The European Training Network POEM addressed the urgent need of experts in the heritage sector who are qualified for working with the mediatized memory ecology, the changing socio-technical, organisational, legal, economic and ethical frameworks for the use of cultural materials. With the completion of their research projects, the ESRs have the capacity to mediate between the stakeholder’s memory institutions, civil society, and creative and digital industries in order to empower people across Europe and to initiate future-envisioning creativity and innovation, promoting socially inclusive memory practices. Moreover, the POEM project has created an extensive network of civil society groups, memory institutions, IT and creative industries, and policy makers. The POEM Model and the POEM Toolbox provide instruments for transferring the concepts to a variety of social contexts for implementing participatory memory work in these arenas. The Covid-19 pandemic reinforced the relevance of the digital media infrastructures for memory work in a wide variety of ways.
With the launch of a POEM Community of Practice the network is continuing the transdisciplinary research agenda together with other researchers and research groups for envisioning socially inclusive futures for Europe. The achieved objectives of POEM are:
- The raining of 13 early stage researchers (ESRs) as the next generation of professionals for Participatory Memory Work (PMW) in science, memory institutions, cultural politics, civil society organisations and creative and digital/ IT industries, theoretically advanced, equipped with methodological expertise and excellent orientation in the complex transdisciplinary scientific landscape of memory work; capable of identifying and integrating the perspectives various stakeholders involved; capable of applying a broad set of tools and knowledge;
- Excellent, transdisciplinary research on how socially inclusive Participatory Memory Work on how institutions and people are building connectivities for PMW, including the conflicts and obstacles they face considering modalities of mediatized memory ecologies with their organisational, economic, legal, and ethical structures;
- A model, toolbox, and tools for socially inclusive Participatory Memory Work considering a broad range of stakeholders, practices, and technologies provided on the POEM website.
- New approaches for empowering people of diverse social and cultural backgrounds; provide knowledge, ideas, orientation, and practical advice for change processes towards participatory memory work in institutions; for policy makers offering bottom-up support and an understanding of how socially inclusive public memory can be facilitated and what organisational and political directions need to be set for broad implementation.