Iasi mayor: Culture and education too help build the future of Europe

Iasi City mayor Mihai Chirica underscored at a heritage digitization conference on Tuesday the importance of history accessibility and protection for the future, voicing his conviction that "the future of Europe is built not only through infrastructure and economy, but also through culture and education".

Addressing the conference dedicated to the CHARME - Digital Cultural Heritage Activity acRoss Multiple European Regions project, Mihai Chirica spoke about the need to create a digital database that would provide real-time information about the cultural and museum heritage, also mentioning the experience of Iasi City's Palace of Culture in digitizing heritage through the programs developed in its museums, agerpres reports.

"Accessibility is essential when we talk about cultural heritage, but especially for protecting our history and future by creating a digital database that can provide us with real-time information. The Palace of Culture in Iasi already has experience in heritage digitization through the programs implemented in its museums, but this is just the beginning and I am sure that we will be able to diversify these initiatives," said the mayor.

He also stressed that learning from the experience of other European countries is highly important too.

"Finland has a much more extensive digitization program than other European countries, and their results, along with those of Italy and maybe even Ukraine, will be useful to us," said Mihai Chirica.

Later on, the mayor of Iasi declared for AGERPRES that this conference is important for tackling the practical utility of cultural heritage enhancing projects.

"Iasi is a city with a venerable history of over 600 years, a vibrant cultural life and legacy, a history of being a Cultural Capital. We are proud to be part of this initiative that puts the cultural heritage in the limelight through digitization, innovation and European collaboration. We are convinced that the future of Europe is built not only through infrastructure and economy, but also through culture and education," said Mihai Chirica.

Tuesday's CHARME project conference was also an opportunity to present how Iasi managed to attract European funding and implement truly impactful projects.

Over 20 academics and local administration representatives from Italy, France, Portugal and Finland participate in a European conference on the digitization of cultural heritage, an event organized in Iasi September 1 - 5 within the framework of the CHARME project.

The project is carried out by the Iasi municipality in partnership with four other municipalities and a university: Pavia City Hall (Italy) - project leader, Poitiers City Hall (France), Coimbra City Hall (Portugal), Turku City Hall (Finland), the University of Pavia (advisory partner), and the Lviv European Integration Bureau in Ukraine (discovery partner), which have all been collaborating for over five years now within the European Campus of City-Universities Alliance (EC2U).