RICHES presented in Bilbao to the PUCK Project’s network

On 13-14 January 2014, in Bilbao, at the University of the Basque Country, a workshop was held by the “PUCK (Participation University City Kulture) Project – Assessing effective tools to enhance cultural participation”. PUCK has been awarded a European Grant in the CULTURE 2007-2013 programme from the European Union, to promote cooperation among organizations involved in the analysis of cultural policies. Academics and managers of public and private cultural institutions are cooperating in in this project to investigate the drivers and barriers to cultural engagement in contemporary European societies. They aims to:

• develop knowledge and useful management tools to better understand and to enhance cultural participation;


• improve the mechanism of transmission of knowledge between the university, the cultural sector and private and public managers.

The 13-14 January's workshop brought together researchers and practitioners who met to discuss the impact of digitization on cultural participation and on research on cultural participation. The meeting was an opportunity to showcase some interesting European projects on the area of impact assessment of cultural projects, digitization and cultural heritage and the use of technology on cultural institutions.

Karol Jan Borowiecki, Assistant Professor at the Department of Business and Economics at University of Southern Denmark, took part in the workshop as PUCK member. In the project showcase, he delivered a presentation of RICHES, which is partner of. RICHES (Renewal Innovation and Change: Heritage and European Society) is a new EU-funded project, kicked-off on 9-10 December 2013, aimed at investigating the change digital technologies are bringing to the European society and at demonstrating the great opportunity digital technologies are offering to the EU citizens to use their heritage as a drive for social and economic development.

The showcase was a good platform to introduce RICHES to a relatively large group of people interested and working in culture and to compare it with projects of other EU-funded networks. It was also a good occasion of networking and for exchanging best practices.

The other projects presented in the showcase were:

CENDARI (Collaborative EuropeaN Digital/Archival Research Infrastructure), presented by Jennifer Edmond from the Trinity College Dublin;

ALIADA (Automatic publication under Linked Data Paradigm of library data), presented by Marta Gonzalez of Tecnalia;

SMARTCULTURE, presented by Aiala Fernandez of EIKEN;

MAPSI (Managing Art Projects with Societal Impact), presented by Beatriz Plaza of the University of the Basque Country.

RICHES on Twitter: #richesEU