CitizenHeritage – Citizen Science Practices in Cultural Heritage: towards a Sustainable Model in Higher Education
A new project co-financed by the European Union under the Erasmus+ programme, to empower Citizen Science and participation in cultural heritage as a booster for higher education.
CitizenHeritage will provide Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with new insights and opportunities to include Citizen Science activities for social purposes into HEIs curricula, teaching and learning activities. It will offer them a selection of good practices on how to benefit from the knowledge circulation in and outside academia and how to adopt a more vibrant role in civil society. The digital realm, with the digitisation of vast collections published in open access, and the growing availability of tools for online engagement and interaction, opens up incredible new possibilities to further stimulate knowledge creation and circulation in cooperation with citizens.
The project includes three universities (KU Leuven, National Technical University of Athens and Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam), two Europeana domain aggregators (Photoconsortium and European Fashion Heritage Association) and one specialized SME (Web2Learn). All partners met virtually on 5-6 November to align the plans for the various project’s activities.

image courtesy of Cyprus University of Technology
The project’s innovative contributions are:
1. its ‘making citizens part of the workflow’ approach.
A general reappraisal of citizen generated content is taking place in the cultural sector today. CHIs are constantly looking for new ways to involve citizens in their activities.
2. the close collaboration it establishes with the Cultural Heritage sector
Via the active participation of Photoconsortium and European Fashion Heritage Association, the project will engage with stakeholders and professionals in the digital cultural heritage domain, establing collaboration for knowledge sharing and co-curation between academics and stakeholders.
3. its focus on technological innovation
The project aims to test how the latest technological innovations to manage digital cultural heritage can support and enhance Citizen Science participation, both from a pedagogical and heritage perspective.
4. its analysis of the conditions favouring sustainability
CitizenHeritage will explore the degree to which Citizen Science can be an element to stimulate sustainability by promoting social ownership of cultural heritage knowledge. To do so, this project proposes the conceptualization of cultural heritage activities engagement as a cultural common in which value is created by social engagement between HEIs, CHIs and citizens at large. Based on variables of governance, financing and social engagement, the project will then examine the conditions under which CS makes both socially and economically sustainable contributions.
Website: www.citizenheritage.eu





A very intense period for the REACH project the one between the end of October and the beginning of November: 2 on line events provided the occasion to present the results of the REACH project activities and to increase its network.
In the framework of the storytelling session of Euromed 2020 conference, the social platform of the REACH project will leave its contribution presenting a short speech titled “The Reach Project Contribution to Protecting, Preserving and Valuing Tangible and Intangible Heritage through Participation”


Six months ago, 
Today, place-based mainstream innovation policies in the EU are by large the so-called Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3 or S3 in acronym), which are promoted as an ex-ante conditionality for member states to get access to the European Structural and Investment Funds via Operational Programmes. Those strategies should be seen as a fast track to connect heritage to innovation policies more massively, as well as an excellent way to expand funding opportunities.This report provides a pathway to those interested in connecting the cultural heritage field with the smart specialisation strategies, in particular: i) RIS3/S3 regional leading authorities wanting to focus on cultural heritage at different levels and dimensions; ii) heritage managers wanting to frame cultural heritage within the innovation policy, notably the strategies for smart specialisation; iii) city officers wanting to unlock the potential of heritage as a driver for innovation-led local development.

From 27 to 30 October 2020, REACH will participate to the virtual exhibition organized in the framework of the Rock Open Knowledge Week, a four days on line event for city officers, policy-makers, urban researchers, cultural actors and civic changemakers. The event will be joined by more than 50 keynote speakers, hundreds of participants and offers an extensive 
The Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO) invites you to discuss how museums can help visitors make sense of complicated matters – be it climate change or migration processes or economic relations. Through storytelling methods, museums can help us understand complex interrelations. Museums can work as innovative labs to test different complex scenarios, giving the opportunity to find answers for questions like:
A digital exhibition of artworks created during lockdown and inspired by university research. 18 artistic responses to research dealing with several and multifaceted themes: Coventry poetry, Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matters movement, Coventry and refugees, its twinning history, women’s suffrage, homelessness and interactive games.































