Projects from Armenia and Ukraine among 2023 European Heritage Awards winners 

The European Commission and Europa Nostra today announced the winners of the 2023 European Heritage Awards/Europa Nostra Awards.

The annual EU prize for cultural heritage rewards 28 best initiatives and personalities from 20 European countries representing the latest developments and priorities related to heritage policy and practice in Europe.

The Armenian-French joint project ‘Scientific-Archaeological Studies for the Preservation of Ererouyk’ is among the winners of the ‘Research’ category. Ererouyk is an early Christian and medieval complex, located in Shirak marz of Armenia. It consists of remains of a 6th-century basilica, ancient mausoleum and cemetery, ancient village and dam. The researchers succeeded in dating the basilica and conducting a detailed analysis of its carved decoration. Through comparative research, the project also highlighted the particularities of Armenian Christianity and funerary customs.

The Ukrainian project ‘Un-archiving Post-industry’ won in the ‘Citizens’ Engagement & Awareness-raising’ category. Collaborating closely with local archives and heritage practitioners, the project, led by the Centre for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv, digitised collections at the Mariupol Local History Museum, the Pokrovsk Local History Museum and the Donetsk Regional Museum of Local History. Approximately 30,000 photo negatives and 82 films were digitised, encompassing press photo collections from the 1940s to the 1990s, company archives, family albums, home movies and amateur films.The project involved local stakeholders at every stage in order to empower local communities.

The Ukraine/international project ‘Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online’ (SUCHO), an initiative to safeguard the digital cultural heritage of Ukraine amidst the ongoing Russian invasion, won in the ‘Heritage Champions’ category.

“Digitised content and born-digital materials, including photographs and other files stored on servers, faced the risk of destruction or corruption during attacks or power outages. Even websites hosted outside of Ukraine were in jeopardy, if the websites owners were unable to meet their hosting expenses,” says the project presentation.

By June 2022, SUCHO volunteers successfully web archived over 50TB of data encompassing more than 5,000 websites. The archived websites span a wide range of institutions, from local museums, music academies and theatres to monasteries, archives, libraries and programmes dedicated to children’s and local history. In addition, SUCHO curated selected materials into a publicly accessible gallery, while also amassing a collection of war-related memes enriched with metadata for future historical research.

The award ceremony will take place on 28 September in Venice, at the European Cultural Heritage Summit 2023. 

The Grand Prix laureates and the Public Choice Award winner (vote online) will be announced during the ceremony. These are chosen from this year’s winning projects and are both entitled to receive €10,000 each.

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Press release