It was the end of September, and I had moved back to my hometown only a week prior. Covid-19 and office closures brought me back home from abroad and I was dying to be a part of the community again. My new neighbourhood, named after cherry orchards that used to grow there, has an interesting community which has been collecting stories, photographs, and gathering historic data on how the neighbourhood grew and formed its identity. My first weekend was definitely marked by an event organised by this community – a Jane’s walk through Tratinska Street, with workshops, exhibitions, stories being shared, concerts, and much more.

One of the workshops was The Heritage Interpretation Workshop, led by Ivana Zrilić. We gathered at Cibona Tower, next to the statue of the late basketball player, Dražen Petrović. Participants had to bring three objects with them – the one they hold most dear, one that was the eldest, and one which travelled the farthest. All of the participants were emotionally tied to the object which objectively would not be of high value, but each item reminded them of a period or a person in their lives. We gave meanings and a new purpose to the objects, interpreted them differently than someone else could have. We have shared stories tied to the objects and the neighbourhood, while our guide slowly shifted focus on how we as people each interpret places, objects, buildings, areas, and situations differently. This was a new way of seeing things that surround us, and their meanings and value.

The second part of the workshop entailed associations connected to the object we were shown, in our case, one of them was the statue of Dražen Petrović. The associations varied from person to person, while some of us saw Dražen as a symbol of sports and success, others associated him with his early passing. Lastly, we were to draw anything we could see in our surroundings, explain to a person we were paired with why we chose that particular object, and say a few words about it. It was interesting to see how people saw, or interpreted, the staircase of the Technical Museum across the street, the phone booth, rubbish bin, etc. Interesting descriptions arose, from the modern rubbish bin representing our attitude towards nature, to a staircase drawing back to the once glorious days of Zagreb’s Fair and its importance in the region.

The workshop ended and we left with a new way of seeing the place we live in, and people we live among. The different media used to interactively interpret have shown us another way to look at heritage and brought us new knowledge.

Petra Mikolić is an M.Phil in Nordic Viking and Medieval Scandinavia. In her work she has tackled the notions and the difference between the history and the past through language and its historical sources, by the use of modern, cognitive linguistics approach.

To cite this article:
Mikolić, Petra (2020) ‘The value and interpretation of personal objects’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2020, 26.

Available online: http://www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/IE_newsletter_2020_4_winter.pdf

I met Bursu Cunneen, a Turkish artist and teacher, when she was photographing the stairs I went down after visiting the Lycia rock tombs in Feithiye, Turkey. She accidentally caught me in her shot and explained that she was working on a mosaics project for that staircase.

I was in such euphoria from visiting Troy with its magnificent museum, as well as the Lycia rock tombs of Feithiye, that when I saw a heritage site with ancient tombs below the popular tombs, dirty and surrounded by garbage containers, I expressed to Bursu my readiness to clean that place by myself. There were no information signs and in general the place seemed so undeservedly abandoned.

Bursu frowned and agreed that the heritage site really should be cleaned up to encourage others to appreciate it. So, we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to call each other. In the middle of the night I received a message from Bursu to meet the next morning.

I took my rubber gloves, left over from a business trip during quarantine, and went straight to the meeting place. And I was so surprised when I saw a smiling Bursa with a dozen workers equipped with shovels and equipment ready for cleaning the heritage site.

Bursu and I were later sitting in a local coffee shop drinking delicious Turkish tea with Suzan Tasor, a first female Headman of District, and two managers from the local museum. I listened to the story of how restless Bursa had called Suzan in the evening to inform her that we were planning to clean up the heritage site and maybe even to invite the press. That information reached the Municipal Manager and the District Governor. As a result, the Municipality agreed at 7am to organise the works that day. Bursu and I received a lot of thanks for our personal involvement. On parting, Suzan Tasor showed us an official letter of appeal on behalf of their community with a request to clean this heritage site, which was sent to the Municipality long before our appearance.

We celebrated our victory at Bursu’s 100-year-old house with magnificent views in Faralya village. It is another art project of Bursu. She has many successful projects to her name. She used her skills and art to fight poverty in a shanty Chinatown settlement in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. She made a dream come true for a child with cancer and organized a balloon flight in Cappadocia. I believe that the key to her success is not only her talent, but also her readiness to change the world for the better every day. Now many more people will be able to safely access this heritage site to engage with the past and find their own meanings there.

Nataliia Gudkova is an Associate Professor of the State Ecological Academy of Postgraduate Education and Management in Kyiv, Ukraine. You can get in touch with her at: ngudkova@gmail.com.

To cite this article: Gudkova, Nataliia (2020) ‘Cultural heritage warriors’. In Interpret Europe Newsletter 4-2020, 23.

Available online: http://www.interpret-europe.net/fileadmin/Documents/publications/Newsletters/IE_newsletter_2020_4_winter.pdf