Digital meets Culture

The students engaged with the WEAVE collections, activities and the project’s tools, framed within the context of accessibility and community engagement

WEAVE Project disseminated to AccessCult Erasmus Students

text and images by Rosa Cisneros, Coventry University.

The European Union funded project, AccessCult, aims to make cultural venues more accessible for all. One billion people live with some form of disability (WHO), at EU level, about 24% of persons aged 16 and over declared a disability, furthermore the aging EU population is growing intensely. The number of people with access needs is therefore significant and growing. Equal integration into society, including travelling and experiencing cultural heritage is a real challenge. Cultural heritage (museums, galleries, monuments etc) provide significant opportunity for social inclusion, sense of community, informal education and lifelong learning; as such accessibility should not be a barrier! Better inclusion through cultural heritage interpretation is not just about social responsibility but is a business imperative representing market potential for tourism. This project tackles this need through education of students, future experts, but also current cultural heritage staff to improve access for all.

For the AccessCult project a consortium of 9 partners including universities and cultural institutions focus on improving the accessibility of Cultural Heritage across Europe through:

Exchange of knowledge and good practice
Through education of students as future experts
Through adult training for existing cultural workers

The project mission is:

To develop knowledge, skills and competencies to enable cultural workers in museums and galleries to respond to the needs of visitors with wide ranging capabilities to ensure they are able to access, enjoy and benefit fully;
To strengthen connections between museums and associations for people with disabilities

For the AccessCult project, Rosa Cisneros from C-DaRE disseminated the EU- Project WEAVE to the students and presented the Europeana Digital Library. The students engaged with the project’s activities and the project’s tools. The WEAVE content providers and some content was also framed within the context of accessibility and the LabDay methodology was also featured. Several of the students were from Spain, Slovenia, the UK and Lithuania.

Credit: AccessCult Project 2022

the roundtable discussed the different ways and domains to do citizen science and roles and responsibilities therein

CitizenHeritage presented as a best practice in Erasmus University Rotterdam roundtable on citizen science

Citizen Science & Engaged Research: Showcase of best practices

Wednesday 19 Oct 2022, 15.00 – 16.30

In this showcase event organized by Erasmus University Rotterdam, engaged researchers from EUR/EMC came together to share what makes their citizen science – and related engaged – research successful and how to avoid pitfalls.

What is citizen science, how does it look like at EUR/Erasmus MC and how do you start your citizen science research?

What are the different ways to do citizen science and what are their pros and cons?

How do collaborations with non-professional researchers arise?

What are the roles and responsibilities of the different parties, how to secure them and what are the opportunities and risks?

CitizenHeritage and its results so far were presented by Dr. Trilce Navarrete, Assistant professor in the economic and historic aspects of digital heritage.

Link to event: https://www.eur.nl/en/events/citizen-science-engaged-research-showcase-best-practices-2022-10-19

Download the presentation by Dr. Navarrete, PDF 1 Mb

the conference I-HE2022 took place in Athens between 19 and 21 October 2022

Presenting CitizenHeritage at Innovating Higher Education Conference 2022

The Innovating Higher Education conference focuses on trends and high impact factors in global and European higher education. This year’s theme was: Digital Reset: European Universities Transforming for a Changing World.

European universities today are confronted by profound, societal changes and crises. To move beyond emergency responses and practices, I-HE2022 gathered experts from the world of online, blended and distance learning. They shared expertise in new modes of (digital) education and explore opportunities towards high quality, inclusive education in the face of a changing world.

The talk entitled “CitizenHeritage: Higher Education & heritage professionals joining forces on citizen science” was delivered as part of the conference programme by Prof. Fred Truyen (KU Leuven).

Abstract:

In the Erasmus+ project CitizenHeritage, we aim to study and promote the conditions under which citizens can contribute to heritage studies, in a consortium that involves university researchers, university students at the MA level, as well as citizen science platform developers and representatives of the heritage sector. Citizen engagement projects are rife in the sector of libraries, archives and museums, in particular for the purpose of crowdsourcing. This reflects a societal trend in which citizens and communities are more and more involved and take responsibility for their heritage, in collaboration with the institutional professionals.

However, there are many modalities in which this citizen engagement is organised. In most cases, the citizen is delivering input without having a clear view of the scientific purpose, or without access to the results. In our study, we searched and reviewed best practice examples, to identify criteria for citizen science projects. We will in our paper and presentation discuss the results of this first overview and classification research. The aim is to further develop a series of guidelines for heritage institutions and researchers who want to do citizen science properly, as well as recommendations for higher education heritage study curriculums.

These guidelines focus on the correct information of the participants, their access to published results, correct acknowledgement of their contributions and possibly authorship rights. After this first phase of the research, of which we will present results in this presentation, we will develop capacity building workshops as well as replicable templates and training materials for heritage professionals and researchers.

More importantly, and the main focus of our presentation, is the role of higher education in the training of future heritage professionals in how to engage citizens in heritage research. For this, the 3 university partners in the project piloted training sessions embedded in official curriculum classes of university degrees at the MA level. We will argue that there is a natural role for open universities to contribute in this way to the development of open, citizen-inclusive higher education and heritage science.

Link to event: https://conference.eadtu.eu/

this new tool improves access to statistics and policy-relevant indicators for tourism and sustainable economy

EU Tourism Dashboard available for consultation

European Commission launches the EU Tourism Dashboard, a new tool to help policy makers at country and regional level to steer policies and strategies in the tourism ecosystem. The aim of this tool is to improve access to statistics and policy-relevant indicators for tourism, supporting destinations and public authorities in tracking their progress in the green and digital transition.

The dashboard offers visualisations of tourism-relevant data and indicators collected from available, trusted sources concerning the tourism ecosystem, to allow the profiling and monitoring of progress of EU countries towards such policy objectives. The indicators of the EU Tourism Dashboard are organised under three policy pillars: environmental impacts, digitalisation, and socio-economic vulnerability. In addition, the Dashboard offers a set of basic tourism descriptors to provide further context regarding the characteristics of tourism destinations in terms of demand, supply and tourism offer.

The current, public version of the Dashboard is the result of a development and consultation process initiated in mid-2021, at the request of the EU Council. The EU Member States and other international organisations contributed to the consultation, and will continue being consulted in view of upcoming improvements to this tool.

It has been developed by the JRC and the Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.

representatives of 6 projects in the area of sustainable rural and cultural development met in a roundtable discussion organized by the European Commission

Policy roundtable of EU-funded projects on sustainable cultural tourism

Text and image courtesy of Joao Martins, UNINOVA Lisbon.

On Tuesday October 11th 2022, a policy round table was held between European Policy Makers and representatives of the six projects that were funded in the Transformations-04 call dedicated to sustainable tourism:

IMPACTOUR (Joao Martins and Marinos Ioannides)
SmartCulTour (Bart Neuts and Lidija Petrić)
SPOT (Milada Šťastná and John Shaddock)
TExTOUR (Julia Delenikas and Daniel Basulto)
Be.CULTOUR (Antonia Gravagnuolo and Aliona Lupu)
INCULTUM (José Maria Civantos)

The discussion was very fruitful and addressed several policy making issues, such as:

EU Policy
Europeanisation
EC Research & Innovation coordination
Innovation
Europeanisation
Sustainable Development
Infrastructure
Implementation
Continuous Monitoring and Evaluation

This meeting happens as a consequence of several internal meetings between the aforementioned six projects, being the last held in Lisbon, at UNINOVA premises (hybrid format), on July 5th.

The outcomes of the sessions are summarized in a report:

Policy Recommendations by H2020 Sustainable Cultural Tourism Projects (PDF)

About the sister projects:

IMPACTOUR https://www.impactour.eu/
SPOT http://www.spotprojecth2020.eu/
TEXTOUR https://textour-project.eu/about/
BE.CULTOUR https://becultour.eu/
SMARTCULTOUR http://www.smartcultour.eu/

the educational element, together with training and cultural activities are part of the strategy of promotion for this territory

INCULTUM: students’ visit to the village of San Pellegrino in Alpe (Tuscany)

text and photos courtesy of Fondazione Campus / University of Pisa.

ph. courtesy of Fondazione Campus / University of Pisa CC-BY-SA

One of the Pilots of the INCULTUM project, aiming and empowering sustainable cultural tourism in peripheral areas with communities engagement, is coordinated by the University of Pisa and is set in the beautiful landscape of the Garfagnana in Tuscany, in San Pellegrino in Alpe, a small village between the provinces of Lucca and Modena.

ph. courtesy of Fondazione Campus / University of Pisa CC-BY-SA

An educational visit to San Pellegrino in Alpe was held on Thursday 13th October 2022 for the students of the second year of the Fondazione Campus Degree Course in Tourism Sciences, who follow the teaching of Prof. Enrica Lemmi “Tourist itineraries and landscape as cultural heritage”.

The students will take part in the INCULTUM project, Visiting the Margins. INnovative CULtural ToUrisM in European peripheries’ – ‘INCULTUM’, funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program, which involves 15 partners (including the University of Pisa) from 10 different European countries. The scientific director of the project for Unipi is Prof. Enrica Lemmi, full professor at the University of Pisa and Director of the Academy of Tourism of the Fondazione Campus.

INCULTUM aims to demonstrate the high potential of marginal and peripheral places, cultural heritage and resources when managed by local communities and stakeholders.
Ten pilot cases of living territories and communities will be analyzed and, based on the results, customized innovative solutions will be co-created.

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

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on 9th November 2022 the event presented INCULTUM's research and pilots and will be enriched by presentation of sister projects IMPACTOUR and TExTOUR

EUROMED 2022 Cultural Tourism workshop – updated agenda

The event was organized in the framework of EUROMED (7-11 November 2022) by H2020 project INCULTUM, to discuss about the role of community engagement and citizen participation in enhancing and promoting sustainable tourism in peripheral areas that are not often part of the mass tourism itineraries. The event was realized with participation of H2020 projects for sustainable tourism IMPACTOUR and TExTOUR.

INCULTUM – INNOVATIVE CULTURAL TOURISM IN
EUROPEAN PERIPHERIES

Wed. 9th November h. 16 EET

INCULTUM research, experiments and findings are oriented to foster positive impacts of cultural tourism, and to demonstrate the high potential of the marginal and peripheral places, cultural heritage and resources when managed by local communities and stakeholders.

This workshop was addressed to cultural managers, cultural heritage institutions, local communities with a stake on tourism potential of their areas, policy makers and researchers on sustainable tourism and local promotion.

All the presentations discussed by the speakers are available at https://incultum.eu/events/cultural-tourism-workshop/

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Programme

PART 1

Introduction: scope of this workshop – Antonella Fresa, Promoter

Policies and participatory model development – Kamila Borsekova, Matej Bel University

Impact, evaluation and exploitation of the plurality of paths to market for participatory approaches to local tourism – Carsten Jacob Humlebæk, Copenhagen Business School

IMPACTOUR – IMproving Sustainable Development Policies and Practices to access, diversify and foster Cultural TOURism in European regions and areas – João Martins, Nova School Of Science And Technology | FCT NOVA, presented by Shabnam Pasandide

TExTOUR – Social Innovation and TEchnologies for sustainable growth through participative cultural TOURism – Daniel Basulto García–Risco, Fundación Santa María la Real del Patrimonio Histórico, presented by Marinos Ioannides

PART 2

Highlights from the INCULTUM Pilots (moderated by Antonella Fresa)

Altiplano de Granada: Desert landscape and oasis – José Maria Martin Civantos, University of Granada
Escape into the archipelago landscape – Marina Toger, Uppsala University
Mining treasures of Central Slovakia – Kamila Borsekova, Matej Bel University
Historic Graves of Ireland – John Tierny, EACTHRA
Aoos the shared rived – Sotiris Tsoukarelis and Thaleia Pantoula, The High Mountains cooperative
Vjosa, the shared river – Eglantina Serjani and Ardit Miti, CeRPHAAL
Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, San Pellegrino in Alpe – Michela Natilli, University of Pisa

how can tangible artefacts as photographs and other items represent intangible heritage such as traditions, practices, skills and cultural phenomena?

WEAVE blogpost: The Paradox of Intangible Heritage

Rugby League Cup final between Bradford Northern , the holders , and Wigan at Wembley Stadium – 29 April 1948 – © TopFoto.co.uk

img: 1398267: Rugby League Cup final between Bradford Northern , the holders , and Wigan at Wembley Stadium – 29 April 1948. TopFoto, In Copyright, Educational reuse permitted.

Looking at photographic collections in particular, it’s a striking realisation that physical prints or negatives are tangible representations of immaterial narratives, while the depictions, the images themselves, are recordings of moments that carry an essence of tangibility. Ironically, the digital transfer of an image re-renders the tangible carrier into an intangible asset that takes on new life and meaning in the even less material ‘cloud’.

Talking about and working with intangible cultural heritage is a challenging and complex process, as the partners in dedicated efforts such as the WEAVE project – can testify first-hand.

Read the blog published by the WEAVE project editorial team in Europeana to discover how photographic agency TopFoto addressed this challenge:
https://www.europeana.eu/en/blog/the-paradox-of-intangible-heritage

This blog is part of WEAVE – Widen European Access to cultural communities Via Europeana: a project funded by the European Commission under the Connecting Europe Facilities (CEF) aimed at developing a framework to link the tangible and intangible heritage of cultural communities.

Stakeholders Survey

European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage

The European Commission, on the request of the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, launched an initiative for a digital infrastructure that will connect cultural heritage institutions and professionals across Europe and develop specific digital tools for this sector; this initiative is the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage.

The Cloud will join and mutually re-inforce other past and future European initiatives such as Europeana or the common European Dataspace for Cultural Heritage.

The Cloud has the purpose of:

help the cultural heritage institutions to work with their digital objects more visibly and more interconnected
unlock the untapped potential of the sector by organizing joint exhibitions, digitizing artefacts, researching artworks, and documenting data
enable transdisciplinary and large-scale collaboration between specialists, who will be able to work in a highly professional digital working space using state of the art tools
generate new income for the cultural heritage institutions by opening new opportunities for marketing and commercialization, in the particular of the digital dimension of the cultural heritage sector.

Within this initiative a stakeholders survey was launched for to better focus on their needs and prioritize research on the tools they would like at disposal to be developed for the Cloud.

The feedbacks will influence the further development of the Cloud and its services.

Here the link to complete the questionnaire. Deadline is set for November 2, 2022.

the participatory activity continues across the months of October and November. It is still possible to join the volunteers in Granada

Recovery of the Aynadamar irrigation channel (Granada) – INCULTUM Pilot

text and images courtesy of Elena Correa Jiménez (University of Granada).

The recovery of Aynadamar irrigation channel, that is a stretch of about 2.8 km, will consist of removing soil and vegetation accumulated in the canalisation since the 80s, after the abandonment of this stretch of irrigation channel, to put it back into operation, up to the Campus de Cartuja (former Pago de Aynadamar), where irrigation will be resumed. During the working day we will learn the traditional techniques of maintenance, use and management of historical irrigation systems, as well as the importance of traditional irrigation and, specifically, the role of the Aynadamar irrigation channel in the city of Granada.

The Aynadamar irrigation channel was built during the 11th century to supply water to the ancient Alcazaba of Granada (Qasabat Garnata), the seat of the Zirid dynasty, and to the present-day Albayzín. This canalisation takes its water from Fuente Grande, also known as Fuente de Las Lágrimas in Alfacar. Aynadamar has undoubtedly been one of the backbones of the city of Granada, at least since the 11th century.

The recovery will be open at all times to the participation of the entire population interested in this hydraulic heritage, thus allowing the people of Granada to learn about the importance of the Aynadamar irrigation channel in the history of the capital, as well as the historical irrigation systems.

To participate, please fill in the following registration form: https://forms.gle/Dk1JwztrJeqZWYTq7.