Third transnational meeting of the project takes place in Romania

The beautiful village of Cisnădioara was the venue for the penultimate transnational meeting of the HEART project, hosted by our Romanian partner Asociatia Perseidele over 27–29 February 2024. This was also the site of the Romanian pilot study in autumn 2023. 

The occasion marked something of a transition point in the HEART project, as the team analysed the results of five pilot studies and designed the digital educator toolkit that will be the main outcome of the project's work. The meeting began with a demonstration of the digital publishing platform that would be used to create the educator toolkit. Partners then worked collaboratively to extract important themes from the teaching and learning methods employed during the pilots and explore how these could help structure the toolkit content.

All participants were pleasantly surprised as the toolkit began to take shape and later stages of the meeting focused on creating editorial guidelines, evaluation criteria and planning for the translation of the toolkit content into Finnish, Irish, Romanian and Spanish.

As was the case with both previous transnational meetings, the location proved more than just a backdrop to the proceedings but, rather, allowed for the project team to explore the theme of Intangible Cultural Heritage further. Here, we met with Mircea Ungurean who has pioneered a resurging interest in the craft of traditional painted Saxon furniture. A visit to Cisnădioara Fortress shed light on the religiuous and social heritage of the region, while the participants also viewed art in the Brukenthal Museum in the nearby city of Sibiu. Outside the city, the ASTRA National Museum Complex—the largest open-air museum in Europe—presented both tangible and intangible heritage on a grand scale. 

It was a fitting end to a productive transnational meeting that will stand as a turning point in the HEART project.