The massive spread of COVID-19 has changed all of our everyday lives and activities. Many of us have been forced to stay away from our normal workspaces to isolate ourselves at home and work remotely. Events have been cancelled or postponed. Opportunities to move about have become limited, if not impossible.

We present you the Spring edition of the Baltic Heritage Network quarterly newsletter. In these pages you will find information about our past and future events, new publications, and what is happening across the globe within the diaspora research and archive communities.

How has the coronavirus epidemic affected your life? The Estonian National Museum is collecting stories and photos about how the spread of this virus and the national emergency situation has impacted and reshaped our everyday lives, as well as how we have adjusted to this new way of life.

We invite you to keep an emergency situation diary

Tartu College Film Society has been showing different films during winter Sundays. Their program has included both documentaries and feature films.

Although the National Archives as an institution is young, the establishment of the national archives system started already at the beginning of the Republic of Estonia. National Archives was born directly after the end of Estonian War of Independence on 3 March 1920 when the Archives Committee’s first discussions were held at the library of the University of Tartu to discuss the future of the national written heritage and the formation of our own state’s archives.

In February 19, 2020 VEMU opened a new exhibition “ESTO – The Keeper of Global Estonianness” at Tartu College. Making of the exhibition was a joint effort by VEMU and the Estonian National Museum (ENM). It portrays the ESTOs from 1972, when the first festival was organized in Toronto, to the latest ESTO that took place in 2019 jointly in Helsinki, Tallinn and Tartu.

This year Estonians living in Toronto had a great Valentine’s present as the Tartu New Theatre visited VEMU and gave two performances of their monodrama “Symphony for One” (directed by Ardo Ran varres) on February 13 and 14.