SISIE – Sites and Signs of Remembrance for peace, democracy and reconciliation – is a European Union founded »Learning Partnership« bringing together groups from four different cities in Poland, the UK and Germany. SISIE was active between 2006 and 2008. Nevertheless, the partners will continue the work.
Our aims
The aims of the partnership were to exchange knowledge and skill in oral history and reminiscence and to enable adult (and especially older adult) learners to travel and learn about the life experience of others. We also aimed to engage the adult learners in creative exploration of personal and community memory, and to explore new approaches to giving expression to these memories.
The learning partnership was intended to impart knowledge and experiences related to history, identity and remembrance within the national and social context of the participating groups. Intense encounter and active project work within the learning partnership have sensitized the participants to the European dimension of this topics and to their importance for democracy and peace.
SISIE Meeting in Berlin 2007
Results
The project has promoted new approaches and methodologies in life long learning processes in relation to lived experience of European history, remembrance and reminiscence. Citizens of different ages, from diverse social and cultural backgrounds in each participating country were invited to participate in the project activities: mapping and documenting sites and signs of remembrance, discussing the changing social and political developments in Europe which they have lived through, and engaging in creative ways of exploring and sharing their own personal and community memories.
Learners from the partner countries have visited the other participating communities, learning about one another's history and culture of remembrance and discussing what sites and signs of remembrance are needed to promote democracy, tolerance and reconciliation in Europe.
The local projects
In the UK, the emphasis has been on work with ethnic minority elders, exploring their life histories through creative reminiscence. They have developed for the first time original pieces of theatre (some of them inter-generational in nature) through which to communicate these life stories to others. For these ethnic minority elders to travel as British representatives to other European countries was also a first-time experience and increased their self-respect and their sense of themselves as citizens of Europe.
The Polish project team focused on two different historical topics (Poznan uprising 1956 / socialist Poland) and on the controversial public remembrance connected to this. They concentrated on the school as a learning place, exploring a broad spectrum of artistic approaches to history such as theatre, film, music, and work with biographical memories.
The activities of both of the German groups laid emphasis on the interaction between different aspects of a public culture of remembrance and individual biographies. Historical Symbols (division of Berlin / Dresden during National Socialism and WWII) and connected places of memory were explored. Their importance for present social, cultural and political developments was investigated. The Berlin work was focused on the history of one selected place of memory and the biographical experiences connected with it. The local Dresden project was carried out by a distinct intergenerational group. It was done on a theoretical (University seminar), explorative (interviews) and practical level - the latter with activities within the local remembrance context.
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