Digital meets Culture

Latest outputs delivered by UNCHARTED WP2 “Identifying the Emergence of Values of Culture”

The Work Package WP2 of the UNCHARTED project aims at analyzing the emergence of values linked to culture in practical contexts and in the field of cultural policy and cultural administrations.
The team in charge to carry on this part of investigation has recently released 4 reports that present the results of their studies and the basis for future actions.

D2.2 Report on the emergence of values in cultural participation and engagement

This research seeks to identify the plurality of social values of culture and the tensions, conflicts, and public controversies in the “valuation” of cultural participation in live arts and culture, as articulated by the practitioners themselves. Focusing on four different fields (community-engaged artistic projects, culture and community based creative tourism, illegal musical events, remote participation in cultural activities during Covid-19) the analysis is conducted through case studies based on a mix of methods, including participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, online questionnaires, and documental review. Their comparisons provide a rich initial analysis to understand the social value(s) of culture.

D2.3 Report on the emergence of values in television and new media

This report explores the plurality of values attributed to digitally mediated cultural participation with specific attention to participation in new media forms, exploring modes of remote cultural participation that are digitally mediated through live stream and teleconferencing platforms. Four case studies of cultural participation are presented, two from the UK and two from Norway, each of which maps the values emanating from two modalities of mediated cultural participation:

Dialogic cultural consumption: participation in fixed digital culture with interaction among participants, such as collective viewing and commenting on a cultural performance through Twitch, Facebook, Instagram TV or YouTube.
Distributed cultural co-creation: participation in co-created digital culture, such as the coperforming of amateur musicians through video conferencing platforms, or arts-based initiatives predicated on co-production between audiences, artists, and curators.

D2.4 Report on the emergence of values in cultural production and heritage

This report explores the emergence of values linked to culture production and heritage management. Six cases of studies were identified: three related to cultural production and three to heritage management. In order to cover the greatest number of values that are put into play in such vast field, a selection of the actors and areas involved was conducted with the following criteria:

the organisations, practices or events linked to creation and production within the art sector and the cultural and creative industries
the areas where intrinsic values prevail (e.g. aesthetic criteria, conservation, education etc.)were identified within each artistic-cultural sector
the areas where extrinsic values predominate (e.g. economic or social)
areas where there is an evident tension between intrinsic and extrinsic values
organisations, practices or artistic-cultural events, where professionals develop their cultural production.

D2.5 Mapping of the values of culture in cultural policy objectives

This section examines values in European cultural policies by addressing a set of case studies corresponding to twelve national, regional, and local administrations. The case study analysis aims to identify the plurality of values of culture and their existing tensions within EU cultural administrations.

The 12 studies include country capitals, peripheral cities and different kinds of substate national entities. This selection configures a vast plurality of value orientations and approaches to cultural policies from their socio-genesis, institutional dynamics and models standpoints.

The predetermined goals of the investigation are:

to draw a complete picture of the European scenario of predominant values and value tensions in cultural policy administrations
to analyse from a pragmatic perspective the tensions of value
to identify axiological affinities among the cases which refer to certain common value principles and to elaborate a synthetic representation of the main tensions between them.

UNCHARTED WP2 webpage
UNCHARTED downloadable page

a cooperation agreement for synergies and stakeholders outreach between projects in the area of sustainable cultural tourism

INCULTUM and Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea join forces

The aim of the Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea project is to demonstrate the potential of Data Analytics for tourism development in the area of Black Sea. To achieve this, pilot services will be tested and the dialogue with regional stakeholders encouraged. Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea project will boost sectoral cooperation and allow greater usage of the Industry 4.0 technologies in tourism. Data driven tourism will enable more sustainable development of tourism in the future.

More about this project: https://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/tourism-4-the-black-sea/

All these themes and actions are very close to the work of INCULTUM, which aims to demonstrate the high potential of the marginal and peripheral places, cultural heritage and resources when managed by local communities and stakeholders, also supporting the research with collecting quantitative and qualitative data on cultural tourism to produce innovative data analysis and new statistics on this phenomenon. INCULTUM findings are oriented to foster positive impacts of cultural tourism by using a participatory approach involving local population and stakeholders as communities of practices.

For this reason, collaboration between the two projects is expected to generate mutual exchanges and benefits and to boost outreach to stakeholder communities in Europe and beyond.

Outcomes of UNCHARTED participation presented at KISMIF International Conference

In July, members of the members of the UNCHARTED Consortium were invited to participate to the International KISMIF Conference ‘Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! DIY Cultures and Global Challenges’ (KISMIF 2021). The event goal was to foster a debate on the artistic sector considered in its widest expression: music, theater, performing arts, cinema, literature and poetry, graffiti and urban art, graphic design, drawing, architecture, radio, graphic design, drawing, architecture, cartoons and comics….In this general context the UNCHARTED project was presented with the Panel “Values in non-professional participation in cultural and artistic activities: examples from the UNCHARTED project” exploring diverse values from cultural participation.
The Panel brought together examples from four national and international cultural and arts-related cases that were analysed in the framework of the project; it pointed out the four different fields of investigation (community-engaged artistic projects, culture and community-based creative tourism, illegal musical events, remote participation in cultural activities during Covid-19) and it presented the general goal of the project (the identification of the plurality of values of culture and the tensions, conflicts and public controversies in the valuation of cultural participation in live and on-line arts and culture).
The panel was co-coordinated by Cláudia Pato de Carvalho, Paula Abreu, Sílvia Silva and Nancy Duxbury
Details of the case studies examined follow:

Paper 1 – Values from Community-engaged artistic projects

Cláudia Pato de Carvalho, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra
Nancy Duxbury, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra
Paula Abreu, Faculty of Economics and Centre for Social Studies– University of Coimbra
Sílvia Silva, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra

Community-engaged artistic projects focus on creative, participatory, and collaborative methodologies to engage different sectors of a community in a joint effort to design, implement, and evaluate an arts or culture-related initiative. The topic of these community-engaged projects often relates to the local history/heritage and/or contemporary issues facing a community. The goal of these projects is to involve local communities in the collaborative design and public performance of local narratives, often focusing on lesser known stories and perspectives. Both the degree of involvement of different people and local organizations and the different expectations for the future transformations of urban environments may bring interesting contributions for the discussion of value in cultural and artistic activities.
The research focuses on De Portas Abertas, a community arts intervention project coordinated by O Teatrão, a professional theatre company in Coimbra, that is designing collaborative, multidisciplinary performances (including theater, music, and dance) with the community (i.e., residents, local associations, and local authorities) of Vale da Arregaça. This is an urban area of the city of Coimbra that includes a social housing neighbourhood and other residences, an abandoned green valley and a ruined industrial facility. The project began in 2020 with a public performance in the area in September 2020, and 2021 marks phase 2 of the project which is proposed to be about the theme of “work,” a challenge to encourage further community involvement.

Key words: societal value of culture, non-professional participation, cultural participation, community engaged artistic projects

Paper 2 – Values from culture and community based creative tourism

Cláudia Pato de Carvalho, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra
Nancy Duxbury, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra
Paula Abreu, Faculty of Economics and Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra
Sílvia Silva, Centre for Social Studies – University of Coimbra

Allied with sustainable and responsible tourism, culture- and community-based small-scale creative tourism can provide regenerative options for local traditions and local care, emphasizing more conscientious options, with explicit community benefits, such as the revitalization of local crafts and traditions, through co-creation and co-preservation, as well as benefits at a personal level, such as personal health and well-being. Creative tourism has significant potential for inspiring new ideas for the revitalization of local culture and heritage resources allowing the possibility to re-imagine community self-representation for tourism which will provide social, cultural, and economic added value for smaller places. This approach brings to the forefront of the discussion, different types of values attributed under the context of activities promoted in the context of intervention of Loulé Criativo.
Loulé Criativo is a creative tourism initiative developed by the Municipality of Loulé, Portugal, since 2014. The ongoing programme offers a range of workshops, short courses, thematic weekends, and other activities, provided through a local network of artisans and artists, linked tightly to the culture, heritage, traditions, and local identity of the municipality. Participants include both travellers (national and international) and local residents.

Key words: societal value of culture, non-professional participation, cultural participation, culture and community based creative tourism

Paper 3 – Values of autonomous culture : Illegal musical events in the times of COVID-19

Félix Dupin-Meynard, CEPEL, CNRS – University of Montpellier

Restrictions due to the COVID crisis (closure of cultural venues, ban on public gatherings) led to the emergence of illegal and self-organised musical events, such as clandestine concerts and rave parties. Some of these events were already taking place before these restrictions – notably for aesthetics and practices that are not recognised by cultural institutions and policies, or that claim autonomy, “do it yourself”, or political contestation. Others have emerged during the COVID crisis, from the expressed ‘need’ to experience musical events in collective presence, despite the health and legal risks – and faced an increased repression, as well as public moral judgements about their supposed responsibility for the pandemic dissemination.
Our research focuses on the values advocated and/or experienced by organisers and spectators of rave parties and underground concerts in the south of France during the COVID crisis. Do these events, organised without any link to cultural policies and institutions, carry the same social values as institutional events and “legitimate culture”? If not, what specific values and valuations emerge from this autonomy and informality? How do participants consider the balance between health risks, legal risks, and the ‘need’ for collective musical experience? How different values are intertwined in these cultural and social spaces (socialisation, entertainment, freedom, well-being, empowerment, autonomy, democracy…)? What are the relative places and shapes of aesthetic and social values? What is the reciprocal influence between social contexts and artistic contents?

Paper 4 – The Values of Remote Participation in Choirs and Cultural Initiatives during Covid-19

Victoria D. Alexander, Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship – Goldsmiths University of London.
Oliver Peterson Gilbert, UNCHARTED Research Associate, Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship – Goldsmiths University of London

The social distancing regulations implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic forced UK cultural and creative organisations to migrate to modes of remote delivery. Our research has looked to two spaces of non-professional cultural participation: amateur choirs in London and Reimagine, Remake, Replay – a cultural makerspace for 16–25-year-olds in Northern Ireland, both of which have moved online in response to the pandemic. Our objective was to capture the values that participants ascribed to this new mode of participation and how it compared to forms of synchronous co-present cultural participation that constituted pre-pandemic experience. Interviews were conducted with members from a variety of choirs. These choirs had different musical repertoires, deployed varied technological solutions to facilitate online participation, and comprised constituencies of participant ranging from beginners to longstanding members. Two focus groups were held with Reimagine, Remake, Replay participants alongside interviews with current staff members. We discerned certain value commonalities across the two case studies which suggest a cluster of values applicable to online cultural participation in the present moment: emotion regulation, sociality, identity consolidation, spatial-temporal affordances, new capabilities, and aesthetic values. These spaces of value production enabled us to propose a new typology (ESCAPISM) to frame the values attributed to remote participation in non-professional cultural activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: Online Participation, Choirs, Participative Museums, Cultural Democracy, COVID-19.

Conference Website: https://www.kismifconference.com/pt/
Previous Posts…

ERIAC is the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture

Meet WEAVE Team: ERIAC

On a regular schedule, the WEAVE team publishes a blog post which features a partner of the WEAVE consortium. This blog item presents partner ERIAC European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture e.V..

WEAVE aims to connects various communities at local, micro and macro levels, and to do this we are relying on various organisations and cultural institutions. The European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture e.V. (ERIAC) is a joint initiative of the Council of Europe, the Open Society Foundations, and the Roma Leaders’ initiative – the Alliance for the European Roma Institute. ERIAC is an association registered under German law on 07 June 2017, in Berlin, Germany. ERIAC has its headquarters in Berlin and Belgrade but its work is international.

ERIAC has a unique and single mandate as the first transnational, European-level organization for the recognition of Roma arts and culture. It exists to increase the self-esteem of Roma and to decrease negative prejudice of the majority population towards the Roma by means of arts, culture, history, and media.

European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture. Damian Le Bas. Gypsyland. Roma Da Da. 2014 © Nihad Nino Pušija/ ERIAC

ERIAC acts as an international creative hub to support the exchange of creative ideas across borders, cultural domains and Romani identities. ERIAC aims to be the promoter of Romani contributions to European culture and talent, success and achievement, as well as to document the historical experience of Romani people in Europe. ERIAC exists to be a communicator and public educator, to disseminate a positive image and knowledge about Romani people for dialogue and building mutual respect and understanding.

The main long-term aims of ERIAC are to educate and inform the non-Roma population about Roma arts and culture in order to foster understanding, tolerance and mutual respect between Roma and non-Roma communities; to raise awareness among European institutions, policymakers and stakeholders about the role of Roma arts and culture; and to build-up broad partnerships across Europe (and beyond) for support of Roma arts, culture and communities.

ERIAC Serbia. 2021 © Srđan Tomašević (LESTE). Belgrade 25.05.2021. Launching Ceremony of ERIAC Serbia and the Roma Education Fund In Belgrade, Eriac are opened by Alexander Soros with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. OSF/Vladimir Zivojinovic

ERIAC is a membership-based organization, bringing together Roma and non-Roma individuals and organizations, with relevant and demonstrated competencies and experience in the field of arts and culture and who are committed to ERIAC’s values. Currently, there are over 150 Roma and non-Roma members, individuals and organizations, including museums, documentation centers, gallery spaces as well as Roma artists, cultural producers and private collectors, from across Europe and the US. ERIAC’s associate members are organized in four thematic sections: 1) Arts and Culture, 2) History and Commemoration, 3) Research and Publication in the fields of arts and culture, 4) Media and Information in the fields of arts and culture.

Through its membership structure, ERIAC will engage content contributors to provide valuable samples of Roma tangible and intangible heritage artifacts that will be included in the Europeana collection in the framework of WEAVE.

ERIAC Berlin façade. 2018 © ERIAC European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture

ERIAC’s role in the project consists of:

Connecting to the Roma community
Providing content
Being an expert on cultural community engagement

The items will be selected based on the following criteria: relevance and/or historical importance; authenticity (produced by Roma); quality of digitalization (meeting the standards); possibility of clearing the copyrights. ERIAC members will be invited to propose items to be included while the final selection will be supervised by ERIAC management (with experience and expertise in curating). An emphasis will be placed on contemporary objects, especially examples of contemporary art produced by Roma artists, to counterbalance the dominant folkloric/ ethnographic, and often stereotypical representation of Roma people.

This is relevant due to the following reasons:

a dominant part of the current items in Europeana collections website labelled as “Roma/ Gypsy” include items which are either produced by non-Roma (for example, ethnographic photographs of the Roma) or represent an imagined representation of the Roma (for example, works of art which fetishizes/ exotifies the imagined “Roma”, as a representation of an archetype/ stereotype);
Contemporary artistic practice is developed by Roma people themselves, giving an authentic and subjective representation of Roma identity and culture;

WEAVE is excited that ERIAC is partner and look forward to exploring the curated content, the collections and learning from them for the capacity-building strand of the project.

The VAST project joined the UNCHARTED network

The VAST project (Values Across Space and Time) is an international collaboration between eight partners from five countries: National Center for Scientific Research Demokritos (Greece), Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), Universidade NOVA de Lisboa – NOVA (Portugal), Fairytale Museum (Cyprus), Semantika (Slovenia), Museo Galileo (Italy) and Athens & Epidaurus Festival (Greece).

The project aims to study the transformation of moral values across space and time with specific focus on the core European values considered fundamental for the formation of sustainable communities and peaceful coexitance such as freedom, democracy, equality, tolerance, dialogue, human dignity, the rule of law and others. VAST envisions to bring values to the forefront in the field of advanced digitisation. By providing advanced modelling, methods, techniques and digital tools, enabling the collaborative study, annotation and continuous capture and digitisation of experiences, VAST will examine narratives that represent significant moments of European culture/history and narratives stemming from citizen experiences, to study how the meaning of specific values has been expressed through different narratives (Greek tragedies, 17th century Scientific Revolution texts, folktales) and user experiences (artists, spectators, curators, museum visitors, pupils).
The new collaboration between VAST and UNCHARTED is a good opportunity to enlarge the horizon of both projects and increase the sharing of experiences and knowledge in the mutual interest of the promotion of culture.
Read more…
VAST website

The importance of cultural heritage in the design of sustainable solutions and development of EU

Slovenian Presidency of the EU: presentation of priorities to the CULT Committee of the EU Parliament

Since the 1st July, Slovenia has taken the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union and last week Slovenian ministers for education, youth and for culture presented the priorities of the Slovenian Presidency to the Culture and Education (CULT) Committee of the European Parliament.
At the meeting the ministers highlighted the key points and goals on which Slovenia will focus over the next six months and stressed the importance of cultural rights and right to heritage as a central starting point for designing sustainable solutions for the EU’s development: “in designing sustainable solutions and turning the EU development, we must not overlook the importance of cultural heritage and its diversity in the EU ” from Slovenian Presidency website.

Two main topics have been identified:

the innovative potential of culture: in particular high quality construction and architecture, a topic strongly connected with the New European Bauhaus initiative, whose goal is to improve the living environment in cities and rural areas using architectural solutions;
the competitiveness of European audiovisual and media content in the global digital market.

More information: Slovenian Presidency and CULT.

a non for profit association whose purpose is the promotion and enhancement of the culture of photography and photographic heritage.

Meet WEAVE Team: PHOTOCONSORTIUM

On a regular schedule, the WEAVE team publishes a blog post which features a partner of the WEAVE consortium. This second blog item presents partner PHOTOCONSORTIUM – International Consortium for Photographic Heritage, based in Italy.

PHOTOCONSORTIUM is a non for profit association whose purpose is the promotion and enhancement of the culture of photography and photographic heritage. It promotes and organizes conferences, exhibitions, events and training courses. PHOTOCONSORTIUM is Europeana’s accredited domain aggregator specialized in photographic content, and since 2014 has made accessible in Europeana over 500,000 photographs of famous and less famous heritage collections from prestigious public institutions and private agencies, and also unveiling hitherto unknown photographic content from crowdsourcing campaigns, private collectors and smaller local archives.

PHOTOCONSORTIUM is active in the Europeana DSI project series with a particular effort in improving the quality of metadata and digital objects provided to Europeana by the network of content providers, and promotes the high quality data in a dedicated space in Europeana, originally known as the “Europeana Photography” thematic collection, curated by PHOTOCONSORTIUM and enriched with galleries, virtual exhibitions, blogs.

PHOTOCONSORTIUM was partner in the successful GS CEF project Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope (2018-2020), aiming at enriching the user experience in Europeana with engaging features developed under the overarching theme of the 1950s, and in the project of the Europeana Year of Cultural Heritage WeAre#EuropeForCulture (2019-2020) which realized a series of pop-up exhibitions across various European countries to showcase the diversity of European heritage and to engage with hard-to-reach age groups.

Most recent projects by PHOTOCONSORTIUM include:

PAGODE – Europeana China (2020-2021), aiming at enriching Europeana with beautiful collections and editorials about Chinese Heritage
Europeana XX – Century of Change (2020-2021), again a Europeana project with focus on high-quality content about the history of 20th century
Citizen Heritage (2020-2023), an Erasmus+ project to foster citizen science in cultural heritage
I2 Identity and Innovation (2021-2022), again a Erasmus+ project with focus on secondary school education supported with digital cultural heritage and technologies.

The Team of PHOTOCONSORTIUM involved with WEAVE is composed by Antonella Fresa, the vice president of the association; Pietro Masi, general coordination; and Valentina Bachi, project manager. Within WEAVE they are responsible for aggregation of content to Europeana and participate in the Dissemination and communication strands of the project. But next to the staff operating in the project, the entire network of PHOTOCONSORTIUM members is involved with the progress of WEAVE and closely follows the project’s developments.

Website: www.photoconsortium.net

The mapping of impact assessment practices in CH of the SoPHIA Platform

The Sophia platform, is developing a Holistic Heritage Impact Assessment Model. The recent progresses of its evaluation are referred to the identification of the three axes along which the model can be developed which are domains, people, and time. Next step was to collect and analyse existing cases of impact assessment practices for their applicability. At this puropose, members of SoPHIA’s Advisory Board as well as stakeholders were asked to reflect upon their experiences and practices of impact assessment in cultural heritage.
This shared reflection led to the identification of an extensive amounts of information on good and poorly done practices in impact assessment: their review was proved to be a crucial exercise in identifying key factors that will define the process of developing the SoPHIA model and will constitute the bases for the creation and implementation of policy recommendations, operational programmes, and guidelines for the use of the model by heritage professionals.Link to the D2.1 Mapping of Impact Assessment Practices in Cultural Heritage
More information…

a project to demonstrate the potential of Data Analytics for tourism development in the area of Black Sea

Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea

Tourism is increasingly popular at the Black Sea, while the challenges affecting the sustainability of the sector (environmental pressures, peak visits in limited areas, poor overall visibility, etc.) are rising at the same rate.

Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea project strives to enable local stakeholders from public and private sector in tourism to increase their understanding of current trends, patterns of tourist flows and impact of visitors as well as predict the tourist impact for taking strategic data driven decisions to foster more sustainable tourism in the future. For this reason, collaboration of all stakeholders of tourism ecosystem as well as exchange of data between them will be promoted to spur innovative touristic services and policies tailored to the regional challenges and opportunities.

The aim of the T4.0 for the Black Sea project is to demonstrate the potential of Data Analytics for tourism development in the area of Black Sea. To achieve this, pilot services will be tested and the dialogue with regional stakeholders encouraged. Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea project will boost sectoral cooperation and allow greater usage of the Industry 4.0 technologies in tourism. Data driven tourism will enable more sustainable development of tourism in the future.

More about the project: https://www.t4bs.eu/

under the Sicilian sun, a meeting between INCULTUM partners to discuss about the local pilot

INCULTUM in Sicily

On the 6th of July 2021, INCULTUM partners Promoter and GAL Elimos met to discuss about the work ongoing in the Pilot 4 Sicilian inland: Monti di Trapani.

Scope of the Pilot is to valorise the territory and the rural and archaeological heritage of an economically depressed area far from traditional tourist circuits. With the proposed actions, the aim is also to give visibility to rural groups by empowering them as valid agents by complementing their traditional knowledge with innovative elements that attract visitors.

INCULTUM Pilot will focus on the three municipalities in the inland of the Trapani territory, which are away from traditional tourist itineraries but with great cultural potential:

1. Agrarian heritage: persistence of traditional irrigation systems, of clear Islamic legacy, especially in Calatafimi-Segesta, where previous projects (such as MEMOLA) documented numerous associated hydraulic systems and infrastructures (mills, irrigation channels, wells, fountains, watering holes), both in the urban area and the surrounding territory.

2. Rural heritage built: represented by “bagli”, these are constructions linked to agricultural activity, dispersed habitat nuclei, many of them of clear Islamic origin, which have survived until recent times.

3. Archaeological heritage: Thanks to previous projects (FP7 MEMOLA in particular) most outstanding elements of each population are known: Calatafimi-Segesta has the Castello Eufemio and the Borgo (old neighbourhood that retains part of its organizational structure despite the strong abandonment), Terravecchia (the neighbourhood from which the entire population emerges, linked to the castle) and churches of great artistic interest (Carmine, Crocifisso, etc.). Custonaci has Pizzo Monaco, a fortified granary from the Islamic era, dated to the 11th century. It is a unique structure in Italy, formed by a fortified enclosure with numerous inside cells dedicated to the storage of agricultural surpluses and the most precious goods of the members of the Islamic community that lived in a nearby settlement.

Finally, Buseto Palizzolo has Monte Luziano that seems to have been another fortified granary of Islamic times. These different archaeological elements are related to the daily activities of the different communities that have inhabited this territory over time.

Discover the INCULTUM Pilots: https://incultum.eu/pilots/

All photos courtesy of Promoter.

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