IDP-CREA is a 15-month collaborative project (April 2008 to July 2009) between six EU partners (from the UK, Hungary, France, and Germany) and three associate partners from China. We are working on an innovative project that will draw together some of the remarkable stories of the European explorers, archaeologists and scholars who travelled to China in the early years of the twentieth century. Their stories will be used to illustrate a shared Eurasian culture that has existed for centuries - and which continues to this day.
The Project will involve European cultural players and institutions telling the stories of their forbears, creators of this heritage. The project will also include comparative documentation on pre-twentieth century explorers (drawing the information from the partners' collections), and this will reveal the remarkable extent to which our valued European heritage has its origins in a common Eurasian cultural past, extending back two millennia. With multi-national and multi- cultural projects such as this, we hope to show the diversity of European citizenship and show European users how they fit into this shared past.
Until now, much of this Eurasian cultural material has been inaccessible to scholars or the general public and this project will enable much of this great heritage to be accessed easily for the first time in Europe and throughout the world.
Stein 3rd expedition image, detail from camels at 4 miles to north-west of camp XXVIII (Kasim).
©British Library. Photo 392/28(252)
With the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union