Please always check the original links for full, up-to-date details and how to apply. 

A good place to start is the overview of open calls maintained by the European Commission:
https://culture.ec.europa.eu/funding/calls

Tip: Many EU programmes require international partnerships, so organisations considering applying should start exploring potential partners and project ideas well ahead of the deadlines.

Call for expressions of interest to establish a pool of experts to the Panel for the European Capital of Culture Action

Deadline 30 September 2027.

More information: https://culture.ec.europa.eu/funding/calls/call-for-expressions-of-interest-to-establish-a-pool-of-experts-to-the-panel-for-the-european-capital-of-culture-action-0 

Research and Innovation Projects (Horizon Europe)

The EU research programme Horizon Europe regularly publishes calls under Cluster 2: Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society.

These calls often support research and pilot projects on themes such as:

• participatory heritage and cultural engagement
• digital transformation of heritage
• social inclusion through culture

More information:

https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe_en

AgoraEU – Up to 10.7 billion Euros will be available for projects during 2028-2034

This new integrated EU funding stream will merge the Creative Europe and CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights & Values) programmes. 

It will be organised around three pillars:

• Creative Europe – Culture: Supports cross-border cultural creation, artistic freedom, and the international circulation of cultural and creative works
• MEDIA+: Boosts the competitiveness of Europe’s audiovisual and video game industries while actively funding and safeguarding independent journalism and news media diversity
• CERV+: Promotes fundamental rights, equality, active civic participation, and strengthens democratic engagement and the rule of law

The programme aims to:

• Defend against AI
• Fight disinformation
• Simplify access

Updates will be posted on the Culture Action Europe website:

https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe_en

To cite this article: IE News Team (2026), Funding opportunities, Interpret Europe Newsletter – Summer 2026, p. 32. Available online: IE newsletter 2026-2 summer

We are thinking about some changes to how we package and deliver news, but we’d love to hear your views first. Thank you to those who joined for the Market of Ideas session at iecon26 in Faro where we started a discussion that will continue while we investigate some options.

In the meantime, this newsletter is for all of us to communicate what we’re up to and what we’re thinking, to support each other, and to start conversations that can help to shape our profession. So, please consider contributing something for future issues and spreading the word among your colleagues to support this communication outlet.

Also, if you think you could spare some time to help on the team – please let Marie know! There are various support roles available and if we change the format of the newsletter, there could be more! 

Marie Banks is IE’s News Coordinator. She can be contacted at: marie.banks@interpret-europe.net or news@interpret-europe.net. 

To cite this article: Banks, Marie (2026). The newsletter needs you! Interpret Europe Newsletter – Summer 2026, p. 34. Available online: IE newsletter 2026-2 summer

Times are changing—and with them, the work of heritage interpreters. 

Digitalisation and AI introduce entirely new challenges. At our conference in Nuremberg, we will explore and discuss from every angle the risks and new opportunities brought about by these developments. 

With its museums and other sites, the city of Nuremberg offers numerous opportunities to explore this topic in greater depth during our study visits. Modern media have arrived in many locations, while other sites are still developing ideas and plans for the future. 

We can trace how we communicate – and how we used to communicate – while considering the future direction of our field and the role the human dimension plays within it. 

Nuremberg is deeply shaped by history. It is a city of medieval life and former wealth – once a Free Imperial City, home to the Imperial Castle, and the famous painter Albrecht Dürer. Yet, it is also the city associated with the Nazi Party Rallies and the Nuremberg Trials, events that continue to have a global impact to this day. Hence its designation as the City of Peace and Human Rights. 

Nuremberg is also the birthplace of the first German railway and a hub for toys and games; not to forget its famous gingerbread, bratwurst, wine and beer of which you will surely get a taste. 

Come to Nuremberg next May and be part of another inspiring IE event!

Join the team!

Do you have ideas for future conferences? Do you see yourself getting more involved in the IE events team? We are looking for one, or several, volunteers to help take on some of the tasks involved in managing the IE annual conference. The idea would be to shadow a little this year to understand more about what is involved with a view to taking on more responsibility.

If this sounds like something you could get your teeth into, please make contact with Bettina.

Bettina Lehnes is IE’s Event Coordinator. She can be contacted at: bettina.lehnes@interpret-europe.net.

To cite this article: Lehnes, Bettina (2026) “Interpret Europe Conference 2027 – In the planning stages”, Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026, p. 33. Available online: Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026.

Climate change is the fastest growing threat to heritage sites and cultural practices worldwide, yet many are unable to take needed action—there’s already so much to do, it’s hard to know where to start, and it often feels like you’re the only one thinking about it. You’re not alone! There are thousands of people like you around the world, so a pledge was started to unite us, and a community is being built to support us. We adapt better when we work together!

On 4 June, the global campaign Heritage Adapts was launched, aiming to unite the heritage sector behind a shared mission: at least 3,000 heritage sites and cultural practices to take locally led climate adaptation action by 2030. 

Alongside other organisations from around the world, the European Heritage Hub (including Project Leader Europa Nostra and partner ICLEI Europe) is involved as a founding leadership partner.

The campaign’s goal is to mobilise local stewards behind this collective pledge and provide the technical guidance, localised data access, and global connections to help them succeed. 

The initiative is recognised by the U.N.’s climate agency as a Plan to Accelerate Solutions advancing the Global Goal on Adaptation. 

The partners urge you to join the movement. Let’s work together to build community resilience worldwide and show that heritage is part of the solution!

Find out more on the Heritage Adapts website: https://act.heritageadapts.org

To cite this article: IE News Team (2026) “Heritage Adapts”, Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026, pp. 31–32. Available online: Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026.

Culture is important; without heritage, there is no future. It seems we are all aware of this, but are we really?

It is always worth repeating this, speaking out loud, so that everyone who cares deeply about memory and heritage does not cease in their efforts and feels that their work is not in vain.

If we think of European tradition, of Western civilisation from its very beginnings, it is hard to find a better place than Cyprus, a country where trade routes and paths of cultural exchange have crossed for centuries. It was the Mediterranean region that gave rise to socio-cultural and economic transformations across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and from our ancestors in this area we can learn how to foster the peaceful coexistence of civilisation and nature.

What heritage experts are currently focusing on is its significant role in the daily lives of local communities, its impact on environmental protection, and its importance for resilience to crises. It was these issues that formed the leitmotif of the meeting at the European Cultural Heritage Summit, which I attended in Nicosia, Cyprus, from 26-30 May.

In the discussions and speeches that took place during those few days, several points were consistently emphasised: without heritage, there is no future; it is on this foundation that a shared, peaceful future can be built, even when there is a degree of hostility between nations. 

It was noted many times how vital the local community is to the preservation of heritage, including natural heritage. Informed residents recognise that the past surrounding them is an undeniable asset, without which the creation of a sustainable future is impossible and pointless. The fundamental conclusion: that education, cooperation, and learning about the heritage that surrounds us is vital to our shared future, as well as subsequent proper and comprehensive interpretation of our heritage, combined with an interesting, engaging narrative.

The five-day meeting in Nicosia featured events that are a regular feature of every Europa Nostra General Assembly: Excellence Day, during which representatives of the award-winning projects presented their work; and the following day’s European Heritage Award Ceremony, at which we celebrated outstanding achievements in the field of heritage conservation and promotion. 

During the European Heritage Policy Agora and the European Heritage Hub Forum, discussions focused on how cultural heritage influences sustainable development and how it can help overcome crises and conflicts. The proceedings concluded with a visit to the Turkish side of Europe’s only divided capital, where we discussed cross-border cooperation and overcoming various barriers, using Nicosia as an example.

The Summit is supported by the European Union and was this year held under the patronage of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU.

Ewa Wojtoń is a historian working as a specialist in the Research Institute of European Heritage in the International Cultural Centre in Kraków, Poland (www.mck.krakow.pl). You can get in touch with her at: e.wojton@mck.krakow.pl.

To cite this article: IE News Team (2026) “‘Heritage as the Soul of Mare Nostrum’ – The European Cultural Heritage Summit, May 2026”, Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026, p. 30. Available online: Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026.

Contemporary heritage interpretation rests on the conviction that the past is best engaged through multiple voices, open dialogue, and inclusive narratives. But what becomes of this vision in an authoritarian state, where engagement with history is treated as a strictly controlled political resource?

This article examines how the Belarusian regime under Alexander Lukashenko has, over three decades, turned the history classroom into an instrument of authoritarian survival. Drawing on a longitudinal discourse analysis of four state-mandated history textbooks published between 2006 and 2019, it traces how heritage interpretation can be inverted: instead of opening the past to dialogue, it is sealed off to silence dissent.

Three mechanisms stand out.

First, the textbooks rely on strategic lacunae (gaps). Stalinist repressions are paradoxically depoliticised. The famine of the 1930s is erased. The democratic transition of 1991–1994, including Lukashenko’s contested rise to power, simply disappears: the 1994 Constitution appears out of nowhere, and his rule begins as a natural, uncontested historical destiny. Through such omissions, the curriculum purges the past of any element that might suggest alternative political possibilities.

Second, the textbooks weaponise heritage symbols against contemporary opposition. The white-red-white flag and the ‘Pahonia’ coat of arms — historic Belarusian emblems and banners of political resistance — are systematically linked in textbooks to Nazi collaboration. The educational narrative laid the legal and moral groundwork for the regime’s later official ban of these symbols as ‘extremist’. Heritage is reframed not as inheritance, but as evidence in a political trial.

Third, the regime extends this work from the printed page into physical space. ‘Lessons in a museum’, and the spatial organisation of state exhibitions constructs what may be called a ‘route of loyalty’: a curated pathway dictating the boundaries of acceptable memory. Classrooms and museums cease to function as sites of inquiry and become sites of loyalty enforcement.

Yet this monopoly carries its own vulnerability. The unprecedented civic protests of 2020 — in which the ‘Pahonia’ and the white-red-white flag returned as symbols of mass resistance — revealed that a narrative stripped of trauma, complexity, and citizen agency cannot indefinitely contain the lived reality of those it claims to represent.

For heritage interpreters, the Belarusian case is a cautionary one. Multiperspectivity, plural memory, and dialogic interpretation are the practical safeguards against the political capture of the past.

Nikolai Shpilkov is an independent journalist and historian. A former PhD student in Russia, he left the country in 2022 and is now completing an MA at the University of Siena, Italy, while seeking a PhD position to continue his research on Belarusian memory politics. Nickolai can be contacted at: nickolay.rayskiy@outlook.com. 

This article is a summary of a longer paper, which was presented at the Interpret Europe online symposium, The role of narratives in 21st century heritage interpretation. The full paper can be found in the proceedings: https://interpret-europe.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ie_online_symposium_2026_proceedings_2nd_ed_compressed.pdf

To cite this article: Shpilkov, Nikolai  (2026) “Weaponising the past in Belarusian schools”, Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026, pp. 29–30. Available online: Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026.

The Beļava Manor House is a mid-18th-century Baroque monument of national importance located in north-east Latvia. After losing its function in 2019, the manor was left without active management, raising an important question: How can a heritage site regain functionality, meaning, visibility, and a sustainable role in contemporary community life?

In 2025, local visioners – Ilze Vanaga, Herta Pugača and Laura Vecmane-Bārtleta – initiated activities aimed at building a new heritage community for the manor, identifying the site’s values, strengthening public awareness, and developing meaningful interpretation. A development workshop, concerts, lectures, poetry events, pottery workshops, and other activities helped reactivate the site while also testing its possible future uses.

The case of the Beļava Manor demonstrates how a values-based heritage approach can go beyond the preservation of physical fabric alone. It highlights a broader understanding of heritage by recognising historical, aesthetic, social, spiritual, ecological, and economic values that were attributed to the site by different stakeholders. At the centre of this process were people — residents, former users, heritage and tourism specialists, and community leaders — whose knowledge, memories, and expectations helped to shape the future of the site.

The value mapping process revealed both tangible and intangible elements that were highlighted by different interest groups: the manor’s park and old trees, its historical landscape, Baroque architecture and interior details, authentic elements, and the strong emotional connection of the former school community. From this process emerged two interpretation directions – Magnetic Authenticity and Contemporary Enlightenment. The mapping process revealed a strong presence of shared values, namely, different interest groups expressed similar views, memories and visions about the site and its future uses. This significantly facilitates the process of its interpretation and development in the future. 

Rather than remaining a museum-like monument, Beļava Manor is imagined as a dynamic place for community events, festivals, children’s camps, residencies, restoration activities, and tourism. The case also underlines the importance of keeping the property in municipal ownership to protect its public value and support long-term, inclusive development. It offers an inspiring example of how heritage can be reactivated through shared values, participation, and imaginative interpretation.

[This article was submitted in response to the IE Learning Landscapes online symposium held in February 2026.]

Ilze Vanaga is a life-long learning and heritage projects coordinator based in Gulbene county, Latvia. She is open for collaboration in the field of manor heritage, and can be contacted at: ilze.vanaga@gulbene.lv.  

To cite this article: Vanaga, Ilze (2026) “Reimagining Beļava Manor through shared values”, Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026, pp. 28–29. Available online: Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026.

Heritage interpretation often reaches schools through museums and organised visits to monuments, where students encounter interpretations prepared by others. This project began closer to home: in Tavros, a neighbourhood of Athens shaped by refugee settlement, industrial activity and social housing. Working within the Greek Skills Workshops curriculum, Grade 9 students of the 1st Junior High School of Tavros were invited to explore the stories of their neighbourhood and transform their own interpretations into a podcast.

“Boring”, “ugly”, “a place everyone wants to leave”: this was where the project actually began. Most students’ first reactions revealed distance rather than connection. Instead of seeing this as a problem, we treated it as a call for interpretation. Could heritage interpretation help students connect with places they passed every day but had never really noticed?

Students explored archival material and oral-history testimonies related to local landmarks. They investigated stories of migration and urban change, and imagined the experiences of people who had lived and worked in the neighbourhood at different moments in time. Most importantly, they were encouraged to reflect on how these stories related to their own lives.

Gradually, familiar places began to look different. Apartment blocks, busy streets and public spaces started to carry memories, experiences and meanings. In classroom discussions, students negotiated different perspectives and constructed a shared narrative about the place they inhabit.

The process culminated in the creation of a student podcast, A Neighbourhood Unfolding, shared through the European School Radio network. Using voice, music and sound, students communicated their own interpretation of Tavros beyond the classroom, reaching both the local community and a wider audience. In doing so, they contributed to how their neighbourhood is perceived. The podcast was also recognised through the European School Radio contest process.

Seen through the lens of the Faro Convention, the project opens up a broader question about the place of heritage interpretation in formal education. Faro reminds us that heritage is shaped by the meanings people attach to places, stories and experiences (Council of Europe 2005). From this perspective, schools can become spaces where young people learn to recognise these meanings, connect them with wider stories and communicate their own perspectives.

In our project, heritage interpretation supported key learning skills: students worked critically with sources, but also imaginatively with stories. They collaborated to shape a shared narrative and then communicated it to audiences beyond the classroom. In this sense, when students are given opportunities to inquire, interpret and create, heritage interpretation becomes both a way of engaging with heritage and a way of learning.

This article is a summary of a presentation given at the Interpret Europe Conference 2026. The full paper with references can be read in the conference proceedings, available soon on the IE website: https://interpret-europe.net/material/ 

References:

• Council of Europe 2005, Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (CETS No. 199), Council of Europe, viewed 31 May 2026, https://rm.coe.int/1680083746.
• A Neighbourhood Unfolding, European School Radio,  can be accessed here: https://europeanschoolradio.eu/episode/13362.

Evgenia Stavraki teaches mathematics at the 1st Junior High School of Tavros, Athens, Greece. She holds an MA in Museum Studies and an MA in New Technologies in Education, with a focus on STEAM education. Her interests lie in bridging heritage interpretation and formal education, exploring how culture and community can become creative spaces for communication and learning. She can be contacted at: eugenia.stav@gmail.com.

To cite this article: Stavraki, Evgenia (2026) “When heritage interpretation enters the classroom”, Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026, pp. 26–27. Available online: Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026.

For more than 25 years, I have worked in environmental education in Albania. In the early years, whenever we designed a project, donors would ask the same question: What will be the outcome?

The answer is not always easy to measure. How do you measure a child’s first understanding that a wetland is alive? How do you measure a teacher who begins to include nature in a lesson plan? How do you measure the moment when a young person stops seeing a protected area as empty land and starts seeing it as heritage, responsibility and identity?
Today, on the streets of Albania, I feel I am finally seeing one of those outcomes.

In recent days, young people, many of them belonging to Albania’s Gen Z, have joined public protests in defence of protected areas, especially around the Vjosa-Narta landscape and the planned luxury tourism development near the sensitive coastal wetlands. The flamingo has become one of the symbols of the protest. Pink inflatable birds, handmade posters and sharp, simple messages have filled the streets. Behind the humour and colour, there is a serious demand: Protected areas must remain protected.

This is not only an environmental protest. It is also a civic lesson taking place in a public space.
Albania has made important progress in recognising its natural heritage. Areas such as Vjosa, Narta, Divjaka-Karavasta, Prespa and many others are not just beautiful landscapes. They are living classrooms, migration routes, habitats, and memory places. They connect biodiversity with local communities, stories, livelihoods and culture.

But protected areas in Albania are now under pressure. Amendments to the Law on Protected Areas, approved in 2024, have been strongly criticised by environmental organisations because they open the door to large-scale development inside areas that were previously intended to benefit from stronger protection. Conservation groups have warned that projects in sensitive zones, including the Vjosa-Narta area, could damage habitats for flamingos, sea turtles, monk seals and many bird species. International attention has also grown, with concerns linked to Albania’s path toward alignment with EU environmental standards.

For me, the most powerful part of this moment is not only the legal debate. It is the faces of the young people in the crowd. Many of them were born after the first wave of environmental education projects began in Albania. They grew up with recycling days at school, nature clubs, field visits, campaigns, posters, clean-ups, biodiversity lessons and outdoor activities led by teachers and civil society organisations. Some of these activities were small. Some lasted only a few months. Some were funded by donors who needed indicators, reports and final evaluations.

But something remained.

A vocabulary remained. A sense of care remained. A belief persisted that nature is not a luxury and that development cannot mean sacrificing everything that makes a place unique.

This is why I see the current protests as more than resistance. I see them as interpretation in action. Interpretation is not only what happens at a visitor centre, in a museum, on a trail or beside a monument. Interpretation also happens when people connect meaning with place. It happens when a flamingo is no longer just a bird, but a messenger. It happens when a wetland is no longer just a map category, but part of a shared future. It happens when young people take scientific facts, personal emotion and civic courage and turn them into a public voice.

For many years, environmental educators in Albania have tried to help people understand that protected areas are not barriers to development. They are a different model of development. They protect water, soil, birds, landscapes, local economies and cultural identity. They give communities the chance to build tourism that respects place, rather than consuming it.

The young people in the streets seem to understand this very clearly. They are not against Albania’s progress; they are asking what kind of progress we want. They are not against tourism; they are asking whether tourism should destroy the very nature that attracts people here. They are not speaking only for birds and wetlands; they are speaking for public trust, transparency and the right of future generations to inherit more than concrete.

As someone who has spent more than a quarter of a century working in environmental education, I feel pride, but also responsibility. Pride, because I can see that education has roots. Responsibility, because this moment reminds us that education must not stop at awareness. It must grow into participation.

The lesson from Albania today is simple and deeply important for all of us working in heritage interpretation: When people truly understand the value of a place, they are more likely to defend it. For years, we planted small seeds in classrooms, youth camps, teacher trainings, and community projects. Now, some of those seeds are standing in the streets, holding flamingos above their heads. And for the first time in a long while, amid all the concern, I feel hope.

Daniela Ruçi has worked for many years as an environmental education expert for sustainable development, and she is passionate about the effective use of heritage interpretation to engage the next generations. Daniela is Interpret Europe’s Social Media and Design Officer. She can be contacted at: daniela.ruci@interpret-europe.net.

To cite this article: Ruçi, Daniela (2026) “When flamingos took to the Albanian streets”, Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026, pp. 24–25. Available online: Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026.

Is there a future for interpretive writers? All of us interpreters, and especially interpretive writers, are facing huge challenges and threats as artificial intelligence tools develop rapidly. It probably comes down to a choice: Do we want to support creative professionals and their expression, or not? Luckily enough, there are a lot of us who do. And, since we are creative, we will always have ideas and new projects. If we respect human effort and incorporate it into our projects, we still have some hope.

What is there to see in the Novi Zagreb (New Zagreb) area? Novi Zagreb is part of Croatia’s capital, built during the socialist era. Of all of the places you could visit in Croatia, why on Earth would you go and see the Novi Zagreb neighbourhood? Curiosity! If there is a place not on the tourist trail, that residents are fond of, there will be someone who wants to understand what there is to love about it.

And now, let’s combine the two charismatic underdogs: Novi Zagreb and interpretive writers. This September, an Interpret Europe training course for Certified Interpretive Writers (CIW) will take place in the Novi Zagreb neighbourhood, on the grounds of the Zagreb fair, once a place where you could see Sputnik and Apollo up close, and now a photogenic spot if you like urban decay. The training is a part of the project, The New Shore vol 2. Last year’s first edition of the project comprised several interpretive walking tours of the area for the locals. Participants exchanged thoughts and stories, and, based on their contributions, a map for a self-guided tour was created. The resulting New Shore map can be found at: www.secret-zagreb.com.

This year, the new edition of the project takes a leap forward. An alternative guidebook will be published, containing self-guided walks crafted as part of the certification process after the CIW course. At least that’s the plan. Of course, we cannot force the participants to find inspiration in Novi Zagreb, but if they do and their home assignments show sufficient quality, they might be included in the booklet.

Two CIW trainers, Ivana Jagić Boljat and Iva Silla, came up with this idea during a brainstorming walk around the Bundek lake in Novi Zagreb several years ago. How about thinking about CIW as a part of a project that could have a goal to publish a book with self-guided tours – as the CIW homework? A participatory guidebook that brings together different stakeholders and different perspectives? After several attempts to secure funding to help us realise such a book, we finally have an opportunity to try it. The idea has changed a bit: the book now contains several ‘chapters’, and the CIW self-guided walks are just one of them. Another chapter will feature fictional stories inspired by the area, to show that tourism and art can work together, that interpretation blends perfectly with artistic expression, and the specific knowledge, viewpoints, and unique human styles are not so easy to replace.

Both editions of The New Shore project are financially supported by The City of Zagreb, proving once again that heritage interpretation can be implemented in various ways, that various institutions recognise its benefits, and that an independent jury is ready to invest in our plan. Let’s hope we have positive updates by the end of the year, and let’s cheer that the walk around the lake will come full circle with a creative guidebook that unveils the spirit of the lake’s surroundings. Will the CIW help increase the visibility of an under-visited area? We hope you, too, will cheer for the underdogs!

Find out more about IE’s training courses and sign up for one near you: https://interpret-europe.net/training/ie-courses/ie-training-courses/ 

Iva Silla is an experience designer and the owner of Secret Zagreb tours and activities. She is an active Interpret Europe certified trainer. Last year, she published her first book, In the Footsteps of Secret Zagreb, using the guidelines of interpretive writing. Contact her at: iva@questoftales.com.

To cite this article: Silla, Iva (2026) “Interpretive writers at The New Shore”, Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026, pp. 19–20. Available online: Interpret Europe Newsletter Summer 2026.