About Us

Roma Routes is an EU funded project made up of a partnership of heritage organisations and Roma representatives from Germany, Greece, Slovenia, Romania and the UK. The project aims to encourage intercultural dialogue between Roma and non Roma to promote European Roma cultural heritage.

The aims as written in the project bid are to:

•    Build a network of heritage organisations across Europe with interests in Roma cultural heritage

•    Develop a transnational network of Roma to create opportunities for understanding and exchange of ideas and knowledge of diversity and commonality of Roma cultural heritage at grass roots level

•    Provide a platform for promotion of Roma cultural heritage through a website related to activities, celebrations, festivals, and collections of heritage

•    Act as a seedbed of activities which will develop across Europe

•    Act as a catalyst for further transnational cooperation between Roma and heritage organisations and between Roma communities

•    Promote a non-confrontational means of communication between Roma and non-Roma communities

•    Lay groundwork for an application to the Council of Europe for  Roma Route of Culture and Heritage


 The project will comprise:

•    An interactive website promoting the Roma cultural events and allowing a wide range of people to contribute

•    A series of Roma cultural events over the course of 2010/ 11, to pilot ways of promoting Roma heritage. These will take place at different times in different countries, and will include: lectures, artistic and musical performances, exchanges, presentations, a summer camp.


Many of the events will feature Roma artists visiting partner countries for performances. The events will initiate and promote communication between Roma and non-Roma communities

•    5 meetings of a Roma network to support the project activities and promote understanding of diversity and commonality of Roma cultural heritage. These will take place with the conferences and meetings of the partners below

•    Two conferences, the first to attract political and media attention to the project when it is launched, the second to provide the springboard from which to launch future cooperation

•    3 further meetings of partners, and regular conference calls to embed  collaborative working, reflect on lessons learned

•    Toolkit of lessons learned


 








 

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From June 2010 to May 2012 the project will support 2 international conferences. There will a month of celebrations in Slovenia, lectures and music in Germany, commemoration of the Roma who died in the holocaust, a summer camp for Roma and non Roma young people in Romania, Roma people performing for the first time in a museum in Athens and many opportunities for Roma musicians and artists to perform. There will also be a chance for Roma to become more established in main stream culture, for example by making contributions to work in schools in Romania and becoming guides in the museum in Greece.

By providing a forum for Roma and heritage organisations to develop strong working relationships, and by promoting communication between Roma from different countries, it will allow an exploration of the diversity and commonality of Roma cultural heritage and a firm basis from which to develop future activity. It will provide a platform from which the Roma Route of Culture and Heritage can be developed and links can be pursued with partners across Europe interested in furthering this process.