Changing Democracies kicks off in Vilnius

New project aims to capture stories of the transition to democracy in Europe

New project: Changing Democracies kicks off in Vilnius

In April, the Evens Foundation team travelled to Vilnius to attend the annual EuroClio conference, where we kicked off our Changing Democracies project with a two-day meeting.

Changing Democracies is an EU-funded project with 13 partners from 10 different countries. It aims to collect untold stories from across Europe about recent transitions to democracy and explore how they can lead to critical reflection and dialogue about democracy today. These stories will then be brought to people around Europe who have never experienced life in a non-democratic system.

The partner organisations include the Association of History Educators Greece (Greece), Autres Directions (Netherlands), Borderland Foundation (Poland), Escola de Cultura de Pau (Spain), EuroClio (Netherlands), Flemish Peace Institute (Belgium), History Lab of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (Czech Republic), In Media Res (Netherlands), Institute of Research in Art, Design and Society, University of Porto (Portugal), Museum of Slavonia (Croatia), Mediawise Society (Romania), and the Open Lithuania Foundation (Lithuania).

Almost 20 representatives of the consortium gathered for the first live meeting in Vilnius, where we discussed the organisation of our common work, our approach to collecting testimonies and how to use and transform these testimonies in a meaningful way for the different activities and outputs of the project.

Thank you to Open Lithuania Foundation and EuroClio for hosting the event.

Photography by David Sypniewski.