2019 had a sweet start. Organizations from four countries dreamed of coming together and working on cultural heritage. The University of the Third Age in Bialystok from Poland, Global Development Association from Turkey, Vilnius Gabriele Petkevicaite - Bite Adult Education Center from Lithuania and Senior University of Rio Maior from Portugal. In October 2019, the representatives met in Bialystok for the kick-off meeting of that Erasmus+ Project, “Cultural and Nature Heritage is European Strength and Treasure” (CHEST), and the decisions were taken with enthusiasm in Bialystok.

But they could not foresee that a danger was coming that would destroy the whole world, even though it was named somewhere far away. While we wanted to study our cultural heritage in terms of adult education, to search and to talk about history, we found ourselves in a very important historical event. Who could have guessed?

It was something sinister, beasty, nasty, cunning, uninhibited and dangerous. It was Corona. It brought a life to hold our footsteps between walls. The light of thoughts to show us the way stayed outside the windows. The date became February of 2020. Or March? Or was it January? Everyone knows very well, but perhaps it is not good for us to remember.

The mind of days dwelt within our elegant silence to create a space for all our safe breaths, and to listen inward and outward. Some of us got angry that they had fallen into such a once-in-a-century pandemic, groaned bitterly and even cursed every day. Some of us noticed that each day is a holy place once again, and created time to transform the broken fragments into continuity. Everybody keeps a dignity inside, which is telling loudly our force will beat the fear. The wisdom of soul and the mind united to enable us to overcome anything.

By the way, some of us dreamed of a tabloid gazette with an enlightenment at the end of almost a year.

One day, one person thought of the idea that we should dig into the cultural heritage a little bit in the months, when we were locked in our homes or could go out partly. We were sitting at home due to lockdown. We could not continue our project activities. Since we could not visit our countries for the international education project meetings and face the culture, nature, and the past one-on-one. We wanted to create an occupation for ourselves in our home, on our couch, to liven up, and to do something albeit a small one. We said “Let’s see the cultural heritage in place during our limited going out times, write a little story and share it with our friends in partner countries with a few pictures.” Our Gazette reached 82 issues in the summer of 2022, as the idea generated was appreciated by the others.

The cultural and natural or tangible and intangible heritages reported in the issues are classified to provide a simplicity to the readers in order to follow the main thema. There are 16 themas, such as historical/cultural place in your place, historical/cultural place in your country, museum, monument of history, festival and national day, nature, tradition, religious tradition, belief, social practice, gastronomy, art, handcraft, sculpture, structure, literary.

29 reporters and contributors wrote about their researches, more interested in cultural heritage prioritized by the peoples. It should be noted that cultural heritage sites or subjects approved by local or international official authorities are secondary to this tabloid gazette. Of course, there are intersections in both areas, that show us which of the cultural heritages chosen officially are adopted by the peoples. Our gazette is a platform where only individual thoughts and beliefs are supported. In an extremely fragile and tragic time, it was the desire of the reporters to transform the knowledge we can not see into the most accurate and tangible form.

The size of life with its difficulties and dangers, while trying to destroy its subjects, in mildly saying, to make them forget, the Chest Gazette succeeds in bringing our past to the present. It is delivered to our children in a natural way, with similarities to the world of a tree. Our branches are our issues. Gradually, with the ideas doubling, our Gazette managed to reach a height that would make a small contribution to not forgetting the cultural heritage and bringing it to the present day, at the end of its infancy of one and a half year. In this vast forest, with humble force, the pride of bringing our readers our pasts and today’s riches grew with a pure heart.

We spent the first years with a pen in hand making the people curious, asking them to think, hopefully acting as societies’ mirror through our issues. The Gazette always knew that we could rely on the reporters to tell the people the unvarnished stories and heritages in a way only lovers can do. Therefore the Gazete identifies them as “Chesters”, sharing its own name. For the components of this gazette, the only way to sense that we are here together is to see that our reports, which we prepared with pleasure, are read with pleasure at every point as the issues of gazette cross the streets of countries. The Chesters say that here is the past life of mankind, which shows sometimes the fairy tales to us, sometimes like lullabies that make us sleep in the deep spaces of our parents. The Chesters say that the days to come are no different from the last night. The Chesters say that the nature awakened in the issues, trying to write how the nature gives light to the wing of birds for bringing to the earth.

Trusting the future, in love with the past.

Hakki Bilgen