Restory

Thank you, Brukenthal National Museum / Muzeul Național Brukenthal, KraftMade and Marlene Herberth, for this wonderful partnership for the Romanian Creative Week. 👏

An inspiring study visit at Centrul de Descoperire Rurală, with Primăria Municipiului Sighișoara and Fundația Civitas pentru Societatea Civilă! We explore ways of turning the intangible cultural heritage of local communities into meaningful projects and stories.

Join us for a new exploration of cultural heritage within the Restory Talks in Cluj-Napoca, Romania!

Through these meetings, we bring together researchers and practitioners to share approaches, questions, and insights into how cultural heritage is studied, understood, and engaged with today.

This coming week, we will look together into how some images survive in time, for centuries, not by staying the same, but by being reinterpreted, reshaped, and made relevant again by the communities that carry them forward.

In this talk, Dr Ștefana Cristea explores the iconography of Madonna della Misericordia as a case of layered reinterpretation. Looking at archetypal representations of the feminine - the Virgin, the Mother, the Protector, the Mediator - she traces how these symbolic structures persist, shift, and take new forms over time.

Bringing together perspectives from archetypal psychology, cultural memory, and the sociology of images, the talk opens a space to reflect on how visual symbols travel across time and how they become meaningful again for different communities.
Ștefana Cristea is a historian and researcher in visual culture, with a background in archaeology and a long-standing interest in how images, symbols, and social contexts intersect.

We invite researchers, students, and those interested in cultural heritage to join us for this conversation.
📅 27 March 2026, 12:00
📍 Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Institute of National History (Str. Napoca 11)

Come with questions, leave with new ways of seeing.
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The RESTORY – Recovering Past Stories for the Future project brings together researchers and community development experts from 12 European countries and 20 partner organisations. Activities take place between 2024 and 2026, with support from the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme.

The work of RESTORY is not only about conducting research and discovering everyday heritage in local communities. It is also about engaging relevant actors within these communities to explore and preserve local heritage.

This week, we are training secondary school teachers from across Romania to use oral history and storytelling methods to involve and empower children and young people in discovering, understanding and preserving life stories from the recent history of their communities.

The workshop is hosted and organized by Institutul de Istorie Orală Cluj-Napoca, Facultatea de Istorie si Filosofie UBB - Restory project leader, and in partnership with C.School, partner in this Horizon Europe initiative.
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🇪🇺 RESTORY brings together researchers and community development experts from 12 European countries and 20 partner organisations. The project runs between 2024–2026 and is funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe programme.

Small communities across Europe carry rich and complex local experiences, such as everyday practices, micro-histories, memories and narratives that often remain undocumented or overlooked. Bringing these stories back into the public conversation is not only an academic exercise; it is also a way to understand how communities evolve and how knowledge from the past can inform present and future development.

In a recent episode of the CEU Podcasts, Dr Adinel Dincă, Restory Project Director, discusses how the project team works to rediscover and interpret local experiences and micro-histories from small European communities. The conversation reflects on the connection among archival research, oral histories, and community engagement, and how recovered knowledge can contribute to more inclusive and sustainable local futures.

The episode offers deeper insight into the interdisciplinary approach that guides Restory's work across partner communities in Europe.

🎧 Listen to the full conversation here:
https://podcasts.ceu.edu/content/restory-recovering-cultural-roots-small-communities
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🇪🇺 RESTORY brings together researchers and community development experts from 12 European countries and 20 partner organisations. The project runs between 2024–2026 and is funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe programme.

After the historical research carried out by the Restory team, our community development experts are continuing the field exploration in local communities such as Cincu. The aim is to better understand how the recently recovered knowledge about the past can meaningfully connect with the community’s present needs and future expectations.

At the end of January, Cincu’s local festival of “scaring the winter away” - Fuga Lolelor Cincu // Großschenker Urzellauf - offered the perfect context for this exploration. It gave us the opportunity to interact with both local residents and visitors at the same time, observing how heritage lives, evolves, and brings people together in the present.
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🇪🇺 RESTORY – Recovering Past Stories for the Future brings together researchers and community development experts from 12 European countries and 20 partner organisations. The project runs between 2024–2026 and is funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe programme.

The Restory partner Maison du patrimoine médiéval mosan is organising a special event dedicated to dinanderie - the traditional copper craft that shaped local identity for centuries and is still practiced today. A great example of how traditional know-how can still connect communities today!

If you’re nearby, join them in Dinant on 10 February and be part of this celebration of craftsmanship and heritage!

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The RESTORY – Recovering Past Stories for the Future project brings together researchers and community development experts from 12 European countries and 20 partner organisations (2024–2026), with support from the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme.

Some stories bring people together, not only to listen, but to see their own city differently.

This was the experience shared by participants at the International Colloquium Os Mundos de Santo António de Coimbra: história e culto, held by - Centro de História da Sociedade e da Cultura (Centre for the History of Society and Culture), within the Restory project framework.

Through the talks, participants gained new perspectives on the Kingdom of Portugal and the city of Coimbra during the time of Saint Anthony, deepening their understanding of religion, spirituality, and culture, not only in Portugal but also in a broader European context. The international dimension of the colloquium, supported by RESTORY, opened space for less familiar themes, such as heresies, which sparked lively interest and discussion.

On the second day, learning moved beyond the conference room. Participants joined a guided visit to the Church of Santo António dos Olivais, built on the site of the hermitage where Saint Anthony withdrew after leaving the Monastery of Santa Cruz.
For many, and especially tourism guides, the visit provided new insights that will enrich future guided tours. For others, it was a moment of reconnection with a part of Coimbra’s heritage that lies outside the historic centre and is often overlooked.

And yet, as the day showed, it is never truly forgotten. Saint Anthony continues to hold a special place in the memory of the city and its people.

This is what knowledge transfer can look like: learning rooted in place, shared across generations, and carried forward into everyday community life.



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The RESTORY – Recovering Past Stories for the Future project brings together researchers and community development experts from 12 European countries and 20 partner organisations (2024–2026), with support from the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme.