EPOP-Lab! - Sito del progetto EPOP

Administration and coordination.

In order to guarantee proper and efficient unfolding of the project and the implementation of activities, an organizational model will be implemented which will facilitate management and monitoring of the unfolding of the project and at the same time, it will allow to develop joint actions among partners at best. From an operational point of view, the organizational and managerial model at the basis of the committee’s common work is based on a participative and collaborative approach that, even if favouring joint coordination and trend, it will ensure the contribution of each partner. Within the first month from start of activities, the organizational and managerial model described herein under will be formalized and defined in details, and an analytical, executive work plan will be elaborated, as well as elements able to ensure clearness and transparency.
During the entire project, coordination of activities will be ensured by the promoter, the participation of each co-organizer will be facilitated, all obligations of formal nature will be fulfilled (management of all administrative, reporting and financial management activities of the project), and the management of the relations with the Management Authorities will be ensured.
All partners will contribute to a suitable coordination of activities through an aware and collaborative attitude.

Study and popularization of the common cultural heritage.

The first activity that organizers will carry out through the coordination of the transnational scientific committee, consists in a research that will produce the contents and methods for the following diffusion actions. In particular, research will be focused on:

• Select materials, produce detailed texts and manage the technical realization of a multilingual Virtual Museum (in English, Italian, French and Dutch) of archival materials (both written and visual) concerning the origins of European popular culture from mid-XIXth century to the third decade of XXth century, comprising examples of serialized fictions ranging from French romans-feuilleton and image d'Epinal to the popular series marketed throughout the whole Continent by German publisher Alwin Eichler and his followers, from British detective novels of late XIXth century to their Italian and German imitations, etc. The intermedial dimension of this survey will be provided by the inclusion of filmographical and bibliographical data documenting the extensive process of adaptation of literary sources on film and comics beyond national boundaries;
• selection of images and production of texts (in French and English) for the catalogue of
  the forseen exhibition, focusing on the processes of cultural exchange at work in the European popular fictions produced in the period comprised between mid-XIXth century and the third decade of XXth century.

Organization of educational activities aimed at youths

EPOP is willing to emphasize the educational value that an historical approach to popular culture may have for EU students, stimulating their sense of belonging to a common cultural history through the lively plots and figures of those fictions and their critical ability to read and analyse contemporanry products of the same kind. The project therefore foresees an Educational organization work /information seminars for students and teachers and the production of specific teaching tools will be aimed to make the results of scientific research immediately available to the educational system. The transnational scientific equipe will identify the most suitable methods to prepare the seminars and the cd-rom, coordinate the research and selection work of the materials to use and supervise the technical realization. Through the selection of anthological texts and iconographic material, and thanks to the production of detailed texts and specific bibliographies destined to divulgation, the seminars and cd-roms aim at supplying a preliminary introduction to students and teachers who wish to introduce in school programs, the study of the cultural patrimony relative to industrial popular culture. Researchers and experts in this activity will therefore elaborate the most suitable strategies to supply and draw the interest of youths on these topics, and render them compatible with current school programs.

Organization of public events

EPOP actions include the preparation of an exhibition devoted to the influence of popular literature – its authors, characters and themes – on the iconography of European illustration, comics and cinema. The scope of the exhibition will be to give the general public the possibility to see reproductions of rare examples of publications and press materials related to cinematographic productions of the silent cinema period, thus broadening the target of the project and drawing interest on intermedial and transnational reports on cinema, press image, and popular literature. The transnational scientific Directorate will collaborate in the selection and recovering of the necessary materials to set up an exhibition which will be held in Pescara and Limoges, and will require a complex work based on cooperation and organization among all project’s co-organizers. The exhibition will explore the process of intercultural exchange among the different European countries, paying particular attention to the important visual dimension of popular culture. The exhibition will be organized in national sections with the purpose to trace the paths followed by the products of industrial popular culture: thanks to the exposition of literary and visual works (illustrations, comics, cinematographic posters), the exhibition will attempt to supply an essential outline of the paths through which these texts were distributed in national forms different from original ones (for example, the German translations and imitations of English detectives, the French translations of Emilio Salgari’s works, the Dutch literary productions inspired to personages of the French and Italian cinema, etc.).
The preparation of the exhibition will be the point of arrival of the research conducted by the transnational scientific team: the work of retrieval and selection of the materials used to produce the CD-Rom and the online Virtual Museum will provide the essential information framework that will allow the exhibition to acquire a true European dimension.

Creation of a transnational network on the history of European popular culture

All the planned activities are conceived so as to allow EPOP to create operative connections among a number of institutions working in the field concerned: universities, museums, libraries, public bodies, cultural associations, festivals, journals and private collectors. The networking activity will continue throughout the whole duration of the project and constitutes in fact one of its main objectives. EPOP aims to overcome the contradiction between the fundamentally transnational nature of popular culture on the hand, and the proliferation of non-communicating local institutions specializing in this field on the other. A specific tool has been devised to stimulate the creation of the network and its maintainance after the end of the project: a periodical newsletter whose function will be to circulate information on research, initiatives and events concerning the history of European popular culture. An international meeting will be organized in Bologna by the DMS to present the network and the results of its activities to University students, high-school teachers and the general public.

Communication and Promotion

The communication and promotion strategy plays an essential role inside this project proposal, and the committee is aware that this is fundamental for the effective sharing of the project activities by the European community.

In order to provide considerable advertising and promotion of the project, it is foreseen the realization of a communication strategy that will cover the entire period when the project activities will be carried out and it will also continue at the end of this period, by continuously dialoguing with partners and potential users of final results.

All partners will actively participate during the publication phase, performing their activity through a program of initiatives which will have a significant impact on more levels: local, national and transnational.

Despite a coordination and supervision role of the promotion activity is foreseen by the leader-coordinator, an activity manager will de appointed for each country in order to adapt the diffusion strategy planned for their own area.

Indeed each partner will actively participate to publication activities in any phase, according to the methods indicated herein under and will use the communication channels which are available and exploitable in his/her own country and those common ones created ad hoc (web site), thus performing an activity of promotion, diffusion, and transferring of experience.