Cultural Heritage Archives on Bulgarian National Radio Platforms

The article describes radio archives as cultural heritage and presents their practical use as integrated resources on different radio platforms. The current situation and plans for the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) for preserving and using these repositories are discussed.

Supporting and Enhancing Research on Cultural Heritage in France: the PATRIMA Project

In this paper, we first overview the French project on heritage called PATRIMA, launched in 2011 as one of the Projets d'investissement pour l'avenir, a French funding program meant to last for the next ten years. The overall purpose of the PATRIMA project is to promote and fund research on various aspects of heritage presentation and preservation. Such research being interdisciplinary, research groups in history, physics, chemistry, biology and computer science are involved in this project. The PATRIMA consortium involves research groups from universities and from the main museums or cultural heritage institutions in Paris and surroundings. More specifically, the main members of the consortium are the two universities of Cergy-Pontoise and Versailles Saint-Quentin and the following famous museums or cultural institutions: Musée du Louvre, Château de Versailles, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Musée du Quai Branly, Musée Rodin. In the second part of the paper, we focus on two projects funded by PATRIMA named EDOP and Parcours and dealing with data integration. The goal of the EDOP project is to provide users with a data space for the integration of heterogeneous information about heritage; Linked Open Data are considered for an effective access to the corresponding data sources. On the other hand, the Parcours project aims at building an ontology on the terminology about the techniques dealing with restoration and/or conservation. Such an ontology is meant to provide a common terminology to researchers using different databases and different vocabularies.

PanamaTipico.com: a Born Digital Initiative for Researching and Preserving Panama’s Cultural Heritage

This paper reflects on the experience of PanamaTipico.com, an independent website specialized in the research and preservation of the cultural heritage of the Republic of Panama, a developing country located in Central America. Basic information about the project is described. Also discussed, are some of the challenges confronted by the project and the results achieved. The goal of this paper is to encourage a discussion on whether or not the experience of Pan-amaTipico.com is comparable to the experiences of similar projects in developing countries in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Augmented Reality as a Method for Expanded Presentation of Objects of Digitized Heritage

Augmented reality is the latest among information technologies in modern electronics industry. The essence is in the addition of advanced computer graphics in real and/or digitized images. This paper gives a brief analysis of the concept and the approaches to implementing augmented reality for an expanded presentation of a digitized object of national cultural and/or scientific heritage. ACM Computing Classification System (1998): H.5.1, H.5.3, I.3.7.

Measuring employee innovation:a review of existing scales and the development of the innovative behavior and innovation support inventories across cultures

Purpose - The paper develops a model of employee innovative behavior conceptualizing it as distinct from innovation outputs and as a multi-faceted behavior rather than a simple count of ‘innovative acts’ by employees. It understands individual employee innovative behaviors as a micro-foundation of firm intrapreneurship that is embedded in and influenced by contextual factors such as managerial, organizational and cultural support for innovation. Building from a review of existing employee innovative behavior scales and theoretical considerations we develop and validate the Innovative Behavior Inventory (IBI) and the Innovation Support Inventory (ISI). Design/methodology/approach – Two pilot studies, a third validation study in the Czech Republic and a fourth cross-cultural validation study using population representative samples from Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic (N=2812 employees and 450 entrepreneurs) were conducted. Findings - Both inventories were reliable and showed factorial, criterion, convergent and discriminant validity as well as cross-cultural equivalence. Employee innovative behavior was supported as comprising of idea generation, idea search, idea communication, implementation starting activities, involving others and overcoming obstacles. Managerial support was the most proximal contextual influence on innovative behavior and mediated the effect of organizational support and national culture. Originality/value - The paper advances our understanding of employee innovative behavior as a multi-faceted phenomenon and the contextual factors influencing it. Where past research typically focuses on convenience samples within a particular country, we offer first robust evidence that our model of employee innovative behavior generalizes across cultures and types of samples. Our model and the IBI and ISI inventories enable researchers to build a deeper understanding of the important micro-foundation underpinning intrapreneurial behavior in organizations and allow practitioners to identify their organizations’ strengths and weaknesses related to intrapreneurship.

The impact of the changing weaving industry on the culture and socioeconomic development of Maya women in Guatemala

Growing demand for handwoven Maya textiles from Guatemala parallels recent international fascination with Maya civilization. This thesis surveys the effects of increases in demands for artisan textiles in Guatemala, and explores the reactions of women involved in Aj Quen, a weavers' association. The hypothesis is that the well-being of Maya women depends on their participation in the association. This is tested by using indicators of the weavers' attitudes defined as their "well-being" regarding (1) health, (2) education levels, (3) child care practices, and (4) economic stability. Interviews were conducted with 127 Maya women. Data were documented, providing a crucial missing link in the current literature of "women in Guatemala." The results of this study yield baseline data demonstrating that health and child care practices are not directly related to women's participation in the association. Their education levels increased as a direct result of working with the association, as did economic stability, although less consistently.

A case study of the development of the Argentinean community college system

In the 1980's and 1990's, Argentina was undergoing significant political, social and economic changes as a result of the change over from a military driven government to elected governments. A major aspect of the change was an increased emphasis on privatization, and promotion of foreign and domestic investment in Argentina. Higher education leaders were increasingly drawn into developing a national strategy for changing the educational structure to help facilitate changes in other aspects of the society. Preliminary reviews by the Argentinean higher education leaders indicated that adaptation of the American community college promised to help achieve the national goals. ^ The purpose of this study was to determine: if and how the community college concept, an American invention, could be adapted to function in Argentina, a nation with a significantly different history of political, social, cultural and economic development. Achieving this purpose involved: identifying the key leaders in the movement that developed to apply the community college concept in Argentina; the study of their perspectives regarding the movement as it developed; and tracking the assistance given by selected American community college leaders. ^ The case study method was employed in this research, using interview and historical data collection. Key leaders from higher education in the United States and Argentina were interviewed in-depth, to determine their views. An interview protocol with appropriate sub-questions was followed to ensure complete coverage. The interviewees identified several major areas of education in need of change including, the system, access to the system, new areas of study, integration into the hemisphere and, in general, decentralization. Historical review revealed a steady development of the community college concept in Argentina reflected in documentation of events, conceptual writings and legal structures. ^ It was concluded that there is a community college structure beginning to emerge that, so far, in broad outline, follows the structure developed in the United States. It is anticipated however, that future developments will include conceptual aspects to the model reflective of Argentina. ^

Curriculum development in a heritage language community-based school: A Qualitative inquiry regarding a Brazilian-Portuguese program in South Florida

This research aimed to describe, understand, and discuss the curriculum development process of a Brazilian-Portuguese heritage language community-based school in South Florida. This study was guided by the following research questions: (a) What roles does this HL community-based school aim to play for its students? This investigation was also related to the subsidiary question: (b) How does this HL community-based school organize its curriculum development process? In order to explore these research questions, I observed and interviewed teachers and coordinators based on a qualitative research approach. I analyzed the interviews’ transcripts, and the program’s website with a central focus of describing and understanding their curriculum development process. Hopefully, the findings will help Brazilian and other HL community schools toward discussing and elaborating their own curriculum development, as well as to look for specific teacher training courses.

The Location of Cultural Authenticity: Identifying the Real and the Fake in Urban Guizhou

This article examines notions of cultural identity and authenticity and how these notions are articulated in the small city of Kaili in Guizhou Province, an ethnically diverse region. Despite its urban status, Kaili has been branded by the local government as a yuanshengtai tourist destination. This Chinese term literally translates as “original ecology” but is used in ordinary conversation to denote a cultural authenticity in which people exist in quiet harmony with nature. Promotional literature uses the term to tout the ethnic cultural practices that mainly occur in the villages of Kaili’s municipal periphery. In contrast, many local urban inhabitants—although amenable to the promotion of Kaili as a tourist destination—have rejected the notion that the city itself could be considered culturally authentic, and proudly declare themselves “fake” ethnic minorities, as against the “genuine” ethnic people of surrounding villages. These small-city inhabitants have also defined themselves against big-city visitors by attributing to the visitors a naïve fascination with cultural authenticity, while themselves remaining aloof from such practices. The cultural authenticity discourse in Kaili has thus facilitated a reordering of social and spatial hierarchies, as blasé small-city residents define themselves against both culturally authentic rural people and authenticity-seeking big-city tourists. In analyzing this, the article draws out the broader implications regarding PRC notions of ethnicity, cultural practices, heritage, and identity.

Do Institutional Participatory Projects Contribute to the Development of Political Capabilities?

Participation usually sets off from the bottom up, taking the form of more or less enduring forms of collective action with varying degrees of infl uence. However, a number of projects have been launched by political institutions in the last decades with a view to engaging citizens in public affairs and developing their democratic habits, as well as those of the administration. This paper analyses the political qualifying capacity of the said projects, i.e. whether participating in them qualifi es individuals to behave as active citizens; whether these projects foster greater orientation towards public matters, intensify (or create) political will, and provide the necessary skills and expertise to master this will. To answer these questions, data from the comparative analysis of fi ve participatory projects in France and Spain are used, shedding light on which features of these participatory projects contribute to the formation of political subjects and in which way. Finally, in order to better understand this formative dimension, the formative capacity of institutional projects is compared with the formative dimension of other forms of participation spontaneously developed by citizens.

Valorization of cultural diversity throught Good Practices Dissemination on Art Mediation: sharing experiencies

In this article, as part of the Erasmus+ project “Divercity”, we focus on the collection and analysis of good practices in Spain and other countries in Europe. The project revolves around the development of methods that valorize cultural diversity and in this respect, identifying and sharing best practices on diversity and inclusion through artistic mediation inside museums, culture institutions, our urban walks, forms an mandatory stage of the research process.

Speeches and paradoxes of cultural mediation: A practice between the elite and the cultural poverty

This text analyzes the speeches of a group of cultural mediators working in Madrid in public and private institutions of arts. The group was organized as part of the activities of the European Project Divercity: Diving into Diversity in Museums and the City of the Complutense University in March 2015. The aim of the interview was to unravel what they mean by diversity in the profession, and analyze the contradictions and objectives professions that arise in this new field of work.

Shakespeare and the Re/Vision of Indian Heritage in the Postcolonial British Context

As part of the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company staged a production of Much Ado About Nothing set in India. Shakespeare’s Messina in sixteenth century Italy was transposed to twenty-first century Delhi and with a company of actors who were all of Indian heritage. The casting of individual British Asian actors in mainstream UK productions of Shakespeare is no longer unusual. What was unprecedented here, however, was that not only was the entire cast ‘Asian’ but the director was not, as is standard practice, a leading member of the white British theatrical establishment. Instead the director, Iqbal Khan, is the son of a Pakistani father who migrated to England in the 1960s. I use the term ‘Indian heritage’ with great caution conscious that what began under the British Raj in nineteenth century India led through subsequent economic imperatives and exigencies, and political schism to a history of migratory patterns which means that today’s British Asian population is a complex demographic construct representing numerous different languages and cultural and religious affiliations. The routes which brought those actors to play imagined Indian Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon in July 2012 were many and various. I explore in this chapter the way in which that complexity of heritage has been brought to bear on the revisioning of Shakespeare by British Asian theatre makers operating outside the theatrical mainstream. In general because of the social, economic and institutional challenges facing British Asian theatre artists, the number of independent professional companies is comparatively small and for the most part, their work has focused on creating drama which interrogates thorny questions of identity formation and contemporary cultural practices within the ‘new’ British Asian communities. Nevertheless for artists born and/or educated in the UK the Western classical canon, including of course Shakespeare, is as much part of their heritage as the classical Indian narratives and performance traditions which so powerfully evoke collective memories of the lost ‘home’ of their elders. By far the most consistent engagement with Shakespeare has been seen in the work of Tara Arts which was the first British Asian theatre company set up in 1977. The artistic director Jatinder Verma brings his own ‘transformed and translated’ heritage as an East African-born, Punjabi-speaking, English-educated, Indian migrant to the UK to plays as diverse as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Troilus and Cressida , The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice. I discuss examples of Tara productions in the light of the way Shakespeare’s plays have been used to forge both creative synergies between parallel cultures and provide a means of addressing the ontological ruptures and dislocations associated with the colonial past.

Culture in Transit: Digitizing and Democratizing NYC’s Cultural Heritage

Presentation from the MARAC conference in Pittsburgh, PA on April 14–16, 2016. S4 - Culture in Transit: Digitizing and Democratizing NYC’s Cultural Heritage.