In 2024, The Headley Southeast European Cultural Heritage (HSEECH) Fund supported 5 projects. One of them is “Window to the Past: Industrial Heritage of Zaječar” implemented by organisation Skver.
The main goal of the project was to raise awareness of the importance of Zaječar’s industrial past, as well as of the processes of collecting and preserving this heritage. Once known for its many factories, Zaječar today faces serious depopulation and the destruction of public space. By making SKVER’s collection of images and objects accessible to the general public through a new exhibition space and a social media campaign, we aimed to:
- raise awareness and educate the citizens of Zaječar about the importance of preserving and digitizing industrial and cultural heritage;
- expand SKVER’s audience by promoting our activities to new audiences on social media;
- promote the educational potential of exhibitions by organizing a series of online and in-space exhibitions featuring items from the SKVER collection;
- stimulate creative thinking about the past through educational activities;
- promote the value of the region’s cultural and industrial heritage as a significant tourist asset.
The project consisted of three main phases:
- digitization (scanning, adjustment, identification, and inventorying) of visual material;
- adaptation of our project space;
- exhibitions presenting images of Zaječar’s industrial heritage.
During the first phase, we digitized more than 7,500 images, each saved as high-quality TIFF and JPG files and stored on three different external drives. The digitized material included the TIMOK Newspaper collection (141 photo negatives, 115 slides, and 700 photographs), 1,536 slides from the Institute of Agriculture collection, newly digitized colour slides, open-reel audio recordings and cassette tapes from the KTK (Leather and Textile Combine) and Crystal Factory collections, as well as rare images from the former Porcelain Factory. In addition, we digitized and made available online all issues of the Crystal Factory newspaper, covering a period of 20 years (1973–1991) and comprising a total of 1,966 pages.
In May 2025, we opened the first exhibition, “Window to the Past: Crystal,” dedicated to the former Crystal Factory in Zaječar. The exhibition presented found objects from the factory, a selection of digitized images from our collection, photographs by Mikica Andrejić, and a video work by the Amsterdam-based collective Public Space With A Roof.
In August 2025, we opened the second exhibition, “Window to the Past: The Seed Is Not Poisoned,” dedicated to the former Institute of Agriculture. We presented a selection of images from scanned slides, which received an excellent response, particularly from scientists and other former employees of the Institute.
In late August, we were confronted with the decision of the owners of our office and exhibition space to sell the premises immediately. Shocked by this sudden news, we were forced to move out and secured a new space in late October. In December 2025, we opened the new space with the exhibition “Window to the Past: KTK,” in which we presented, for the first time, colour images from the Leather and Textile Factory. This exhibition was accompanied by a parallel display of images from former factories installed in shop windows throughout the town centre.