Together with REMPART... For good, I hope!

Dr Przemyslaw Nocun is a professor at the Institute of Archaeology of Jagiellonian University in Poland. He is also the instigator of the partnership between the association restoring and curating the Ducal Tower of Siedlęcin and REMPART.

We are very happy to share with you his words and we take advantage of this article to say how dear this relation is to us.

 

“Together with REMPART… For good, I hope!

 

“As a person interested since my youth in heritage and monuments protection, I have to say that I heard about REMPART for the first time more than 25 years ago. Later, already as a student, I was even considering to take part in one of REMPART camps, but unfortunately, I did not make it.

Many years later, as a scholar working at the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland), I was managing summer field schools for students. We were working on the 14th-century Castle of in Siedlęcin (South-West Poland), which contains unique medieval paintings telling the legend of Lancelot du Lac. We hosted few volunteers and one of them – a young French archaeologist – shared his experiences with one of REMPART officials a few months later. And that is how the cooperation between REMPART and our Tower has begun. It was great to host French volunteers during the next 4 summers. They were not only working with us and learning some new skills but also taking part in trips to other castles or discussing with us the methods of research and restoration in Poland and France. Some of the French volunteers became friends with Polish students and are still in touch.

The next huge step of our partnership was when our association was invited to participate in a big multinational project: ERASMUS+ HERITAGE VOLUNTEERS and LEADERS – Give everyone access to Heritage. I took part (with my students and volunteers) in two wonderful camps in Villandraut and Marcoussis, that were run by passionate and experienced leaders. In addition to the interesting programme, I would like to emphasize that some of the volunteers (who were also studying archaeology or history of arts) told me that the camps had given them not only skills but also new perspectives for their future work with heritage (to study/research, to share the results with local communities, to involve them in the future use of monuments).

I also enjoyed to organised a study tour in Poland for French heritage leaders who visited our association. They gave lectures in my University and it perfectly fitted to the field of so-called “public archaeology” (archaeology of the people for the people).

Personally, I am really very happy that I became a partner of REMPART as I find the cooperation very fruitful, informative and creative (I do hope it is mutual). I met wonderful but also very inventive and experienced people, visited great sites, learned a lot and saw models of “dealing with heritage” that I would like to implement in Poland (as well as present and discuss as ‘study cases’ in my University work!).”