Social cohesion, Participation, and Inclusion through Cultural Engagement

ended

"The overall aim of the project is to foster diverse participation in the heritage domain through a process of ""citizen curation"". Citizens will be supported to: develop their own personal interpretations of cultural objects; work together to present their collective view of life through culture and heritage; and gain an appreciation of alternative cultural viewpoints. Methods will be codesigned that can be used by citizen groups to produce personal interpretations of cultural objects and analyse and compare them against the interpretations of others. Tools will be developed for modelling users and groups and recommending content in a way that assists citizen groups in building a representation of themselves and appreciating variety within groups and similarity across groups to enhance social cohesion. A Linked Data infrastructure will support citizen curation using social media platforms in a way that gives heritage institutions control over rights protected digital assets and access to citizens responses to their collections. User experiences will be designed that enable inclusive participation in citizen curation activities across cultures and abilities. A series of citizen curation case studies with a diverse set of museums and citizen groups will demonstrate how the approach can promote inclusive participation and social cohesion in a variety of contexts. The project brings together 13 partners from 7 countries. The consortium comprises: three SMEs from the visitor guide (GVAM), mobile game (PadaOne) and data mining (CELI) sectors; four heritage institutions (Design Museum Helsinki, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Gallery of Modern Art Turin, Hecht Museum); and seven research centres (Bologna, Aalto, Aalborg, OU, UCM, Turin, Haifa) with expertise in codesign, museology, HCI, Linked Data, narratology, ontologies, visualisation and user modelling. "