The core network meeting IN Leipzig
During the last core meeting of the network, held on on 1-2 July 2025, a lot activies kept the Archetics's participants busy.
They visited the Matthäikirchhof redevelopment area, born in 1943 and represent the birthplace of that was the birthplace of Leipzig, the largest city of Saxony in East Germany. Today, the city of Leipzig is willing to transform this huge ‘non-space’ into a novel and vital part of the city with the aim of symbolising its vivid democratic environment.
The delegation, then, visited the exhibition “A new dawn and the end of a system. The 1990s in Leipzig” at the City History Musueum and attended the online lecture on dissonant Heritage in the Mass Mediaand Cinema.
Sandra Rainero, Urbact ad hoc expert and expert on culture and communication, guided partners through a "write storming" to co- create the ARCHETHICS common glossary, which is one of the most important project outputs. Furthermore, ARCHETHICS met the Urban Agenda for Culture and Cultural Heritage coordinator of the Urban Agenda for EU, Jan Schultheiß, who presented his work and the future possibilities for the partnership.
Finally, the participants were involved in the creative sessions for co-designing the outputs, runned by Ileana Toscano, to talk about the Archethics Living lab as operational governance tool, and the legacy about participation through the participative methodology used by the network. Following, a charrette workshop was facilitate to harvest insights from partners about the research questions of the four project dimensions (architecture, history, people, ethics) that guided the work along 2 years of project development.
Bilateral Meetings In Leipzig & Kazanlak
On the 3 July 2025 the Bilateral exchange on “Communicating Dissonance” took place in Leipzig. The meeting focused on communication, tools and practical experiences for involving communities in the debate on dissonant heritage. On that occasion, the case studies presented showed to participants how communication and art together could foster difficult concepts and involve citizens.
The second meeting, instead, was held on 3 October in Kazanlak, this time focusing on adaptive reuse of dissonant heritage for a multi-perspective storytelling. During the day, participants from the partner cities of were guided by the Kazanlak team to visit the Buzludzha Monument and were involved in a collaborative workshop meetingfacilitated by Nils Scheffler, ad hoc expert.
Testing actions: the experience of Cerveira and Cesena
As mentioned above, the partner cities started to implement the first testing actions of the project. Here we will report the experiences of the municipalities of Vila Nove de Cerveira and Cesena.
In the Portoguese city, the action called "Curtas no Castelo –Castle Short Movies" aimed to reestablishthe Castelo D. Dinis as a cultural and social hub for the community and involving local students to create short films about the castle. While, in the Italian experience of Cesena, hrough the collaboration between the municipality, t theDepartment of Architecture of the University of Bologna and citizens,a set of testing actions were carried out, including: mapping the heritage of fascist period, opening the air raid shelter, production of a podcast of collective memory, workshops with students and artistic performances.
Dissonant Heritage conference at the EU capital of culture
On the 28 September 2025, Ileana Toscano, Lead expert of ARCHETHICS, participated at theconference “Multi vocality of cultural heritage” organised by prof. Neža Čebron Lipovec of the UP Faculty of Humanities in the framework of the EU Capital of Culture in Nova Gorica (SLO). ARCHETHICS project was showcased focusing on the different level of dissonance present in the heritage of cities partner.
Creating a digital archive for ARCHETHICS
And finally, the latest news: within the ARCHETHICS network there is the aim of creating a digitalarchive where it will be possible to find information on Dissonant Heritage in their cities, and linking itwith the 4 project dimensions of History, People, Ethics, and Architecture that are at the core ofARCHETHIC. The archive will be created with the support of the ad hoc expert Marion Cugnet. To learn more, you can read the article here.
Have a look to the full Network report!
