Piet Chielens is a museum director at the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres (Belgium). He was born in 1956 in Reningelst, which during WW1 was some 12 km behind the front of the Ypres Salient. There he grew up among the war cemeteries and the stories of the local population. It marked him as a person. As the years passed and his contacts spread out, these stories became only more international and intercultural. From 1992 to 2007 he was artistic director of Peaceconcerts Passendale which created annually international concerts about the shared heritage of WW1. Since 1996 he is general co-ordinator of IFFM, which opened in 1998 in the rebuilt Cloth Hall in the city center of Ypres, and which will be enlarged and refurbished in 2012.With the small team of the museum he is looking for a constant renewal of the memory of the Great War in Flanders. Special attention is given to the ways in which micro (personal, family) and macro (cultures, nations, the world) history can be linked. As an institute with a large historical collection and specialized knowledge, the IFFM also sees an important role for artistic interpretations of our attitudes and concerns about war and peace.
