Offers active beyond the duration of Zeit.shift

The Zeit.shift project ended in June 2023. The central web offerings continue to be active beyond the project duration. Specifically, the results can be followed via the website. The newly generated web portal is accessible worldwide and the text material provided (several million newspaper pages) is searchable and downloadable. Geodata and content tags can be assigned via an external platform and the online game Ötzit! is freely available. However, an evaluation of the generated data, as formulated in the project description, no longer takes place after the end of the project.

What is the Zeit.shift project about? 

The aim of the Zeit.shift project is to establish a long-term, cross-border cooperation for the preservation, development and dissemination of the cultural text heritage of Tyrol and South Tyrol from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Using historical newspapers as a prototype, the text collections are to be preserved in the long term and made accessible to the general public in a web portal. This offers the opportunity to learn more about one's own cultural heritage and to learn to appreciate historical texts as a source for exciting discoveries. An important focus of the project is the active involvement of the population. Interested citizens are invited to participate and can contribute to the text indexing by annotating the text material online. Together with citizens, relevant key terms and the correct location of the text excerpts will be added in order to improve the usability and searchability of the historical text material.

How can one participate? 

Via the Historypin platform, interested citizens can participate in text indexing by describing the content of advertisements in historical daily newspapers and geolocating them via Google Maps in order to virtually reconstruct the shopping streets of 100 years ago. In this way, one can gain an insight into which products were traded and which events took place in yesterday’s world. One discovers professions and trades, some of which no longer exist, and has the opportunity to draw one's own comparisons of what can be found in the places mentioned today. This is only a small excerpt of the variety of topics offered by the advertisements in the press of that time - a voyage of discovery into the world of our ancestors. Participation is not tied to a specific time or place; all you need is internet access and a computer or smartphone. Tutorials will help with questions, and there is also the possibility of contacting the Zeit.shift project staff directly (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). The citizen science activities are aimed at all citizens and no special knowledge is necessary to participate in the project.

Another citizen science approach in the Zeit.shift project was developed with the gamification application Ötzit!. The online game Ötzit! is about saving Ötzi from dangerous animals by correctly typing out falling words in Fraktur script. A game against time! Ötzit! is primarily aimed at German-speaking pupils aged 11-14, but is open to anyone interested. The aim of the game is to create an awareness of the digitised newspaper collections and to practise reading historical documents in Fraktur script. All data anonymously provided by the players (e.g. typed words) was analysed and used to explore automated OCR corrections via crowdsourcing and to improve the searchability of the digitised collections.

Why is it important and what happens to the data? 

The benefit for the citizens is to experience the newspapers as a historical source and to learn something about their own cultural heritage through them. Together with the project team, they discover hidden archival treasures, thus making an invaluable contribution to indexing. In the project, the Zeit.shift portal for archiving, managing, researching and presenting digitised historical daily newspapers of the Tyrolean region was implemented. Using search filters, such as place and family names, time period, etc., the search results can be narrowed down precisely and the search term appears in the full text highlighted in colour. The data generated by the Citizen Science activities serve as support for the computer-linguistic analysis (e.g. correction of recognition errors in digitised texts in Fraktur script).

Photo gallery

• Unterinntaler Bote, 03.01.1908, S. 6 Unterinntaler Bote, 03.01.1908, S. 6
• Schwazer Lokal-Anzeiger, 16.04.1927, S. 4 Schwazer Lokal-Anzeiger, 16.04.1927, S. 4
• Unterinntaler Bote, 03.01.1908, S. 6 Unterinntaler Bote, 03.01.1908, S. 6
• Reuttener Nachrichten, 04.07.1930, S. 3 Reuttener Nachrichten, 04.07.1930, S. 3
• Unterinntaler Bote, 03.01.1908, S. 8 Unterinntaler Bote, 03.01.1908, S. 8
• Unterinntaler Bote, 03.01.1908, S. 10 Unterinntaler Bote, 03.01.1908, S. 10
• Unterinntaler Bote, 03.01.1908, S. 7 Unterinntaler Bote, 03.01.1908, S. 7
• Reuttener Nachrichten, 27.06.1930, S. 4 Reuttener Nachrichten, 27.06.1930, S. 4
• Schwazer Lokal-Anzeiger, 16.04.1927, S. 4 Schwazer Lokal-Anzeiger, 16.04.1927, S. 4
• Reuttener Nachrichten, 01.02.1929, S. 4 Reuttener Nachrichten, 01.02.1929, S. 4
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The research project Werkstatt Neu Leopoldau is focused on the settlement process as a workshop situation for social innovations in housing and urban development, with the aim of fostering sustainable development and creating good neighbourhoods.

As an applied research project, "Werkstatt Neu Leopoldau" (Co-creation Neu Leopoldau) accompanies the settlement process of the IBA quarter in Vienna's 21st district. The phase of residents' and users' arrival in the neighbourhood is explored, which is conceived as a potential for social sustainability in Viennese housing. Using proven and new practices as a starting point, settlement processes are viewed as learning and education processes. Furthermore, it entails socially integrative potentials that should be shaped and further developed in a collaborative and co-creative setting to think about future ways of living in the neighbourhood.

In a first step, relevant topics and questions will be developed in a co-creative process based on the experiences of the actors involved. Special attention is paid to established and future social innovations in urban development (e.g. social innovations such as social support in the settlement process, community spaces, and sharing of further resources, etc.). In a synthesis step, a selection and focus on key topics are undertaken, which are then elaborated in more depth with the target groups in collaborative workshops. The aim of the innovation project is to develop transformational knowledge in a spatial context to enable and strengthen learning and educational processes at the individual and institutional level.

The project was carried out from November 2022 until September 2023, involving residents, tenants, property management companies, and experts who are accompanying the settlement process. Werkstatt Neu Leopoldau is supported by the IBA_Wien 2022 of the City of Vienna, MA 50, and a series of further cooperation partners.

Transdisciplinary research team

• future.lab Research Center TU Vienna: Christian Peer (project leader), Magdalena Augustin, Tamara Bauer, Ruth Höpler
• Citizen scientists: residents of Neu Leopoldau
• Practice partners: GB* district management Neu Leopoldau, property management and further experts, who professionally accompany the settlement process

Podcast episode

In September 2022, project leader Christian Peer was a guest on the Österreich forscht podcast "Wissen macht Leute" - if you're interested to learn more about the project, you can listen to the episode here (in German). In addition, Maria Schönswetter, a dedicated Citizen Scientist in the project, gave interesting insights into the project in March 2023 - tune in!

Results

You can download the final report directly from IBA_Vienna 2022 website or from the future.lab website!

Read more about the findings and results in our blog entry!

Archaeological finds of textile remains give an insight into ancient weaving techniques, including fabrics from the Hallstatt salt mine dating from between 1500 and 300 BC, or finds of gold threads such as those from Ebreichsdorf in Lower Austria, ca. 1100 BC. They are scientifically analysed and reworked in the Prehistoric Department of the Natural History Museum in order to understand the manufacturing technique and the amount of work involved. Especially the board weavings and fabric with gold thread decoration are the subject of research here. Instructions for reworking Iron Age fabrics from Hallstatt have been posted on Pinterest and Instagram (#tabletweavehallstatt; #archaeologicaltextileoftheday). Hundreds of people have already participated with their own weaving suggestions, creative implementations, and also corrections to the scientifically published weaving instructions.This has resulted in a new research question on the production of the bands, which was developed together with a Finnish weaver from this community and presented at a conference (including publication).

Who can participate?

People who are interested in old weaving techniques and who weave themselves.
The project is also about re-enactment and do-it-yourself!

Period

You can participate in the project at any time.

Where can you participate?

The weavings can be shared on the Pinterest wall on weaving techniques and on Instagram under #tabletweavehallstatt; #archaeologicaltextileoftheday.

How can you participate?

You can make your own creative woven objects inspired by the textiles from Hallstatt! You can get inspiration and share your weaving objects on Pinterest or Instagram (see above). 

Contact

Dr. Karina Grömer
Natural History Museum Vienna
Prehistoric Department
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

“Homegrown - There is nothing like a homegarden”

Project description

With their variety of plant species and the experience of the gardeners, rural home gardens constitute an integral component of the cultivated landscape in the Lienz district, East Tyrol. Together with pupils of the BG/BRG Lienz school (and biology, math/physics and English teachers), scientists are investigating rural home gardens, including stocks of plant species and the use of plants. These results will be compared with those taken 20 years ago from the same gardens and will help to identify changes in gardens and their cultivation. These diachronic perspectives allow a precise and empirically established overview of changes in rural home gardens in the countryside of an industrial and services-focused state, in the context of demographic and economic changes and the search for a new identity.

To gain a better understanding of the local perception of the significance of rural home gardens, observations from gardeners and their neighbours concerning ecosystem services in gardens and their significance will also be recorded.

The project will also investigate cultivation techniques that adapt to extreme weather or ensure sustainable growth. It will also find out why people grow gardens and which values and approaches guide their behaviour or actions in gardens.

As part of an additional citizen science module, the local population in East Tyrol and Oberen Drautal will be combined. The module appeals to gardeners who are interested in taking surveys in their gardens, according to methodological direction and by monitoring their gardens, so as to demonstrate the material and immaterial ecosystem services in gardens. These gardeners and the cooperating young people will be trained in simple quantitative and qualitative survey methods for this purpose. This will take into account the opportunities that depend on the education and experience of each individual participant.

The starting point for developing analogue survey tools for the researching gardeners is a universal T-card office planner (49 x 47.3 cm, 7 panels, light grey) with 20 slots and 7 columns. The card slot system provides a weekday structure (Monday to Sunday), an hourly structure (6 a.m. to 10 p.m.) and six variables for recording ecosystem services.

On the universal T-card planner, the gardeners use the provided weekday and time scales with differently coloured slots to record the following specific information in writing about the individual ecosystem services during the recording period:

• Provisioning services, such as the yield of vegetables and fruits from the home garden (name of the person harvesting, time and duration, name of the harvested fruits and vegetables, the amount harvested and its respective use).
• Regulating services, such as birds, insects or pests in the home garden (name of the observing person, time and duration, name and number of birds, insects or pests observed).
• Cultural services, such as cultivation techniques in the home garden (name of the person cultivating, time and duration, tools used, etc.) or activities in the home garden when used as a place for relaxation and leisure.

The time spent in the garden will be recorded with a simple stopwatch. Some plant materials will be weighed out with simple, easily available kitchen scales. The card slots will be placed somewhere protected from weather or positioned where they are in the gardener’s view. This location will be decided on site with the gardener.

The duration of collections using the card slot system will be calculated at at least a week and will then be passed on to another gardener. Seven card slot systems will be prepared. The recordings ran from 1 August to 31 August 2018.

Through the participation of citizen scientists, a continuous observation and record of local perception (emic viewpoint) of the ecosystem services of home gardens is guaranteed. The methods were proposed by a gardener from the region being researched and were discussed/considered together with other gardeners from the area. The citizen scientists were actively involved in data acquisition and collection, data analysis and interpretation and the publication of results in the project report, scientific journals and conferences and in local media (dolomitenstadt.at). The collected data was continuously documented and stored by scientific guardians. Interim and final results were returned to the participating gardeners as part of the “give back” culture in the citizen science final event (“Gartenfest”).

Project collaborators

Heidemarie Pirker

Brigitte Vogl-Lukasser

Partners

BG/BRG Lienz (Renate Hölzl, Arno Oberegger, Hansjörg Schönfelder and the pupils of class 6b (from academic year 2018/2019: 7b).

Marie-Luise Wohlmuth (workshops on soil biology)

Ramona Walder (photography)

Peter Werlberger (video)

Gerhard Pirkner (dolomitenstadt.at)

Germain Weber & Team (Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna)

Christian Ragger (REVITAL - Integrative Naturraumplanung GmbH)

Image gallery

(Click on an image to enlarge)

What is the project specifically about?

So much hangs on just one thing - and yet words sometimes fail us. How do we talk about our bodies and the things that we need, want, and do when it comes to sex and sexual pleasure? And who do we talk to about these things? Categories to Come invites everybody to put their sexuality into words, and to discuss new words or new uses of words with other people. Goal of the project is to create a platform and gather resources, that open up so far unnamed subject areas of sexuality. They will be accessible both for personal gain and interdisciplinary research.

How can citizens participate in research?

Citizens are actively involved in shaping the future vocabulary of sexual language and provide important impulses for research. Citizens can write down their own terms and descriptions for intimate activities and their own sexual desire. They can also collect and name passages from songs, books or films that are sexually interesting to them. They can look at films and photos and other cultural works and describe what can be seen there and index them. They can read books and texts and filter out places with sexual acts and tag them.

What happens to the results?

The results form a resource to illustrate previously unnamed areas of sexuality. This data collection will be organized and made available as a database and can be used to enhance studies by researchers working in linguistics, social sciences, sexology, gender studies and literature as well as for art production.

What does the research contribute to?

Categories to come helps to build a new resource for research on sexuality in different disciplines. The project is based on two assumptions, namely, 1) the existing sexual vocabulary has only been partly described, and 2) because of sexuality’s visual nature, lack of language, and location within the realm of experience, there are many fantasies and sex acts that nobody has yet attempted to put into words. The project Categories to Come combines artistic and academic research interests. In contrast to purely scientific research, the artistic element also allows one to become creative and to create new words. Categories to come thus contributes to making research into sexual language and sexual desire more diverse.

This project shows what the artistic aspect can be in a research context, how it produces a different kind of knowledge than purely scientific research and how this can make a contribution in an interdisciplinary context. By making the results publicly accessible, citizens can use the database themselves and find new ways and terms to talk about sexuality. This counteracts tabooing and promotes a conscious discussion of one's own sexuality.

Image gallery

• "so much revolves around this one topic" "so much revolves around this one topic"
• "and still we sometimes miss words" "and still we sometimes miss words"
• Facebook header of the project Facebook header of the project
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The growing flood of images cannot be processed by institutions alone. Partnership with citizen scientists is vital. Topotheque is a digital archive and network in which this historical legacy can be gathered. For the locally resident Topotheque users, every new image and new piece of information means a valuable building block with which they can document their regional history in more detail. Enthusiasm for the work with the Topotheques creates local archives that captures an interest that goes far beyond regional interest. This includes prop managers and costume designers on period films and scientists who can retrace the spread of a cattle breed in the 1930s. People have very often discovered a photo of a great-grandfather in the photos that were provided by a previously unknown person.

Realisation

The Topotheque is run by a municipality or an association. Volunteers and digital archivists at the Topotheque work on behalf of the municipality as links with the general public. Running a Topotheque is easy and the entry field on the administration user interface meets the international archive standard. Before the update was started, the Topotheque volunteers were introduced to the system in a two-hour training course using ICARUS. A Topotheque is usually opened at a locally organised event in which interested members of the public are presented with the Topotheque as a digital option to gather contemporary documents. Local museums and municipal archives often benefit from the Topotheque, as they can be sent originals. Similarly, memory institutions can take advantage of the Topotheque as a platform for their own inventories.

Dialogue counts

The Topotheque creates new groups of users. A Topotheque can not only answer questions about the history of a castle complex, but also provide quick information on the questions “What did the inn look like in the 1960s?” or “Are there photos of old innkeepers?”. Questions asked offhand, which often refer to details, can be answered. These questions are asked by a new and often younger userbase. To get in touch, you can ask the Topotheque a question, which can be answered directly through the website. This is because dialogue is the heart and soul of the Topotheque.

Expansion

The Topotheque was developed in an office in Wiener Neustadt. Based on the first “Prater” Topotheque as an example, municipalities in Lower Austria were the first to make private material about the community history available with the help of volunteers. The Topotheque was also well received in Upper Austria and implemented in a regional project as part of LEADER. The LEADER regions Weinviertel-Ost, Weinviertel Donauraum, Traunviertler Alpenvorland and Eferdingerland as well as other regions are using topotheques or preparing to use the Topothek. With Carinthia, where the Topothek was launched as a provincial project, the Topotheque is now being joined by a new province. In the “co:op” EU project, the topic of which is communication work in the archive, the Topotheque was established in seven other countries. Through the international archive platform ICARUS, the Lower Austria state archive joined as a scientific partner.

The European genealogy database

"Connecting genealogists"

GenTeam is a European platform of genealogical databases. Both scientists and amateur genealogists can make their data available here for free for other researchers. The cooperation of collaborators from many different countries has made it possible to compile databases that one researcher could not typically manage alone due to the volume. Our focus is currently on the indexing of ecclesiastical sources from Lower Austria, on a baptismal and death index of Vienna, as well as on an overall index of Austria-Hungary's casualty lists from the First World War. The baptismal index of Vienna between 1784 and 1900 alone will probably comprise about 4 million data records, of which more than 3,000,000 have already been recorded. They will in turn become the basis for scientific research. Of the approximately 3 million data of the loss lists, more than 2 million have already been recorded.

The more than 64,000 registered users currently have more than 21 million records available. These users come from a variety of countries from around the world. They are primarily genealogists, although there are also scientists, historians and biographers who increasingly make use of this resource. GenTeam is free and there is no membership fee.

All voluntary membership is more than welcome!

Project coordinator Felix Gundacker made the platform available with GenTeam (and also promoted its potential), while researchers and research groups have the option to provide data and forward these lists to coordinators (sometimes after prior query/consultation). To conclude, the coordinator ensures that all data is put online.

“Soon, everyone who visits the GenTeam site will ask themselves how they got by without this fantastic source!”
Dr Peter Braunwarth, 2011

This project ran from 01.07.2017 to 31.12.2019. You can download a thematic booklet created in the process at the bottom of this page. In addition, print copies can now be made available to school classes free of charge (while stocks last). Please contact the project leaders if you would like to use them for teaching.

Faces of migration. Youth from Tyrol collaborated to research their family histories of migration

Studies in social history have documented time and again that migration has always been part of the human existence. If migration movements are as old as human history itself, world history can be read as a story of mobility. In today's world, international references have become part of day-to-day life – whether we are shopping, eating in a restaurant, watching television, at the cinema, maintaining a certain lifestyle or taking political action. These everyday situations in which we find ourselves and in which we act build our biographies and our familial references. They are also involved in many ways in events that cannot exclusively be defined locally, even if they manifest in a locally specific manner.

It is with this in mind that, together with their (grand)parents, teachers and friends, youth from Tyrol researched their family histories of migration and searched for traces of mobility in their neighbourhoods. They also gained broad support from universities and civil society. The project’s active network, which is based at the Institute for Educational Science in the Migration and Education learning and research field, includes: 

• Research Centre for Migration and Globalisation, University of Innsbruck
• Office of Tyrol Regional Government, Dept. Society and Labour – Integration
• Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen
• Tirolean State Museum
• Center for Migrants in Tyrol (ZeMit)

It also included citizens from the Innsbruck/Pradl and Fulpmes Tirolean research areas, who wrote reports on the history of migration in their areas or provided documents that were relevant to the project (e.g. artefacts of migration). 

Investigating stories of migration in your own family

Why not take a look into your own family history? You can refer to family migration experience if, for example, an uncle emigrated to Canada for professional reasons or if your grandparents moved to Tyrol from the capital city through internal migration. Our regions of experience cover the entire world. In this way, multiple affiliations are possible and there are a variety of examples of this from multi-home day-to-day life:   

A pupil from Tyrol meets her best friend over Skype and regional borders. Every week, a university assistant commutes between his home and work. During the week, he works in Vienna and at the weekend, he spends time with his family in Innsbruck. It is a long car journey from Tyrol to Serbia, especially when the children are excited about Gran’s baklava. One teenager is immersed in several languages a day: he speaks German with his sister, Kurdish with his mother and a regional dialect with his best friend.

In this research project, young people are experts in their life experience and actively shaped the entire research process: they developed their own research questions, which they then answered with the help of open interviews with parents and relatives. Furthermore, the young people used ethnographic field research to search for traces of migration in their immediate area and district.

What do family migration stories mean to me?

From a scientific perspective, it was then asked how migration is perceived and evaluated in individual families and whether there is a knowledge or awareness of migration. The artefacts of migration, and other items, brought into project lessons and schools helped with this.

Based on the knowledge obtained on family and location-specific histories of migration, the young people organised a final event in Innsbruck. The research results were also entered into an online notebook, which was largely aimed at schools and the general public. On the one hand, this project made a significant contribution to researching family stories of migration and the city. On the other hand, the findings from the project should serve to create another form of awareness of migration and diversity in your location.

Image gallery

(Click on an image to enlarge)

Project manager:

Prof. Dr. Erol Yildiz und Ass.-Prof. Dr. Marc Hill (Forschungs-Bildungs-Kooperationen), both Universität Innsbruck, Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft/Migration und Bildung

Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Scientific project staff: Mag. Miriam Hill, Anita Rotter MA

Student assistant: Alexander Böttcher, BA

Blog

Scientific cooperation partner:

Universität Innsbruck, Forschungszentrum Migration und Globalisierung

Partners from civil society, art, culture and politics

• Amt der Tiroler Landesregierung, Abt. Gesellschaft und Arbeit – Integration
• Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen
• Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum
• ZeMit

Participating schools:

• NMS Vorderes Stubai, Fulpmes (Direktion: OSR Josef Wetzinger)
• UNESCO NMS Gabelsberger, Pradl/Innsbruck (Direktion: Brigitte Winkler-Greimel, MEd BEd)

Project duration:

1 July 2017 – 31 May 2019

Sponsor:

Sparkling Science/BMBWF

Project presentation

An Intergenerational Ethnography on Rural Images of Longing

Taking the unique photography collection of the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art as its starting point, the research project “Stadt-Land-Kind” (City-Country-Child) investigated the myth of a “better life in the countryside” from an intergenerational perspective. In dialogue with social scientists, and in exchange with older generations of parents and grandparents, pupils conducted research into prevailing urban/rural sentimental and ideological constructions and the corresponding images and meanings they produce. The project asked about the social models and (future) promises that are deeply rooted in images of the idyllic countryside. What do we say and what do we feel when we connect these often backwards-looking pictures with our present-day life? On the one hand, the project’s objective was to deconstruct conventional notions of authenticity that are often used in today’s images of the countryside by touristic, commercial and political branding. On the other hand, by way of asking what images we use to “write” our history of the countryside, the project aimed to update rural conceptions through a critical investigation of historically and culturally constructed motifs of longing, as well as by an active-reflexive production of new images of the countryside.

For two years – the entire duration of the project – we conducted our research in close cooperation with three partner schools from three rural regions of Austria: Waldviertel, East Tyrol and Bregenzer Wald. The schools were the Primary School Rastenfeld (Lower Austria), the New Middle School Kals am Großglockner (Tyrol) and the Werkraumschule Bregenzerwald (Vorarlberg). This constellation included three age groups as well as three different types of schools. Overall, more than 100 citizen scientists participated in the project, including the pupils, their families and further local participants. This enabled us to differentiate age- and region-specific perspectives. During the collective field research and image analysis three different methods were applied: intergenerational picture talks, photo expeditions (these first two methods were specifically developed for our project), and research postcards in the tradition of historical ethnographic field research. During the intergenerational picture talks, pupils shared their personal memories and experiences – elicited by historical and contemporary images of the countryside – as well as their knowledge and conceptions of the future of country life with their parents and grandparents, teachers and neighbours. During the photo expeditions the pupils produced new images of the countryside depicting their personal perspectives on their rural environment, which allowed us to consciously counter current visual politics as is often seen in advertising and the like. 108 photographs and 50 postcards entered the collection of the Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art as contemporary documents.

Based on our manifold findings and visual-material productions, we curated the research exhibition Retropia: Talking about Rural Images of Longing, which was on display from April to June 2019 at the Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna. The exhibition fostered an understanding of the research process with contributions by the pupils. The Top Citizen Science expansion project, “Stadt-Land-Bild. A Social Image Analysis of Contemporary Conceptions of Longing,” continued our research with visitors in the exhibition space.

The exhibition illustrated our core finding that a new longing for the countryside is a highly relational phenomenon. Fantasies of a good life in the countryside are not necessarily linked to certain geographical regions, places or locations. Far more, they are shaped by biographical experiences and actual life conditions that come into play when talking about images in a multi-sensory and multi-perspectival way. Longing for the countryside particularly presented itself as an alternate construction to a person’s everyday life and to the present time. When comparing the different generations, parents seemed to have a strong desire for quietude and slowing down. Too, sensory-physical memories like handicrafts or hiking proved to be a strong reference to the country life for members of all generations. While these leisure activities are usually fun for the pupils, some members of the grandparent generation reacted to historical photographs with memories of times of deprivation; this introduced a critical perspective towards the “good old days.”

The different points of view and stories gathered from the Intergenerational Picture Talks, combined with the experiences from the active-reflexive image production with the pupils through photo expeditions and postcard workshops, brought about new and multilayered perspectives and insights for us. The impetus for educational policy resided in the exploration of an open concept of Heimat (“home”) and the enhacement of visual literacies among pupils and their families. There is scientific benefit to be gained from empirically observing today’s manifestation of the usually vaguely discussed phenomenon of longing for the countryside. Differentiation was achieved by content analysis as well as visual-material analysis.

Team:

Martina Fineder, Paul Reiter (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)
Luise Reitstätter, Mark Elias Napadenski (University of Vienna)
Herbert Justnik, Astrid Hammer, Katharina Zwerger-Peleska (Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art)
Iris Ranzinger (photography, digital images, archive)

Project duration & project partners:

“City-Country-Child” was a project of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in cooperation with the Laboratory for Cognitive Research at the University of Vienna, the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art, the Werkraum Bregenzerwald, the Primary School Rastenfeld, the New Middle School Kals am Großglockner and the Werkraumschule Bregenzerwald. It ran from 1 September 2017 until 31 October 2019. It was conducted through the grant program Sparkling Science, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.