The site

Ivanić-Grad is located forty kilometres east of Zagreb and has around 14,000 inhabitants. It is part of the Zagreb County and geographically belongs to the Western Moslavina. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the town was a small border post of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It wasn’t’ until the railway line built in 1899 that Ivanić-Grad received an impulse into modernity and a gradual industrialisation process began. For this reason, the industrial heritage in the city can be traced to mostly the 20th century.

In the first half of the 20th century, the industry consisted mostly of mills, sawdust, alcoholic beverages and brick factories. Thanks to the electric power plant, Ivanić-Grad was one of the first towns in the district to have electricity already in 1913. In the period after the Second World War, rich deposits of oil and natural gas were discovered in the fields and forest areas of the rural hinterland near the historic settlements of Križ, Kloštar Ivanić and Ivanić-Grad which were one of the main reasons for significant changes in the economic and social structure of the population. In addition to the oil industry, Ivanić-Grad has other industries which started to develop such as Ivasim (chemical industry), Ivasim Electronika (computer manufacturing), Antilop (production of protective clothing), TMPK (metal products and constructions factory), Ivakarton (paper production cartons of paper and cardboard packaging), Ivanićplast (production of plastic items), Croatia (battery factory), and DIP (wood processing industry).

The basis of its economy is nowadays apart of the oil, gas and chemical industry and metal processing also agriculture and livestock. Most of the industrial heritage is still left undocumented or valorised, although its impact in the social fabric of the community is still palpable through the stories and way of life that developed there gravitating around the industrial sites.

The project

The European Heritage Volunteers Project in 2022 is the continuation of the work done within the European Heritage Volunteers Project that took place in 2019 under the title “Mapping and documentation of industrial heritage in Ivanić-Grad” and had focused on material research in archives, the identification of relevant industrial heritage monuments and their photographic documentation.

The aim of the project in 2022 is to make industrial heritage more visible and accessible by enlarging the current online catalogue with new exhibits and documentary resources. In addition, in order to involve the local population and make use of their knowledge, interviews with people who worked in these industrial sites will be conducted, analysed in connection with the existing data and included into the catalogue. The purpose of these interviews will be to obtain a more comprehensive overview of how the industry influenced everyday life in Ivanić-Grad and to use the tool of storytelling to raise awareness within the local community about the importance of preserving industrial heritage.

Given that the industrial heritage in Ivanić-Grad had not been documented before 2019, the 2022 project will through the elaboration of the mentioned comprehensive online catalogue which will provide a systematic overview of the industry development of the city, present a new source of information about the history of Ivanić-Grad to locals, outsiders and international researchers in the field of industrial heritage.

The educational programme of the project will be complemented by lectures, discussions and guided visits to heritage sites in the region to assist the participants in the contextualisation of their work.

The project was jointly organised by Prijatelji Baštine – Amici Hereditatis Ivanić-Grad in collaboration with European Heritage Volunteers.