NATUR – North Atlantic Tales: Untold Routes and Roots

NATUR is a Cultural Heritage Project that addresses both project priorities by promoting a sense of belonging to the common European space – finding and telling human stories that connect the international archives beyond their physical and intellectual borders. It directly strengthens interaction between the heritage and creative sector creating a dialogue and mechanism for creating culture between active artist collectives, communities and archives in 5 cities using 5 catalyst projects and 10 residencies. This work will then be shown in a series of festival events each year with a high-profile launch in February 2018 at Scotland’s Spectra Festival. NATUR is a project celebrating the European Year of Cultural Heritage bringing together the cities connected and created by the North Sea, enabling 4 artists collectives and archives working over 5 cities at the fringes of the North Sea to forge an international identity together. It will create an ongoing platform for the creative and heritage sector to meet enabling communities to engage with one another’s ongoing histories as Europeans. It will interrogate 8 themes through the archives of each city that shaped and continue to forge a shared Northern identity (folklore and the language of the north, medieval merchants, fisheries, industralisation, global conflict, oil, women’s history, and the digital future)- inviting artists and communities to work with archivists and collections to activate those stories that connect partners’ sense of place and being.