European Pathways to Minority Religious Heritage (MIRETAGE)

The Center for Religion and Heritage is the coordinator of the project European Pathways to Minority Religious Heritage (MIRETAGE), a EU-funded project that will develop innovative methods for adult education around minority religious heritage with the aim of promoting both inclusive education and inclusive heritage.

The start of the project was marked by a two-day meeting on 22 and 23 January in Groningen. For the occasion, the Centre for Religion and Heritage organised a symposium with three round tables on Jewish, Muslim and Christian heritage. The event also included the launch of “The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe“, a state-of-the-art guide to scholarship on religious heritage with critical analysis and an exploration of best practices.

One of the main outcomes of the project will be the creation of “heritage labs” and “heritage trails“. The heritage labs will bring together cultural heritage associations engaged in public education to co-create heritage trails that interlink the memories, sites, and histories of minority communities with other heritage spaces. The heritage trails will help members of minority communities give visibility to their own communities and their heritage in the wider societal context. The public nature of the trails and the focus on their use in the education of community organisations will create pathways that stimulate better educational experiences that benefit both learners and heritage institutions. 

The experiences from the participation in the heritage labs and the creation of heritage trails will result in a set of guidelines and digital tools that will be offered to heritage organisations, adult education providers, policy makers and other stakeholders through multiplier, policy and networking events.

The project will run for three years from December 2023 to November 2026. Project partners include the Centre for Religion and Heritage (University of Groningen), Autonomous University of Barcelona, Future for Religious Heritage (FRH), KADOC (Documentation and Research Centre on Religion Culture and Society at University of Leuven), La Xixa, Mozaika, the Storytelling Centre of Amsterdam and the Moslim Archief, based in Rotterdam.