Focus areas

Remembrance & Heritage

Without remembrance, no society or individual can move forwards. Remembrance helps us analyse the past, understand the present and anticipate the future. Remembrance is a common thread of the initiatives supported by Œuvre.

Room in the Tudor Museum

©Gilles Kayser

The Tudor museum, supported in the focus area "Remembrance & Heritage".

Without remembrance, no society or human being can truly move forwards. It helps us not only analyse the past but also understand the present and anticipate the future. Youth, respect for human rights, tangible and intangible cultural heritage and remembrance are the common thread running through all the projects in this focus area.

Passing on memories from one generation to the next is a process that must involve young people. When we better understand key historical events and how our society functions, we can help strengthen mutual respect, tolerance, critical-thinking skills, resilience and democracy.


Œuvre supports initiatives that engage young people from all social classes and backgrounds. The focus is on projects that adopt a humanist, holistic and interactive approach.
It is vital to encourage young people to embark on new experiences, travel, explore other cultures, meet other young people, learn to become more independent and gain new skills. Œuvre supports study trips and exchanges for young people aged 12 to 27.


Some examples of initiatives that are prioritised:

  • educational academic and extra-curricular activities
  • training courses for teachers
  • intergenerational and/or intercultural projects, such as examining migration from an interdisciplinary perspective, or through intergenerational portraits
     

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. These universal rights are inherent to everyone, regardless of their nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language or any other status.


Œuvre supports awareness projects and projects that promote access to social and human rights and that are centred around human migration, mutual respect, respect for difference, and fighting exclusion and discrimination.


Some examples of initiatives that are prioritised:

  • inviting committed individuals to share testimonials and engage in dialogue and discussion 
  • creating educational projects and activities for academic and extra-curricular teaching
  • developing innovative projects that encourage active citizenship (or civic participation) 
  • encouraging efforts to make concepts easier to understand 
  • offering professional training courses
     

Safeguarding our heritage means preserving the memory of a place and the identity of a region. Cultural heritage is not limited to monuments and collections of objects. It also includes oral traditions, the performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events, knowledge of practices and know-how. Intangible cultural heritage is an important factor in preserving cultural diversity in a globalising world.
 

Œuvre supports projects that seek to safeguard tangible or intangible heritage and to learn about other lifestyles and different cultural communities in order to contribute to a democratic and open society.


Some examples of initiatives that are prioritised:

  • smart inventorying and enhancement of monuments 
  • restoration and preservation of historic sites
  • understanding and educating through workshops, discussions, conferences, tours, exhibitions, publications, performing arts, cultural expression and digital technologies
  • knowledge transfer and outreach
  • documenting the personal stories of immigrants to Luxembourg
     

Remembrance work functions as both experience and learning. As it is turned more towards the future than the past, remembrance work also serves an educational function. When we better understand the past, we can live better in the present and pave the way to the future.


With this in mind, Œuvre chooses to use the term "remembrance" rather than "commemoration". Remembrance work should not become a duty that entails a moral obligation to remember tragic historic events. The goal is to construct a collective plural memory around shared values and to contribute to a sense of shared belonging – the embodiment of social cohesion.


Œuvre supports projects based around remembering and better understanding as a result. When people know one another and acknowledge the past, social cohesion grows stronger.


Some examples of initiatives that are prioritised:

  • sharing recollections through gatherings, discussions, testimonials, visits to remembrance sites, family and personal histories that intermingle with modern history (e.g. migration)
  • educational programmes that include visits to sites of memory such as concentration camps, death camps, labour camps
  • participatory approaches 
  • supporting historical research
  • creating connections between individual memory (personal experience) and collective memory (history)
  • projects that connect historic events to current events (e.g. migration, COVID-19 pandemic, floods, Black Lives Matter)