Digital meets Culture

The Rock project presents the final report on CH and RIS3

Linking Cultural Heritage to Smart Specialisation Strategies

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.
It is the final output of the ROCK project task named “Linking Cultural Heritage-led Urban Regeneration to Smart Specialization Strategies”. Main goal of this task was to give a transnational response to the need for better connecting heritage-applied technologies and innovative activities to the existing smart specialisation strategies.
The ROCK project has been focused on historic districts as testbeds to demonstrate the full potential of cultural heritage as a driver for regeneration, sustainable development and economic growth. Based on a role model approach, ROCK´s final goal has been refining a European pattern on heritage-led urban development and regeneration.
Download the full document here

online capacity building workshop, recording available

Digital Transformation for User Engagement in Cultural Heritage

This unique webinar organized by Photoconsortium in collaboration with Europeana and the Cyprus University of Technology was proposed in the contex of the EUROMED 2020 webconference. A capacity building workshop dedicated to Cultural Heritage Institutions looking at new opportunities offered by Digital Heritage collections and technological tools for getting closer to their existing network and for engaging with new audiences.

Digital Transformation for User Engagement in Cultural Heritage

Download the presentation from the event: PDF, 10 Mb

Following the pace of the digital transformation is a must that all CHIs are currently experiencing, requiring big efforts in digitization, online presence and social media actions, all with the objective to increase visibility and to become more deeply rooted in the heritage community. This is enabled and backended with services and systems for digital collections management, aggregation to online repositories, and tools for metadata enrichment and annotation.

During the covid 19-crisis, when they were forced to close their premises, museums and libraries became fully aware of the importance of leveraging their digital cultural collections as a form of compensation for the unavailability of the physical spaces. As the digital environment very much is a global one, CHIs are now engaging with users from all over the world, thus meeting new audiences with no geographic boundaries. Yet this expansion, both in terms of audience and digital features adding to the physical experience, remains complementary to the place and role of memory institutions as representatives of their local community and its history.

In the post-covid scenario, therefore, it will be more important than ever to reconnect with local communities, by compelling user engagement actions via user-driven storytelling, co-creation, crowdsourcing and citizen participation.

In this multidisciplinary webinar, success stories and best practices from international projects were presented as case studies, offering different perspectives on what is possible to achieve by leveraging digital collections, technology and tools.

Case studies presented and discussed in the event:

Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope, user engagement with photographic heritage
WeAre#EuropeForCulture, co-creation events and citizen participation: stories from Nicosia
Europeana: a community empowering the cultural heritage sector in its digital transformation
PAGODE – Europeana China and Europeana XX: Century of Change: diversity, multiculturalism, identity and storytelling

Speakers:

Dr. Antonella Fresa, Promoter / Photoconsortium
Prof. Fred Truyen, KU Leuven / Photoconsortium
Prof. Marinos Ioannides, Cyprus University of Technology
Ariadna Matas, Europeana Foundation
Sofie Taes, KU Leuven / Photoconsortium

Join our virtual booth!

REACH Project at the #OpenKnowledgeWeek on line exhibition

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 programme of 20 sessions including talks, live sessions, thematic online seminars and the virtual exhibition to discover the technological solutions developed by ROCK partners and learn about other relevant EU-funded projects focusing on cultural heritage.
To join the exhibition you shall register to the event and then you will be free to visit the booths of the ROCK sister’s projects, to make questions to the exhibitors, to plan a B2B meeting, to participate to debates and exchange your knowledge and experience.
REACH will be waiting for you!!!
Register here https://rockproject.eu/ROCK-open-knowledge-week
Follow the event on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin
Download the Press release of the event

Save the date: 16-19 November 2020

NEMO’s European Museum Conference 2020:Museums Making Sense

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:

How do we want to live?
How could the future look like?

Register to experience the online version of the NEMO European Museum Conference 2020 – Museums making sense. The conference is free of charge.
Spread out over four days, we invite you to take part in morning and afternoon sessions. In the registration form below, please tick the boxes for all of the sessions that you want to join. We will provide you with the individual links to join the sessions shortly before they take place. The links will be sent to the email address that you enter below. In most cases will you be able to join/ leave a session later/ earlier if you have to.
Full programme is available at: https://www.ne-mo.org/about-us/european-museum-conference-2020/programme.html
Contact: office@ne-mo.org
Conference webpage: https://www.ne-mo.org/about-us/european-museum-conference-2020.html

Coventry creates is now live!

18 Pieces Of Research, 18 Creative Responses

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.
Coventry Creates is part of the ongoing work by Coventry and Warwick universities in the lead up to the City of Culture. The University Partnership has funded over 30 creative research projects, involving over 50 Coventry organisations and local communities.
During the March-May 2020 Covid-19 UK lockdown the two Universities selected 18 local artists to receive a grant that allowed them to continue their work during the pandemic. Coventry Creates received over 100 applications by researchers from the social sciences, arts, science and medicine from across both the city’s universities.
The project, Coventry Creates, provided up to £2,000 funding to the chosen projects so that they could keep producing artwork for this collaborative digital exhibition, in the run up to UK City of Culture 2021.
The exhibition will be hosted until December 2022 and all art works will also be kept in the Coventry City of Culture Digital Archive. The collaboration between The University of Warwick and Coventry University follows a new Memorandum of Understanding that provides them with new opportunities to work together to the benefits of arts and culture throughout the region.
Organisers invites to visit the online exhibition and participate to a survey that is available on the Coventry creates webpage.
Download the Coventry Creates flyer
Coventry Creates webpage
More blog about Coventry Creates

Espacio Byte, digital art museum, launches a new online exhibition on computer viruses

Virus Attack! First computer pandemics

Espacio Byte, digital art museum, presents a new exhibition on computer viruses.
An approach to the aesthetic dimension of disruptive phenomena in the digital ecosystem.
The curatorial project raises an analogy between pandemics in the biological and digital sphere, and how both end up interfering in the dynamics of human activities.
A reflection on how technology has been integrated into contemporary society and it is impossible to consider human and digital as separate entities.

Link to exhibition: http://www.espaciobyte.org/virus-attack

About the museum
Espacio Byte is an online museum dedicated exclusively to digital art. A source of information to learn about its first manifestations, contemporary movements, and specific issues. The museum offers a natural environment for digital-native artworks, an interface to exhibit the work of artists who, through the use of digital technology as a means of expression, explore new languages, poetics, and aesthetic values.
The platform brings together a large spectrum of practices including software, virtual & augmented reality, visual and sound art, as well as the ones created specifically to be experienced on the Internet.
Espacio Byte is a non-profit organization focused on education, a space open to exchange and collaboration. An interactive experience for recreation without physical limitations, open 24 hours a day. Founded in 2012, Espacio Byte was created with the mission of researching, exhibiting, and conserving digital art.

get your GIFs ready for the new edition of the annual contest of creativity with cultural heritage!

GIF IT UP 2020

Throughout October, GIF-makers, history nuts, culture enthusiasts, and Internet fans are invited to take part in GIF IT UP 2020, the latest edition of the annual contest hosted by Europeana that challenges people to create animated cultural heritage images and share them online. GIF IT UP is a great and fun way to demonstrate how digital tools can foster culture and creativity. This year, it’s more relevant than ever as we all spend so much more of our lives online. The internet is where we now work, play and interact with others and the COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged many cultural institutions and people to ‘go digital’ and to engage with cultural heritage – often for the first time.

This year’s contest is going even more global in its offer of inspiring and diverse content to reuse and remix and get creative with. Along with Europeana’s regular partners, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), New Zealand’s Digital NZ and National Library of Australia’s Trove, two new content partners have joined the fun – Japan Search, which gives access to digitised cultural heritage from Japan, and DAG Museums in Kolkata, India.

Website: https://gifitup.net/

HOW TO PARTICIPATE? The competition is open to people of all ages, professionals and amateurs alike. Choose among the millions of public domain works from the content partners, create your GIF, and submit your entry!

Rules: https://gifitup.net/rules/

WHAT ARE THE PRIZES? Prizes will be online art history courses from DailyArt magazine and Red Bubble gift cards. There will be a special category for the best GIF & runnersup, 1st time GIF-makers, children & teens (below 18) and a bonus category for GIPHY backdrops. Moreover, GIF IT UP has its own GIPHY Channel that exposes the participants’ creations to millions.

About Europeana

Europeana is Europe’s platform for digital cultural heritage, empowering cultural heritage institutions to share their collections with the world. Through Europeana’s collections website millions of cultural heritage items from around 4,000 institutions across Europe are available online. The Europeana Foundation is the organisation tasked by the European Commission with developing a digital cultural heritage platform for Europe. Europeana DSI is cofinanced by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility.
More Info on https://www.europeana.eu/en

October 12- November 27, by the Climate Heritage Network

Culture x Climate 2020: mobilising arts, culture and heritage for climate action

Culture x Climate 2020 is a virtual global forum for arts, culture and heritage-based climate action, presented from 12 October to 27 November, by the Climate Heritage Network.

Culture x Climate 2020 brings together leaders, practitioners, researchers, and experts from business, government, universities and civil society to promote new partnerships between cultural actors and stakeholders across sectors. It is designed to unite all those interested in the role of arts, culture and heritage in tackling the climate emergency and aims to enhance the capacity of these sectors to help build a climate-neutral and resilient world in the time of COVID-19.

Over a 45-day period, three events series will be held:

November Dialogues. A series of three virtual Dialogues across multiple time zones under the theme: “A Culture of Resilience: Mobilising Arts, Culture and Heritage to Win the Race to Zero” held as part of the UN November Dialogues.
Regional Climate Heritage Forums. A series of five Climate Heritage Network regional forums that will spotlight the work in each region of the world to mobilise arts, culture and heritage for climate action. They include Africa and the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America.
Climate Heritage Mobilisation Webinars. A series of 7 webinars, held in partnership with Historic England’s Climate Friday, showcasing the diverse work across the Climate Heritage Network to increase the ambition and capacity of arts, culture and heritage to engage in climate action, science and policy.

In addition, on November 16, Climate Heritage Network members and other partners will meet in an action-oriented Annual General Assembly with the aim of organizing, planning and preparing to bring the voice of arts, culture and heritage to the next UN Climate Summit (COP26).

Culture x Climate 2020, from 12 October to 27 November

The culture sector is committed to the climate

“Cultural Heritage is a Climate Action Issue. Climate Action is a Cultural Heritage Issue” this is the premise of the event organized by the Climate Heritage Network.

Culture x Climate 2020 is a virtual global forum for arts, culture and heritage-based climate action, presented from 12 October to 27 November, anchored by Climate Heritage Week 2020 (16-22 November).

It is designed to unite all those interested in the role of arts, culture and heritage in tackling the climate emergency and aims to enhance the capacity of these sectors to help build a climate-neutral and resilient world in the time of COVID-19. It promotes new partnerships between cultural actors and stakeholders across sectors and encourages the culture sector to play its part in driving greater ambition at UN Climate Summit (COP26).

Over a 45-day period, attendees will have access to a variety of virtual formats:

A series of three virtual November Dialogues held as part of the UN November Dialogues. This series showcases the often-overlooked role that arts, culture and heritage play in achieving a climate-neutral and resilient world.

A series of five Climate Heritage Network Regional Forums will spotlight the work in each CHN region of the world to mobilise arts, culture and heritage for climate action. The Regional Climate Heritage Forums are being presented during Climate Heritage Week 2020.

A series of seven virtual Climate Heritage Mobilisation Webinars held in partnership with Historic England’s Climate Friday.

On November 16, the Climate Heritage Network will hold an action-oriented Annual General Assembly, that will bring together Climate Heritage Network Members and Invited Observers, with the aim of organizing, planning and preparing to bring the voice of arts, culture and heritage to the next UN Climate Summit (COP26).

More information:
https://www.culturexclimate.org/

https://climateheritage.org/

Virtual visits of the Museum in the time of pandemic

Digital offering at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History of Washington

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

The pandemic from Sars Covid-19 has accustomed us to receive messages of cultural events, exhibitions, concerts, shows that are cancelled. Museums and art galleries have also closed public visits.

However, digital technology is trying to bridge physical distances by allowing people to enjoy culture even staying at home.

From now on it begins the virtual tour of the Natural History Museum; Image from: https://naturalhistory.si.edu

There are many museums that have begun to offer digital tours and virtual exhibitions however others already had these tours before Covid-19. In this article I would like to present the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History digital offering that ranges from virtual tours of exhibits to distance learning resources.

First I would tell you why I chose the virtual tour proposed by the Smithsonian National Museum.

The navigation in the site is simple and fast; the graphics of the site, is excellent, very clear and understandable even by people not familiar with the web; thanks to the toolbar that allows you to move your mouse left and right you can easily continue in the path choosing which section of the museum/site to visit.

This photo shows us the beginning of the tour and the rooms we can visit; Image from: https://naturalhistory2.si.edu/vt3/NMNH/z_tour-022.html

It’s great for teachers, because it contains several sections with images that allow you to know not only the different habitats and animals that inhabit them, but also the history of man and its evolution.

The quality of the photographs is excellent; the layout of the exhibition is extremely effective.

The virtual visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History allows visitors to make independent guided tours, room by room, from their desktop or mobile device.

The virtual tour is also recorded in several videos and a narrator explains with simple words the section.

The page to enter in one of the narrated virtual tours; Image from: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/visit/virtual-tour/narrated-virtual-tours

If we decide to enter the section of the museum related to Africa we can admire different animals and hunting scenes and discover the natural environments. Then, we can decide whether to continue the visit to the territories of the southern hemisphere or North America.

I suggest you to watch the video with the narrated tour of the Hall of Human Origins illustrated by the researcher Dr. Diana Pobiner. I found it very interesting because it answers some essential questions about human life “who are we?”, “how did we become human?”.

Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, reports that this is the most visited virtual museum in the world, where people can “find detailed information about our exhibits, events, collections, scientific research and educational programs” and specifies that “the museum’s mission is understanding the natural world and our place in it”.

Once again we discover that, thanks to technology and the web, especially in this period when people move less, we can continue to increase our culture using our digital devices.

https://naturalhistory.si.edu

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/explore-at-home

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/visit/virtual-tour

https://naturalhistory2.si.edu/vt3/NMNH/z_tour-022.html