May, the chimney month of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 (EYCH 2018), is approaching, so if you are looking for ideas and wanting to join the European campaign, check out E-FAITH’s report below.
image Industrial Heritage EU website
E-FAITH writes:
Factory chimneys are the most visual elements and symbols of industrialisation, landmarks of past industries. Factory chimneys have long been seen as symbols of prosperity and progress. A rich industrial city was characterized by a forest of factory chimneys. Their use is closely related to the introduction of the steam engine in the 19th century, to evacuate combustion gases and smoke.
Due to changed production processes in the 1960s and 1970s, when many factories were closing down, their corresponding chimneys were demolished. Factory chimneys are still disappearing every day. One thinks that today less than 5% of these chimneys are remaining.
If nothing happens, an important industrial monument that is so closely related to and a symbol of our industrial development will disappear completely from the horizon. Thus we would lose an essential part of our industrial heritage.
Old factory chimneys are landmarks advertising the industrial heritage site below. They are symbols for the labour which took place at their feet. They are part of the identity of a town, a village, a former industrial area. They can be seen from a large distance, thus promoting local industrial heritage sites at night as well as during the day by the judicious use of lighting – and also when cleverly used promoting the locality itself…
Ideas and proposals: Europa Nostra and Placido Domingo launched for the 9th of May, the Europe Day, the #Ode2Joy Challenge… the aim is to perform in a creative way on that day Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ode an die Freude (Ode to Joy) in front of or in a heritage building or site you care for, to record the event and to share it as much on social media.
Why not do this in front of a chimney ? Have a barbecue or a party with the neighbours near your chimney – have fun and tell stories about how it was in those times when smoke came out of the chimney organize a guided tour along the sites – explaining what the factories to which the chimneys belonged did produce. Ask former employees to tell their stories in front of the chimney. Record it and share it. Ask children to draw chimneys and have a drawing contest; exhibit the drawings near the chimney.
Organise an exhibition with old photographs, postcards, pictures, … on the chimneys that have disappeared in your region. If you have somebody who can climb the chimney from the inside or the outside, use this as an event and put a flag or a crown on top of the chimney – or balloons or an inflatable pig as Pink Floyd did in December 1976 over Battersea Power Station in London – and which was re-created in 2011
