This first quadrimester of 2016 was definitely marked by one strong and life changing training programme: ICCROM’s tool for the reorganization of storage REORG! Those of you that follow our news for some years now might remember that already in 2014 we became part of the REORG family, firstly organizing a reorg-research action in the museum of political exiles Ai Stratis here in Athens and then by participating in the training for trainers held in Belgrade. It was then only natural to work our best to “cut the clackle” and find the way to bring this wonderful tool in Greece by submitting the full proposal to the Ministry of Culture. Interaction in action, or as it was theatrically raised in the closing day of the ceremony in Athens, the Ministry took the relay and reached successfully the finish line organizing a REORG training seminar in two museums in Athens contemporaneously this May!
As for REORG’s cascade effect, this year we didn’t only participate in REORG Athens, but also in the previous REORG held in Assam State museum in India. REORG Assam project was a joint venture of the Department of Cultural Affairs, Government of Assam, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) and ICCROM. A blog post is not enough to share the feelings and emotions of working in such an exciting environment. Guwahati is a place where you immediately feel like home, walking everyday near the Brahmaputra River to reach the Assam State Museum and meeting your new colleagues which you felt like you knew from forever. There, with the REORG programme we worked for two weeks in reorganizing four storage areas…well that was the initial plan. Actually we ended up doing much more: reorganizing two storage areas, liberating a corridor, creating a deposit, creating and organizing a new storage area and in addition setting up a temporary exhibition and a competition! All this because, having a solid methodology you can easily adapt to any unexpected situation…after all, projects like real life are full of surprises. Making the best out of these surprises is what characterizes you!
The methodological tool is one part of the success story and the people are definitely the other. Achal, Jitender, Anil and Sahil from the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), having successfully organized other two REORG’s in India knew exactly what to do and how to do it! The big brown luggage was fully equipped for two weeks, so the teaching room was set up in an afternoon and subsequently all little needs of the workshop were easily solved silently and always with a big smile! And that was the 
preparation key to success…what about the execution? If one single name must be given, that is definitely that of Mrs. J.S. Wunglangton director of the State Museum of Assam. Nothing can be more inspiring and reassuring for the success of any undertaken, from a director with such a shiny and positive personality! He was there in every step of the training workshop, helping in all the steps and reassuring so the team that the REORG workshop was only the beginning of much more to come.
In addition, the partner institution with the authorisation of the Museum, asked us due to our previous experience to take care of the documentation and dissemination of #REORG_ASSAM. And that has been yet another unique experience. Being the documentation eye, allowed us to have a panoramic view of both the specific training workshop, but also of the entire methodology in action. Our biggest challenge was to create an educational video at the end with all the different steps of the methodology. Experiment went pretty well and you will be able to enjoy the video soon online. But, that was only part of the dissemination strate
gy, as dissemination can only be planned in situ with real data and facts. The video, was for after completion, what about during execution? Our objective was to bring more people and so more attention to our work and the museum, and method chosen was a temporary exhibition and a drawing competition. Big success 260 visitors in three days and 42 participants in our competition. Of course once again the success was due to people’s engagement and excitement: Ivan, Mithu and Supryia, core of the dissemination team made every wish and idea of mine come true as if it was planned months in advance! In that I have to add and underline another REORG principle applied, that of the reuse: the exhibition added in the budget only 8 meters of coloured textiles and 20 photocopies. The rest was retrieved, restored and reused during REORG. Old showcases were covered with the coloured textiles, and the stories of the 12 objects “discovered” during our training workshop were printed in house. A small exhibition full of stories, isn’t that exactly what people are searching in a museum visit?
Full of colours and experience packed my suitcase and came back to Greece. Only two weeks were missing from starting of REORG Hellas, organized by the General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage and the Directorate of Conservation of Ancient and Modern Monuments, and I could now with the experience of India contribute more to the final details of organization. Creativity was the magic stick of the super organizing team of the Directorate of Conservation: Maria, Christina and Maria. Together we could solve everything: coordinate a seminar in three different locations of Athens, organize and give lectures, prepare last minute events and doing our best to offer hospitality to our guests. Well, the late was the easiest one, as the international experts Gael and Veljko are always a pleasure to be with 🙂
Every REORG is a different one, as every case study is unique. But, the answer is one and 
unique, follow the four steps methodology by working in team. Differently from India that I could observe and document all teams working, here in Athens I was privileged to focus and work with one team from beginning to completion. What a wonderful trip we made with the green team named NEDA River! Lazaros, Hara, Eleni, Fotis, Adriani and myself, even if we just met on that Monday we were already on Thursday a successful working team. I think our team really deserved the quote of 2004, when the Greek football team won against all predictions the Euro: “Impossible is Nothing”! You see for us the challenge was double: we were reorganizing contemporaneously two areas and our collection was made of heavy stone pieces. I can assure you that two day before completion, still there were voices of the corridor that we would have never made it – and on that voices we were looking at each other with little conspiracy smiles on our faces. Of course we would do it, the objectives were clear, the roles and responsibilities carefully assigned, everybody was enjoying his proper task and respecting the work of the others and in addition we had extra help from the museum staff the guards, the conservator and the most enthusiastic conservation intern Rafailo. I believe I speak in the voice of all my team when I say that REORGanizing the two storage areas was indeed tiring but deeply rewarding and over all great fun!
And do you wanna know an extra that DIADRASIS gained with all this adventure? Working and learning in action from Gael de Guichen! As the main objective of our NGO is non-formal education there is nothing better than learning from someone that has taught adults around the world for more than 40 years. Do you know the difference between a lecturer and a teacher? If you had the chance to be taught by Gael, you would definitely knew. And what makes his teaching more unique is his will to share it with young, loud and sometimes too creative colleagues like myself! So I look forward in applying in action little details that I learned in our new programmes. After all quality is given by the attention to details!
Closing and respecting the title of this post, you do know that in all fairytales there is that person that does some magic and problems are solved! So , I need to write two lines for the little fairy of this story Catherine Antomarchi the director of Collections Unit in ICCROM. All the above described and much more would have never happened if it wasn’t for her fighting with dragons and obstacles. There is no bigger reward in any professional than discovering that people that you have for years admired, are wonderful straight forward collaborators showing maximum respect to the work of others! And for our little DIADRASIS , that was born in the warm family of ICCROM it is lovely to be able to still believe in fairytales and good fairies…
And as this fairy-tale was written in the 21st century…let’s see if it is going to have a sequel!
Almost a month has passed from the completion and presentation of our – now that is over I can admit- quite ambitious research project 
Sophie Blain, Archaeometrist, who in a very straight and direct volunteer lecture explained
With enthusiasm we moved on drafting the outline of the research, which was not exactly a piece of cake! We had the clear idea of creating a useful handbook, not competing with the existing bibliography, easy to use from the reader. Simple and straight as an idea, but the execution was by far more complicated. What to include, which are the main points that are usually not clear, which where the different needs of the different professionals, and much more… summarizing how would the result differ from a simple publication and become what we wanted a useful and practical handbook? Well, while posing this questions to each other, we found that actually questions where the answer. The handbook would come to answer to clear questions in a systematic way and in different depths of information. In addition big importance would be given to the graphic representation both of the structure and the explanations themselves.
of participants together with the lecturers celebrated the success in the book presentation and website launching later the second evening. And after that, did we forget someone? Yes, indeed the wider public, always curious and interested in what we were doing, how could we share this more specialized project? By putting to our owl it’s new and final coat for 2015, that one of inspector Clouseau and inviting people to explore the profiles of heritage professionals and laboratory experts at the 
Only two days have passed from the 
The concept was simple”, I mentioned before, yes indeed, but to have valuable results much work, commitment and coordination was necessary. We had to first do the research of existing references, then form the team of researchers – train them on the principles of ethnographic research, do the mapping, analyze the data and then organize a “diadrastic” way of presenting it to the public. And at this point a very bug bravo goes to the team of interns Theodora, Maro, Myrevi & Lisa, that made all this happen. They worked hard and passionately, making Exarcheia and the landmarks their favorite subject of the day while supporting also our wonderful volunteers from the beginning to the end.
n the response of the public. After all, we are still a small NGO and we were not even sure that anyone would be interested in the specific subject of our research. Surprisingly there where many! We received 12 applications of which 7 at the end formed the dream-team that conducted 100 interviews and helped us in collecting another 100 online. The laughs of our every 15days group coffee, where we would share progress of the research, problems or simply stories, sound still loud in my ears. And that is another reason why I love pithari: I’ve met and collaborated wonderful people from various fields. Marina, Dimitra, Maria, Katerina, Eva, Chrysa, Myrsini have filled our pithari with great enthusiasm and have made our project very lively and open. Finally the collaborators of this adventure, 
But, all the above would be nothing without the response of the main component of this project- THE PUBLIC! The response and interest of the people we have interviewed is what made this adventure so special. We would never expect to listen to so many personal stories, walk into houses rich of history and meet all kind of different people. Young or old, locals or foreigners were feeling Exarcheia their home and so wanted to fill our pithari we stories about it. Searching for landmarks, we found people and therefore this Sundays’ event was only the beginning. We have still many stories to tell and share, so stay tuned!
Twenty participants from twenty different countries…
diadrasis 