Imagining Sustainable Glass Network Europe (ISGNE) includes four partners in UK, Germany, Latvia and Ireland. The project involves 33 associated organisations and EU Glass Artists / Designer-Makers (GADM) and Glass cultural Workers (GCW) in 19 European countries.

ISGNE will focus on audience development and transnational mobility relative to contemporary glass practices as tacit knowledge and craftsmanship; within the constructs of intangible cultures, visual arts (sculpture) and design and applied arts field (decorative arts & craftwork).

Glass has become a critically endangered craft. ISGNE’s main priorities are the documentation, treatment, restitution and dissemination of Glass arts / Glass Making (GA/GM) from the rural and urban glass communities of Europe.

ISGNE is an interactive online/offline community connected to imagine new ways of artistic mobility, to use learning and technologies as a vector, to augment the sharing of experience, creative practice and professional opportunities for artists and new publics. ISGNE will be accessible to a non-arts audience, and bring a wider public debate on GA/GM. ISGNE is only possible with a direct and participatory involvement of target communities. To meet this challenge, our project is able to deploy and combine both technical and artistic expertise, which are diverse but complementary.

During the project a dense set of activities will be deployed:

• a rich series of workshops
• publications and reports (artistic/mainstream, paper/digital, online/offline, text/multimedia)
• community-driven cultural events
• forums, exhibitions and symposia in the involved territories (to be broadcast globally); where all of our knowledge will be convoked within glass disciplines from antiquity to contemporary practice.

  There is a vast, rich and articulated cultural history of European GA/ GM that needs to be taken into account and protected not only for heritage or academic purposes, but also and especially for a consequent revitalisation, through a closer intercultural transmission of knowledge and learning.