The Minister of the Presidency of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Luis Arráez, has made an appeal to all people interested and linked to the world of teaching or who know someone with some relation to the history of education in Lanzarote and La Graciosa, to collaborate in the creation of the first documentary fund on this subject. A fund in which the Mercedes Medina Díaz Association and the Cabildo have been working since last year, through the Digital Memory of Lanzarote project.
In the presentation of this research fund, Arráez has encouraged those who can provide information to contact the Data Center, go to the Yellow House on Calle Real in Arrecife, where its headquarters are located; to contact the email made available to the Mercedes Medina Díaz Association ([email protected]); or to contact the telephone number 699110886.
Photographs, posters, videos, oral and written documents or any other material related to the history of education in Lanzarote and La Graciosa will be part of this documentary fund. The objective, as detailed during the presentation by the Minister of the Presidency, "is to create a digital archive and collect all the graphic and documentary material, as well as the oral testimonies of people who had some relation or are linked to everything that has meant the history of education and teaching in Lanzarote and La Graciosa".
Educational heritage
The Documentation Fund Project of the History of Education in Lanzarote is "a commitment to the investigation of our educational heritage", added the president of the Mercedes Medina Díaz association, Juan Cruz, who detailed that "we seek to implement measures to prevent the loss of these stories and existing material, to draw the profiles that have created the work developed almost heroically, and with few resources at that time, of hundreds of teachers for decades".
For his part, the Minister of the Presidency and Data Center of the Cabildo explained that at the end of last year, "the association presented the project to the Institution and seeing the interest of the same, a small subsidy was granted for the creation of this documentary fund that will fit through the collaboration of the Data Center and the portal of the Cabildo Digital Memory of Lanzarote (www.memoriadelanzarote.com)". The association will be responsible for the concretion of the objectives of the project, and specifically, through its Scientific Committee to select all the material that is collected.
Likewise, the Cabildo of Lanzarote will make available to this project the Digital Memory of Lanzarote tool and will collaborate with the work methodology developed for this initiative, with the guidelines of digitization, the description of the contents, the databases and -among others- with the dissemination of the project.
To carry out the creation of this fund, two research grants have been granted, with a duration of seven months that have been assigned to a graduate in History and a degree in Fine Arts. Juan Cruz has specified that they are already conducting "the first oral interviews with people who were once linked to education on the island". The interviews to collect the oral testimonies of these people began in the municipalities of Haría and Arrecife and intend to carry out an important field work that will reach 300 oral testimonies in total.
On the other hand, Arráez has announced that the Corporation intends to continue working in this line of "promoting and expanding these transcendental documentary funds for the history and the patrimonial and cultural wealth of Lanzarote and La Graciosa" and encourages other groups to contact the Data Center of the Cabildo to send them this type of initiatives on other topics that "could also be subject to collaboration and study by the Institution".
