who have been left out of official history, how will we be able to record the stories that would otherwise be forgotten.

In recent years, there have been several projects in the Hungarian Open Air Museum that used new tools to transfer knowledge, presented stories that were often left out of the official narratives or were present as resource communities in the life of the museum.

In my presentation, I will present examples from Szentendre that are based on research related to different minorities: the museum representation of romani culture and society (make the invisible visible), the museum presentation of Jews (stories beyond the Holocaust), research on Hungarians living in the diaspora (exaples from USA, Argentina and Israel).

The Ulster Folk Museum is an open-air museum situated on a 180-acre site at Cultra, seven miles east of Belfast. It explores how the people of Ulster have shaped their natural environment over time, creating a cultural landscape rich in traditions and diversity.

The concept for this new open-air museum took on an additional layer of meaning in Ulster. In a region marked by growing division between its two main communities – Protestant and Catholic - the museum set out on a mission to bridge divides. It was designed to explore both shared heritage and cultural diversity within Ulster – on one hand illustrating that the two communities have more in common than what divides them, whilst on the other also recognising the importance and promoting understanding of cultural difference.

As the museum began its operation in the 1960s, the region was increasingly being torn apart by a political conflict known as ‘The Troubles’ which had a devastating effect for the next thirty years. During this period, the museum played an important peacebuilding role, not solely through cross-community engagement projects, but also by but also by offering the promise of a ‘good day out’ during times when such options were scarce.

Fast-forward to the present day and more peaceful times have prevailed in Northern Ireland following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Despite undoubted progress, however, significant divisions remain. Sectarianism and segregation are still dominant issues. There is little consensus on addressing the difficult legacy of conflict and moving towards a shared and more prosperous future. It is clear that, alongside the political peace process, a much broader social peace process is now required.

It is in this space that the Ulster Folk Museum has an important contribution to make and is more relevant than ever. It is uniquely placed to become a communal, democratic and civic space that fosters dialogue and collaboration in a society where traditions still matter.

However, fulfilling this role will require change and new possibilities. Amidst more peaceful times, the museum has shifted its original peacebuilding ethos towards tourism growth. In recent years, it has become static and has somewhat lost its sense of purpose.

In its 60th anniversary year therefore, the museum finds itself at a juncture that calls for reinvestment and a purposeful realignment of its role. Now is the time for the museum to fully deploy its collections and resources to support Northern Ireland’s journey of peace, reconciliation and shared futures. This is what we are calling its ‘reawakening’.

This presentation will explore the unique role of this open-air museum in a divided society. It will outline the approach being taken to transform the museum’s engagement model so that it can deliver a more relevant, resilient and impactful role in response to the needs of a post-conflict society.

In the context of a monumental open-access project, the research department (architecture and building research) has written and edited 70 documentations of Ballenberg’s historic buildings, thus adding about 1’500 printed pages to the pre-existing 20 publications. The museum now has thoroughly researched booklets featuring more than 100 buildings, translocated before 2020.

A further result of the project is a booklet defining guidelines for safeguarding and handling Ballenberg’s historic houses in order to professionally preserve them for future generations. Based on principles of monument conservation and protection the guidelines were adapted to the day-to-day circumstances and requirements of the Open-Air Museum. We truly hope that it will contribute to the discussions and efforts all Open-Air Museums are facing when it comes to preserving their historic houses. All publications will be available for free from our website from April and July 2024 respectively.

A wide range of now more or less extinct technologies, ranging from agriculture to spiritual culture, are tested, verified and reconstructed by experiment in open-air museums. If used properly, they significantly contribute to the credibility of presentation in these institutions. Open-air museums also contribute to the general pool of knowledge as they are a kind of 'reservoirs' of old technologies that should be used especially during the reconstructions and repairs of buildings and museum objects.

We shall present experiments in the field of traditional earthen construction, which have been systematically carried out since 2011 at the Museum of the Villages of South-East Moravia in Strážnice – an open-air museum administered by the National Institute of Folk Culture. These efforts aim to create a workplace within the Strážnice open-air museum focused on building experimentation as a basis for the creation of working manuals (certified methodologies) of extinct building techniques from the preparation of the material to the application of a specific building solution on the site. The experiments are carried out and the research results are tested and applied on concrete museum exhibits.

An important part of the research is focused on the periodic maintenance of earthen buildings - especially surface finishes and flooring. The aforementioned research activities also have considerable educational overlap and are reflected in both visitor events and specialized courses for professionals as well as the public who wish to use traditional technologies while maintaining their own homes or local sites.

In the context of applied research on earthen building, since 2012 the National Institute of Folk Culture has been running workshops entitled “The use of clay in rural construction”, the purpose of which is to impart practical knowledge in working with clay as a building material. The institute maintains cooperation with the National Open-Air Museum in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm or Czech universities as well as international cooperation with the Technical University and the Agricultural University of Vienna and the Niedersulz Open-Air Museum in Austria.

The value of a modern and innovative museum does not reside solely on the quality of the programs for the public, but also on the way it serves the most stringent needs of its core community: traditional craftsmen. The dissolution of guilds and trade unions, followed by the dramatic transformation of the rural civilization during communist times, left a void in the recognition and a huge inequity on the labor market for traditional craftsmen all over Romania. With the Center for Activities and Regional Resources - CARR, ASTRA Museum started validating professional competences previously acquired and organizing professional training sessions for craftsmen, to increase their resilience and competitiveness on the current labor market, providing a glimpse of hope for crafts in the future.

* Activities in the framework of the project Restoration and revitalization of the historical monument House of Arts – Centre for Activities and Regional Resources (C.A.R.R.) This project is financed with the support of EEA Grants 2014 – 2021 within the RO-CULTURE Programme

America, like many countries, is no stranger to trauma. From its outset, trauma has been part of the creation of the country, whether through the displacement of Indigenous peoples by colonial settlement, the importation of enslaved peoples from Africa, or the legacies of war – both internal and external. The legacy of this trauma is still with us today.

From the displacement of the African American community in the creation of the Museum, though attempts to tell the story of the enslaved in a meaningful way, to getting to grips with the remaining legacies of centuries of trauma in the Indigenous and African American communities, Colonial Williamsburg has been at the center of successes and failures in processing this ingrained trauma. The museum is working to be an inclusive museum in which the microhistories of individuals are fore-fronted, beyond the traditional histories, and the traumas of the past are confronted. Using Colonial Williamsburg as a case study, this paper will examine the way that an interdisciplinary approach from the open-air museum has dealt with this legacy, and how it is working to develop dialogue and social sustainability for the future.

It is only in recent years that Germans have become more aware of their own colonial past. Initially, the integration of metropolitan areas into colonial structures was the main focus. This year, an entire region, Westphalia-Lippe, is embarking on a search for its colonial past with exhibitions and events. In this context, the LWL open-air museum Hagen has also taken a new look at its workshops and asked about colonial traces in crafts and trades. A themed trail leads to 15 stations and shows how these businesses were integrated into colonial structures through the import of raw materials, the export of products and the production of stereotypical images on packaging and in advertising. The article presents the project and its various forms of communication. In addition, after four months, it will be possible to report on how the exhibition is perceived by visitors.

Ukraine has been under attack from Russia and partly occupied since 24 February 2022. This has resulted in a number of heritage sites and collections being looted and/or deliberately destroyed. On 29 August 2022 UNESCO had identified 183 damaged sites, including 13 museums and 35 historic buildings. Examples include Ivankiv Museum, Hryhorii Skovoroda Museum, and the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa. Of course this is only one aspect of Russia’s war against an independent European state, and of course not the most important one. The loss of Ukrainian lives is a much larger tragedy.

These actions by Russia to erase cultural heritage is one aspect of the war where members of AEOM have expertise and the ability to help, when it comes to protecting sites and museums, and the handling of collections when these are at risk of being destroyed and lost forever.

Jamtli has been part of an initiative by a group of regional Swedish museums where we have supported the Maidan Museum in Kiev with their work to protect and document Ukrainian cultural heritage. In this presentation I will give members practical advice and insights into how we have organised our fundraising activities, and also describe the work done by our colleagues, including when equipment has been purchased and transported to the Maidan Museum in Kiev.

I am sure there are other initiatives to support Ukraine being taken or planned by AEOM members, and in this session I hope we can discuss how initiatives from our members can be coordinated, with the aim of maximising their impact and efficiency.

I feel we have a moral duty and a professional reponsibility to commit ourselves to this cause.

What’s the task?

With around 230.000 visitors a year, over 100 buildings and a collection exceeding 200.000 items, Hessenpark Open Air Museum is one of the biggest museums in Hesse. Our mission statement is clear: to depict rural life up to the end of the 20th century. Thus you can find farmsteads, schoolhouses, workshops, churches and synagogues. You can experience how life changed with the times. There are exhibitions on the life of Jewish communities before the Holocaust, on the integration of refugees and expellees after 1945 and on refugees fleeing from the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. But there is one big gap: What about the period between1933 and 1945 – the time of Nazi-Deutschland? We want to close this gap!

What’s the challenge?

But how to present the unfathomable? Fortunately, there are many good examples on how exhibitions take on different aspects of National Socialism. These mostly target an audience that is willing and prepared to experience what it is about to learn. However, the typical audience of an open air museum is not! Most of our visitors – many of them families with younger children – come to take a dip in the past, enjoying the simplicity of the good old days remembering stories from their grandparents.

What’s the goal?

What we have to do is find a way to get under their skin without frightening them away. We hope to achieve this goal with two exhibitions: The first will be located on the upper floor of our schoolhouse from Frickhofen, where (on the ground floor) a 1900s class room welcomes numerous school classes and families. Here we want to explain how children from a young age were indoctrinated by the Nazi regime in organisations such as the Hitler Jugend and the Bund Deutscher Mädel, as well as in schools and sports clubs. In the second, a Reichsbahn-freight car from the type which was used for the deportations to concentration camps, we want to give a small insight into the Nazi policy of extermination. Both exhibitions have the goal to be a reminder more than a deep explanation. In times of remarkable shifts to the political right, we think this is overdue.

In 2020 The Occupation Museum in Aarhus (an off-site part of Den Gamle By), reopened after two years of research and total refurbishment of the building with a new permanent exhibition.

The mission for the museum was to tell a multi-faceted story about life in Aarhus during World War II and to make the dilemmas and issues of this particular period in history relevant to a contemporary and future audience. Furthermore, the aim was to tell personal stories and to focus on the difficult and morally challenging choices the German occupation forced ordinary Danes to make.

It was the ambition to inspire the visitors to reflect on how they would have acted themselves if they had been in the same situation, and to achieve this the exhibition tells personal stories and lends voices to ordinary people and the men and women who joined the resistance or became collaborators. Moreover, it was the intention to give voices to the German occupiers and portray them as human beings instead of faceless enemies.

I Danmark this is a new and somewhat controversial point of view. The reason being that it challenges the popular postwar narrative claiming that the Danish people was united in their resistance to the German occupation. According to the narrative, all true Danes resisted the Germans to the best of their ability – either passively or actively as part of the resistance. In the same narrative, the collaborators were perceived as nothing more than a small group of traitorous Danish nazis, habitual criminals or sad individuals who choose to ally themselves with the Germans because they were of low intelligence and therefore easily influenced. Studies into the postwar criminal trails against Danes accused of being collaborators reveal that the narrative is way too one-dimensional and largely ignores the numerous and often complex reasons why someone would choose to collaborate with the Germans.

In order to disseminate a much more nuanced and scientific narrative about the German occupation, The Occupation Museum has developed a system that enable visitors to immerse themselves in the life and experiences of a person living in Aarhus during the war. The ID-card system is very much inspired by a similar system in the 1960s exhibition in Bokrijk, Belgium and have been developed further to facilitate a system of choice making.

In essence, all visitors are given an ID-card that can be scanned throughout the museum. There are 20 very different life stories (10 men and 10 women) and each of them have five stories/scenes and one dilemma that gives the cardholder an intimate insight into their person’s life and motivations. Most visitors will be able to identify themselves with some of the motivations even if they perceive their person’s actions as highly reprehensible. At some point throughout the exhibition the cardholder is confronted with a difficult dilemma, and they are forced to make a choice on behalf of their person that can have dire consequences.

According to surveys of visitor experience the ID-card system has been well received by most visitors and their feedback proves that telling personal stories is an effective tool to achieve immersion and identification. Another conclusion to be drawn is that the visitor experience could be improved by making the system more user-friendly and by adding more personal stories. In the same survey several visitors stated that they had gained a new understanding.

However, the question remains whether the use of multi-faceted personal stories is truly capable of bringing forth the nuances and thereby challenging the popular narrative.

The population in Europe is getting older and an increasing number of people suffers from dementia. It can cause huge social challenges to be diagnosed with the disease. Both for the person diagnosed but also for the relatives it can cause great traumas. Many lose their social circle and experience increasing loneliness.

As open-air museum we can make a great difference for this target group. Open-air museums appeal to all senses and can provide a sensory and tactile experience of the past. This is something all museum visitors benefit from. But in particular visitors suffering from dementia. By providing a whole setting, open air museums provide unique opportunities to work with reminiscence and help improve the well-being and quality of life among this target group (cf the Erasmus+ project Active Ageing and Heritage in Adult Learning 2015-2017).

Since 2004 Den Gamle By has run special programs for elderly people with dementia. This includes programs for the people affected by dementia as well as their relatives, who can experience the disease as just as big a trauma as the person with the diagnosis – maybe even greater.

“At first, I went along for my husband’s sake, but now I can see how much I’ve benefited from the visits. It’s almost as if I’ve got my husband back. It’s the best experience I’ve had in years.” Quotation of spouse to a person with dementia, participating on the course Memories Together in Den Gamle By.

Research at CON AMORE, Centre for Autobiographical Memory Research at Aarhus University, has shown that continued visits to the House of Memory in Den Gamle By brought back more memories with greater detail than in a modern setting. Results provide evidence that the sessions were holistic experiences that depended for their success not just on the objects, but also on the space, the facilitators, and the social and sensory experiences that participants had during the sessions.

Thus, it turns out that we as open-air museums have unique opportunities to work with reminiscence and accommodate the social challenge related to the increasing number of people being diagnosed with dementia. By appealing to all senses and providing programs in whole settings thus generating holistic experiences.

In my paper I present the ways the Hungarian Open Air Museum applies its research results in interpreting social and historical traumas of different ages often having a long-time effect on society. How can, could and should a museum do that? What kind of issues are to be addressed in an open air context with what methods? What types of interpretation are used in the Skanzen in Szentendre? What are the visitor reactions to them and what are the experiences of the museum staff? Can we achieve our goals in launching dialogues about these topics?

Apart from that it is also very important to be inclusive and reflect on contemporary problems by using the knowledge and know-how embedded in open air museums. Reintegration projects of different kind are answers to society’s needs and social history museums have a great responsibility in paving the way for local cultural institutions in dealing with varied problems and varied communities.

"ROM (a) NOR Interferences" is an incursion into time and space to promote, capitalize on, and revitalize the cultural heritage specific to the Roma ethnicity through museology and social inclusion, in order to improve the situation of the Roma population. Also, it contributes to the strengthening of bilateral relations between Norway and Romania through specific cooperation activities in the field of cultural heritage. The project is addressed to the Roma minority as a whole and the visiting public in Romania and Norway, as well as to the organizing museums (“Dimitrie Gusti” National Village Museum and Anno Museum)."ROM (a) NOR Interferences" is based on the principle of respect for diversity and the demystification of stereotypes. Although the Roma are a historical minority in Romania, the social distance between them and Romanians continues to be maintained, with stereotypes and prejudices remaining the main vectors that describe them in the minds of the majority population.Taking this into considerations, we aim to revitalize their cultural heritage. We will research the cultural patrimony of the Roma to identify typical elements of vernacular architecture. Based on the research, a specific household with a complete inventory will be later rebuilt in the Village Museum, and the cultural goods will be preserved and restored by the museum specialists. To present their intangible heritage innovatively, adapted to the requirements of the 21st century, we will also build an ethnographic heritage building construction augmented by virtual reality applications and other media. At the same time, the entire exhibition complex will be completed by panels with various digitally colored historical photographs.Another important part of the project focuses on empowering the Roma population through debate sessions, training activities, and public events. We aim to offer solutions related to social inclusion through courses in the field of creative industries and traditional crafts, entrepreneurship, and cultural heritage. Roma craftsmen will also be trainers in workshops dedicated to school children. The youth will thus have the opportunity to learn how to make various wooden and metal objects or how to use musical instruments. Also, we will organize four festivals around the household with Roma music, dance, and crafts demonstrations, as well as sales of hand-made products.To ensure the success of the project, the Village Museum benefits from the expertise of Anno Museum. Our Norwegian partners will participate in the research campaigns, the transfer of expertise in the field of restoration and curatorship, and in the debates focused on identifying the best practices for the revitalization and promotion of traditional Roma crafts. Also, they contribute to the promotion of the cultural heritage of the Roma by organizing a temporary exhibition dedicated to the Roma minority from Norway in Romania.