Cultural Manifestations Organised by the Astra Museum For the Campaign "Europe, a Unique Patrimony"

The Roma Culture and Civilisation Museum from Romania - Cultural European Specificity and Diversity

In the framework of Romanian society's democracy in the past few years, the economic and social process of Roma emancipation become more intensified. This was completed by a cultural ebullience in order to keep this community into attention and to put its own cultural identity into account. From this point of view, a major priority of strategies of Roma community development becomes concrete: the reconstitution of the ethnic distinct profile, capable of showing and promoting coherent and viable identity models, based on the idea of unity in diversity.

• The identification of the cultural patrimony which is specific for every Roma group and people from Romania and the creation of a data bank through scientific and interdisciplinary archives and field researches.
• The revaluation of the cultural patrimony of the Roma with the help of publications, temporary exhibitions, museums' collections and cultural -artistic activities.
• The organisation based on the movable patrimony, constituted as a scientific representative collection of a permanent museum of the Roma people from Romania. The project of establishing in Sibiu of the first museum as an ethno-definitory institution in a cultural framework for this cohabiting minority, dedicated to the presentation of the material and spiritual values (with the help of mass media means), specific - in a traditional manner - for this ethnic community from Romania, will represent the institutionalisation of the cultural politics of the Romanian state, for revealing the ethno-cultural identity of the Roma people from our country.

The organisation in Sibiu of the "Roma Culture Days" in September 1998 (including a seminar entitled "Strategies for the XXI century", the "Roma Handicrafts Fair" - bringing into attention the traditional handicrafts practised by the different Roma communities - film gala, documentaries about Roma's culture and civilisation, the Artistic Festival presenting authentic dances and songs of this different Roma tips, an exhibition entitled "We, the Roma" - which re-evaluated the XIXth century photography collection, being extremely valuable and belonging to the "ASTRA" Museum), constituted through its remarkable success the necessary condition for achieving the proposed target - of creating in Sibiu, in the perspective of developing several cultural activities in the annual Festival's program, The Roma Culture and Civilisation Museum from Romania.