After reviewing 83 submitted applications, we are happy to announce that the following 9 projects and organisations will receive funding through the Headley SEE Cultural Heritage Fund’s Third Call for Applications. Over the next year and a half, these projects will work with communities across Southeast Europe to safeguard, reinterpret, and share their cultural heritage — from oral traditions and feminist histories to mining testimonies and architectural landmarks. Below is an overview of each funded project.
| Organisation | Project | Country |
|---|---|---|
| Art Association Artfraction | Silent Voices – from oral tradition to sign language, theatre and tactile crafts | Serbia |
| Association KomshiLOOK Skopje | Macedonia Priceless: A Living Heritage Route Through Banknotes and Coins | North Macedonia |
| Colinele Transilvaniei Association | Local Interpreters of Shared Saxon Heritage in Transylvania | Romania |
| Glitch Association | To Read a House | Romania |
| Rebels and Resisters – Institute for Research, Promotion and Development of Women’s Movements Ljubljana | Women’s Movements and Feminist Memory in late Yugoslavia | Slovenia |
| IKA – Istrian Cultural Agency | SEND IT ON …: The Culture of Resistance through Film and Heritage | Croatia |
| BLOK – Local Base for Culture Refreshment | Building a Better World: Photo Chronicle of a Liberated City | Croatia |
| Loke Studio Film Creative Club | Documentary film: Preserving the mining experiences of the Zasavje region | Slovenia |
| Via Unitariana Association | Via Unitariana – The Historical Route of Transylvanian Heritage | Romania |
Silent Voices – from oral tradition to sign language, theatre and tactile crafts
Art Association Artfraction, Serbia
Art Association Artfraction will bring oral tradition to life for two groups often left at the margins of heritage transmission: young children and members of the deaf community. Through parallel workshop programmes, participants will explore local stories and traditional values through modern, accessible formats, culminating in a puppet theatre performance that brings both groups together. By translating heritage across sensory and generational lines, the project aims to strengthen a shared sense of belonging within local communities and to break down the language barriers that often stand between tradition and its youngest or most excluded audiences.
Macedonia Priceless: A Living Heritage Route Through Banknotes and Coins
Association KomshiLOOK Skopje, North Macedonia
This project turns everyday currency into a gateway to cultural discovery. By activating 38 historic symbols and heritage sites depicted on Macedonian Denar banknotes and coins, KomshiLOOK Skopje will use augmented reality to transform ordinary transactions into moments of exploration: scanning a note or coin unlocks 3D visuals, short stories, and a GPS-guided route to related museums and archaeological sites. Once there, visitors can dive deeper through audio stories and interactive tasks, creating a tested, replicable heritage route that connects daily life with North Macedonia’s history.
Local Interpreters of Shared Saxon Heritage in Transylvania
Colinele Transilvaniei Association, Romania
Colinele Transilvaniei will train rural youth — including Romanian and Roma young people — as the next generation of heritage interpreters in the Transylvanian Highlands. Through practical courses in heritage interpretation, guiding, content writing, and small-scale project planning, participants will engage directly with Saxon built heritage and local living culture. The result will be co-created stories, guided experiences, and concrete proposals for municipalities, museums, and heritage custodians — building local pride and forging stronger intergenerational ties to heritage along the way.
To Read a House
“To Read a House” is a heritage-education project built around Glitch Library’s new home in Bucharest’s Protected Zone 32. Working with built-environment education association De-a Arhitectura, heritage association Aici A Stat, and Sofia-based printmaking organisation Sito Studio, Glitch Association will trace the building’s history and transform it into an animated story, cross-border linocut workshops for children and teenagers, and a co-produced zine printed in Sofia. A micro-exhibition and an open online resource will share the results, giving young audiences a reusable, visual method for “reading” the built heritage around them.
Women’s Movements and Feminist Memory in late Yugoslavia
This project marks the first documentation and oral history phase of the emerging Women’s Movements Museum of Former Yugoslavia. In partnership with feminist and cultural organisations across four post-Yugoslav countries, Rebels and Resisters will record oral history interviews with women who took part in feminist, peace, cultural, and grassroots initiatives between 1970 and 2000. The result will be the region’s first dedicated oral history collection on this history — edited interviews, transcripts, and translated subtitles made freely accessible online.
SEND IT ON …: The Culture of Resistance through Film and Heritage
IKA – Istrian Cultural Agency, Croatia
IKA will engage students in researching and interpreting Istria’s cultural and cinematic heritage, working at historical sites across the peninsula that have served as filming locations for films and television series exploring resistance and anti-fascism. With mentors, university professors, and local communities, students will create at least twenty one-minute videos for social media — a youth-authored digital interpretation of Istria’s heritage that will also serve as a tutorial for future short-form heritage filmmaking.
Building a Better World: Photo Chronicle of a Liberated City
BLOK – Local Base for Culture Refreshment, Croatia
In 2022, BLOK discovered a set of photo negatives documenting post-liberation Zagreb — discarded in the garbage. The images bear witness to historical moments of equality and solidarity that deserve preservation and public visibility. Partnering with the Serbian Cultural Center and the local community, BLOK will contextualise, exhibit, and permanently safeguard this discarded heritage, actively countering both its dismissal as “unwanted” and the revisionist tendencies increasingly present in public discourse.
Documentary film: Preserving the mining experiences of the Zasavje region
Loke Studio Film Creative Club, Slovenia
Documentary film: Preserving the mining experiences of the Zasavje region
Over 300 years ago coal mining started in the Slovenian region of Zasavje, and 20 years ago the last miner ended his shift in the town of Zagorje.
Soon the living memory of the mining heritage will be lost and now is the time to preserve those experiences. That is the main goal of this documentary film.
At the centre of the project is a 100-year-old miner whose first-hand account of the mining history is a valuable source of local memory.
The Loke Studio Film Creative Club will record his testimony and combine it with archival material to produce a short documentary film,
preserving an irreplaceable account of the region’s mining past for viewers, researchers, and heritage professionals alike.
Via Unitariana – The Historical Route of Transylvanian Heritage
Via Unitariana Association, Romania
Via Unitariana maps and protects an endangered network of Transylvanian historic monuments connected to the 1568 Edict of Torda, one of Europe’s earliest declarations of religious tolerance. In this pilot phase, spanning the Cluj–Aiud corridor, the association will digitise the architectural heritage of 15 sites onto a trilingual platform and install physical trail signposts. Working with rural caretakers and local tourism operators, the project will run co-design workshops to build local heritage management capacity — creating a fully operational cultural route that protects tangible heritage while empowering marginalised rural communities through sustainable tourism.