Project team visits Ireland for its final transnational meeting

Representatives from each of the project partner organisations gathered in Gleann Cholm Cille, in the north west of Ireland, from 20–22 May 2024. This is home to project partner Oideas Gael and is an area known for a wealth of Intangible Cultural Heritage practices.

A huge body of work had been completed since the group's previous in-person meeting in February, with the partners having collectively produced over 35,000 words of written content, as well as an array of multimedia materials, for the HEART educator toolkit. A series of workshops over the first two days sought to arrange the toolkit contents and, through an iterative process, explore various possibilites for presenting the toolkit to users. The team settled on a non-linear structure with various navigation options, organising the toolkit units by broad themes as well as fine-grained categories, with an additional textual search facility. It was felt this would best permit educators to access the resources in line with their individual needs and goals.

With the basic toolkit materials in place, the next task on the project roadmap is to translate the content from English into four other European languages associated with the partner organisations and countries involved in the project. Later sessions of the transnational meeting focused on coordinating this not inconsiderable task as well as planning for the dissemination of the project outcomes in the autumn.

Over the course of three and a half days, the hard work of project management was punctuated by a number of enjoyable ICH-themed excursions. These included a guided walk along part of the picturesque Turas Cholm Cille pilgrimage route, an historical bus tour of the region, a traditional music session, and a visit to the Glencolmcille Folk Museum.

This transnational meeting was the first of what will likely be several fond farewells—it is the last time the team will meet in person as partners in the HEART project. Of course, we will continue to work together remotely right into 2025 as the project moves into its dissemination and reporting phases. The partners have enjoyed a fantastic spirit of cooperation, on both a professional and a personal level, and have learned important lessons from each other. A real European collaboration success story!