Oral history and cultural practice in historic Mediterranean cities, a program let by the London Metropolitan University under the contract no. ME8/AIDCO/2000/2095-05.

Stefano Bianchini is the Coordinator of a national research team on «Voices of the Mediterranean: The Twin Cities of Ancona and Split» as a partner of the international project on «Oral history and cultural practice in historic Mediterranean cities» supported by the European Commission within the framework of the Euromed Heritage program II (contractor: London Metropolitan University). During the year 2005 the research project has been finalized launching a regional exhibition at the Mole Vanvitelliana in Ancona, with the sponsorship of the local University and the Municipality. The exhibition has the title of: “Mare Coniungit” and describes the historical roots and the local heritage of Ancona. The attention is focused on the role of the external historical, religious and cultural elements which have been contaminating the story and the development of the city. As in an imaginary journey through time and space from the Ancona harbour we put out to Mare Nostrum, searching for common identities and stories in a itinerary that follows four direction. In SESSION1 we perceive the echoes of the trades and the voices of the merchants who, in the past, travelled between Ancona and other Mediterranean harbours; we perceive the scents and flavours which recall different ports and lives; we perceive the tales of heroes and Saints, forgotten on a seaside and venerated on the opposite one. In SESSION2 the words of the “sea farmers”, recorded in the places where they live and work, show how Ancona lives on the sea and thanks to the sea. In SESSION3 the images of a precarious life, lived by the people of the cities waged by the war, tell about the absurdity of hate and pain, lived by different people in different times and places, but still the same in the faces and the gestures of the victims. In SESSION4, aware of a rediscovered Mediterranean identity, we leave again from Ancona harbour and, between cinema and reality, we head to those places which now seem more familiar to us, because they are the subject of a common memory and because they went through a deep transformation in recent times. See the documentation of the exhibition at the following address: www.med-voices.org. In addition to that the Italian team has offered the documentation collected on Ancona by taking part to a regional exhibition, held in Alexandria, and under the title: Shared Spaces in Times of Crises: Memories of Alexandria, Ancona, Beirut, Bethlehem and Split. The exhibition is centered on five cities in five different countries and emphasizes the nexuses that characterize their stories. In fact, even though in different moments and for different reasons, they share common experiences of mobility and nostalgia, boundaries and shared spaces, cultural pluralism and cosmopolitanism, rupture and dislocation and the creation of new borders. This exhibition wants to pay tribute to Alexandria, Bethlehem, Beirut and Split and was hosted in Ancona as well along with the exhibition "Mare Coniungit".