Bridging cultural heritage and communities through digital technologies: Understanding perspectives and challenges

We present and discuss the results of a qualitative study aimed at identifying what role interactive digital technologies could play in facilitating the participation of communities at risk of exclusion (particularly migrants and refugees) in cultural and heritage-related activities. Culture and heritage are known to be key factors in fostering social inclusion, and this has the potential for contributing to both the wellbeing of these communities and to cultural institutions themselves. Through surveys and interviews with two cohorts of participants (cultural heritage professionals and community facilitators), we gathered insights about their perspectives on how ICT tools could support their work with and for communities, as well as the challenges they face. This work sheds light on the opportunities and barriers surrounding the use of digital technologies for participation in the cultural heritage sector, which is timely due to the increasing focus on grassroots and community-led heritage initiatives and to the growing body of work on participatory ICT in disciplines such as human-computer interaction and community informatics.

[1]  C. Jeurgens.  Onlife in de wereld van erfgoed en kunst? [Bespreking van: C. van den Akker, S. Legêne (2016) Museums in a digital culture : How art and heritage become meaningful] , 2018 .

[2]  Janet Blake,et al.  UNESCO’s 2003 Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage: The implications of community involvement in ‘safeguarding’ , 2008 .

[3]  Konstantin Aal,et al.  "This is My Story...": Storytelling with Tangible Artifacts among Migrant Women in Germany , 2017, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[4]  Yanki Lee,et al.  Participation Is Risky: Approaches to Joint Creative Processes , 2014 .

[5]  María Teresa Arredondo,et al.  Engaging People with Cultural Heritage: Users' Perspective , 2014, HCI.

[6]  Bill Doolin,et al.  Information and Communication Technology and the Social Inclusion of Refugees , 2016, MIS Q..

[7]  Ragnar Andreas Audunson,et al.  Technology and Social Inclusion. Rethinking the Digital Divide , 2006, J. Documentation.

[8]  Ole Iversen,et al.  Participatory heritage innovation: designing dialogic sites of engagement , 2014, Digit. Creativity.

[9]  G. Black,et al.  Embedding civil engagement in museums , 2010 .

[10]  Gabriel Rissola,et al.  E-Inclusion Policies and Initiatives in Support of Employability of Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Europe , 2009 .

[11]  Annemaree Lloyd,et al.  Connecting with new information landscapes: information literacy practices of refugees , 2013, J. Documentation.

[12]  Gabriela Avram,et al.  Supporting Cultural Heritage Professionals Adopting and Shaping Interactive Technologies in Museums , 2017, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[13]  J. Stephens,et al.  Symbolic estates: community identity and empowerment through heritage , 2015 .

[14]  Bonnie Nardi,et al.  Survival needs and social inclusion: technology use among the homeless , 2010, CSCW '10.

[15]  Cristiano Storni,et al.  The problem of de-sign as conjuring: empowerment-in-use and the politics of seams , 2014, PDC.

[16]  Stella Douka,et al.  An adaptive framework for the creation of exergames for intangible cultural heritage (ICH) education , 2018, Journal of Computers in Education.

[17]  Claire Wallace,et al.  The Geographies of Community History Digital Archives in Rural Scotland , 2015 .

[18]  Rodney Harrison,et al.  Heritage as Social Action , 2010 .

[19]  Khorshed Alam,et al.  The digital divide and social inclusion among refugee migrants: A case in regional Australia , 2015, Inf. Technol. People.

[20]  Paul Dash,et al.  Museums and communities: curators, collections and collaboration , 2014 .

[21]  Yasmin B. Kafai,et al.  Ethnocomputing with electronic textiles: culturally responsive open design to broaden participation in computing in American indian youth and communities , 2014, SIGCSE.

[22]  Michael Petzet.  Place, memory, meaning: Preserving intangible values in monuments and sites , 2003 .

[23]  Daniela Petrelli,et al.  Cultural heritage communities: technologies and challenges , 2015, C&T.

[24]  Raelene Wilding,et al.  Mediating culture in transnational spaces: An example of young people from refugee backgrounds , 2012 .

[25]  Lora Aroyo,et al.  Crowdsourcing in the cultural heritage domain: opportunities and challenges , 2011, C&T.

[26]  Roberto Pierdicca,et al.  A Survey of Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality for Cultural Heritage , 2018, ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage.

[27]  Andrew Flinn,et al.  Community Histories, Community Archives: Some Opportunities and Challenges1 , 2007 .

[28]  Nicola J. Bidwell,et al.  Community Consensus: Design Beyond Participation , 2012, Design Issues.

[29]  George P. Nicholas,et al.  Protecting indigenous cultural property in the age of digital democracy: Institutional and communal responses to Canadian First Nations and Māori heritage concerns , 2012 .

[30]  Elise Paschen.  Heritage , 2020 .

[31]  Julien Keiichi Nakata Glenat.  CONVENTION FOR THE SAFEGUARDING OF THE INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE GLOBAL STRATEGY FOR STRENGTHENING NATIONAL CAPACITIES FOR SAFEGUARDING INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE , 2015 .

[32]  Anthony Collins,et al.  Curator: a design environment for curating tabletop museum experiences , 2009, ITS '09.

[33]  Rachel Clarke,et al.  Re-configuring inclusion, decolonising practice: Digital participation and learning in Black women’s community-led heritage , 2016 .

[34]  Tiina Peil,et al.  Heritage from Below , 2014 .

[35]  Fabio Paternò,et al.  Cicero Designer: An Environment for End-User Development of Multi-Device Museum Guides , 2009, IS-EUD.

[36]  Heike Winschiers-Theophilus,et al.  An insider perspective on community gains: A subjective account of a Namibian rural communities' perception of a long-term participatory design project , 2015, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[37]  Fotis Lazarinis,et al.  Handbook of Research on Technologies and Cultural Heritage: Applications and Environments , 2011 .

[38]  Bronwyn Bevan,et al.  Professional Development for Museum Educators , 2008 .

[39]  Rhiannon Mason,et al.  What role can digital heritage play in the re-imagining of national identities?: England and its icons , 2009 .

[40]  Joy Davis,et al.  Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift , 2001 .

[41]  Stacey Pitsillides,et al.  Heritage and Social Media : Understanding heritage in a participatory culture , 2012 .

[42]  Federica Mancini,et al.  Incorporating User Participation in Heritage Institutions: Approaching Institutional Strategies in Relation To New Social Media and Audience Needs , 2015 .

[43]  Hugo Fuks,et al.  Collaborative museums: an approach to co-design , 2012, CSCW.

[44]  Gail-Nina Anderson.  Reinventing the museum : historical and contemporary perspectives on the paradigm shift , 2004 .

[45]  Colin Latchem,et al.  Book reviews: Learning to bridge the digital divide , 2002 .

[46]  Emma Waterton,et al.  Heritage, Communities and Archaeology , 2009 .

[47]  Ron Eglash,et al.  Ethnocomputing with Native American Design , 2007 .

[48]  T. Kvan,et al.  A Virtual Community as the Context for Discursive Interpretation: A Role in Cultural Heritage Engagement , 2008 .

[49]  Nick Dulake,et al.  Articulating Co-Design in Museums: Reflections on Two Participatory Processes , 2016, CSCW.

[50]  Ross Parry.  Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change , 2007 .

[51]  William Nitzky,et al.  Community Empowerment at the Periphery? Participatory Approaches to Heritage Protection in Guizhou, China , 2013 .

[52]  Chris Mellish,et al.  Linking to the past: an analysis of community digital heritage initiatives , 2013, Aslib Proc..

[53]  Nina Simon.  The Participatory Museum , 2010 .

[54]  Željka Jelavić,et al.  Culture as a field of Possibilities: Museum as a means of Social Integration , 2010 .

[55]  Serena Iervolino,et al.  Museums, migrant communities, and intercultural dialogue in Italy , 2013 .

[56]  Gustav Taxén,et al.  Introducing participatory design in museums , 2004, PDC 04.

[57]  Jenny Kidd.  Digital media ethics and museum communication , 2018, The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication.

[58]  Mathias Czaika and Armando Di Lillo.  The geography of anti-immigrant attitudes across Europe, 2002–2014 , 2018 .

[59]  E. Helsper.  Digital inclusion: an analysis of social disadvantage and the information society , 2008 .

[60]  Anne Preston,et al.  In the Eye of the Student: An Intangible Cultural Heritage Experience, with a Human-Computer Interaction Twist , 2018, CHI.

[61]  Mauro Tavella,et al.  Widening Access to Intangible Cultural Heritage: towards the Development of an Innovative Platform , 2014, HCI.

[62]  Christos Sintoris,et al.  A survey on tools for end user authoring of mobile applications for cultural heritage , 2015, 2015 6th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications (IISA).

[63]  Laurajane Smith.  Uses of Heritage , 2020, Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology.

[64]  Gerhard Fischer,et al.  End-User Development: From Creating Technologies to Transforming Cultures , 2013, IS-EUD.

[65]  Maurizio Ambrosini,et al.  Between Fears, Contacts and Family Dynamics: the Anti-Immigrant Attitudes in Italy , 2018 .

[66]  Danilo Giglitto,et al.  Using wikis for intangible cultural heritage in Scotland: suitability and empowerment , 2017 .

[67]  Richard Sandell,et al.  Museums, society, inequality , 2002 .

[68]  Jesper Simonsen,et al.  Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design , 2012 .

[69]  Yi-Ting Huang,et al.  An annales school-based serious game creation framework for taiwanese indigenous cultural heritage , 2013, JOCCH.

[70]  Iain Robertson,et al.  Heritage from Below , 2012 .

[71]  Rob Comber,et al.  Za'atari Refugee Cookbook: Relevance, Challenges and Design Considerations , 2017, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[72]  Jyi-Shane Liu,et al.  Building Digital Heritage with Teamwork Empowerment , 2005 .

[73]  Manyanga Munyaradzi,et al.  Intangible cultural heritage and the empowerment of local communities: Manyanga (Ntaba Zi Ka Mambo) revisited , 2003 .

[74]  Carmelo Ardito,et al.  Combining multimedia resources for an engaging experience of cultural heritage , 2010, SAPMIA '10.

[75]  Mike Robinson,et al.  Community empowerment through voluntary input: a case study of Kiltimagh integrated resource development (IRD). , 2006 .

[76]  Jeff Z. Pan,et al.  CURIOS: Connecting Community Heritage through Linked Data , 2013, Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work.