Chudskoye/Peipsi Museums Ring

Closed

Chudskoye/Peipsi lake is a unique cultural, historical, and social phenomenon naturally connecting Estonia and Russia. Meanwhile, there is still lack of cooperating institutions that would purposefully deliver the information about the lake, depicting a holistic picture of cultural traditions of peoples inhabiting the lake shores, jointly promoting indigenous crafts, languages, cuisines, and tourist destinations, and serving as hubs for the involvement of local communities. The partners in collaboration with the associates will bring their over 20 years of the lake-related experiences, visions and perspectives as well as a huge amount of regionally-based publications, promo materials, cultural and archaeological artefacts to develop a circle of local museums and heritage centers located across the lake. Thereby, the overall objective, to which the Project will contribute, is to ensure readiness of local organizations and communities of  the Estonian-Russian border municipalities to actively cooperate in the field of preservation and promotion of cultural and historical heritage of the region. The Project takes the responsibility to implement two specific objectives: (1) to build the capacity of the staff of local museums and heritage centers for the delivery of attractive and quality services for both domestic and cross-border visitors, and (2) to develop Chudskoye/Peipsi museum rooms in the 'capitals' of the lake region, that is, in Mustvee and Gdov for their long-term cooperation as of main regional hubs of tourist information about the lake. The latter will finalize the partners' efforts taken for over 15 years, while they have been collecting and consolidating a massive of different resources and narratives popularizing the regional heritage. Hence, two new entities will be ready by the end of the Project: an updated Peipsimaa (Peipsi Region) Museum in Mustvee and a newly developed Chudskoye Lake exposition at Gdov Museum. Aside from the such novel interventions as the capitalization of the lake resources and exhibits, and the development of new museum facilities, the partners will elaborate a new tourist route uniting around-the-lake destinations and heritage centers into a cooperative network, a Peipsi Ring. The Project also anticipates a sound capacity building program to improve the service delivery, hence the market role of local (primarily - municipal, private, little-known, and newly-opened) community-based heritage centers. The Project will strengthen the positions and cooperative connections of at least 20 such institutions. All Project activities will be accompanyied by the participation of media and tourist companies to widely promote the new routes and locations. Finally, since the lake region is a home to four ethnicities (Russian, Estonian, Seto, and Vodja) and several socio-cultural groups (the lake's islanders, Old Believers, etc.), the Project will have a special focus on the multicultural and linguistic diversity. Thus, such a topic will be specifically articulated at the Project educational activities, and the Project publications, including the newly developed museum expositions will be translated to both Estonian and Russian.

Medium