The European project Prometheus offers the fallaire community an interactive platform where both sides of the Pyrenees’ tradition is collected
The partners prioritize the action facing the incidence of COVID-19 in the fallaire environment
The eight partners of the Interreg POCTEFA Prometheus project, coordinated by the University of Lleida (UdL), have prioritized the action of creating a virtual museum, the Prometheus Museum, which collects the festivity of the Pyrenees Falles from different territories, to provide the fallaire community with an interactive platform that contributes to keeping the festive spirit alive, given the incidence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The virtual museum www.prometheus.museum, of which a first version can be seen today as the final version will be ready at the end of 2021, is being developed by the University of Barcelona (UB), the Occitan Institute of Culture (CIRDOC) and the University of Perpignan Via Domitia (UPVD). This mini-museum, as this initial proposal has been called, has different exhibition and explanatory spaces about the festival, as well as participative spaces such as an interactive map where you can search for the different Fallaire towns; a museum for children, where you can find a first tasting of readings and games related to falles, and a section in which, through social networks and the use of hashtags, the contributions of the fallaire community are collected.
Xavier Roigé, professor of Anthropology and Museology at the UB, explained that this action was already planned in the Prometheus project and that “it is the circumstances that we have had to live with COVID-19 that have made us decide to release it now. We wanted to create this mini museum to make the festivity continue alive, at least virtually”. The virtual museum, which will be fully operational at the end of 2021, as planned, “will not be a website or a collection of documentation, but rather an interactive space where the fest can be preserved and continued. The party can only be lived in each town, in the town square where all emotions are experienced, but the virtual space may help preservation”, he points out.
Also, Virginie Soulier, professor of Museology and Information and Communication Sciences at the UPVD, and Jean-Jacques Casteret, deputy director of CIRDOC, agreed that the museum’s structure is evolutionary and dynamic. Virginie Soulier has stated that “the conceptualization of this space allows us to technically adapt to new realities and the possible growth of the Fallaire community.” The UPVD with Espace Pixel has been in charge of the production of the Prometheus Museum. «The Fest Continues space is one of the most active and innovative. It collects, at the moment, all the contributions that are made on the social networks with our hashtag #prometheusmuseum” says.
Prometheus is the project on the Fire Festival of the Solstices in the Pyrenees. It has eight partners: the Government of Andorra, the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Conselh Generau de Aran, the Board of Economic Promotion of the Diputació de Lleida, CIRDOC, the UPVD, the UB, and the Chair of Education and Intangible Heritage of the Pyrenees of the UdL, which leads it. Prometheus intends to contribute to the continuity of the recognition of the Pyrenees Falles as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, which inscribed the festival on its lists on December 1, 2015 at the proposal of the candidacy led by Andorra, and with the adhesion of Spain and France.
The Prometheus project is 65% co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg V-A Spain-France-Andorra Program (POCTEFA 2014 to 2020). The objective of POCTEFA is to strengthen the economic and social integration of the Spain-France-Andorra border area. Its support focuses on the development of cross-border economic, social and environmental activities through joint strategies in favor of sustainable territorial development.
Project co-financed by the FEDER
TEXT: Sui Generis Comunicació Creativa