Workshops

Citizen Science workshop

In the framework of the Citizen Heritage Erasmus+ project, PHOTOCONSORTIUM organizes a key event to discuss about citizen science in (digital) cultural heritage and education, also including a special co-creation activity aiming at engaging local citizens and communities with their tangible and intangible heritage. The event also builds upon the work and research carried out by successful past projects such as WeAreEuropeForCulture in Nicosia, PAGODE – Europeana China and WEAVE.

Abstract

Engaging citizens in education and cultural heritage curation and research is gaining a growing attention in the cultural sector today, as cultural heritage institutions are constantly looking for new ways to involve citizens in their activities and the link with education and communities’ inclusion actions is becoming more and more in focus.

Convincing exemplary projects have demonstrated how citizen engagement appeal and digital participation are essential in crisis situations such as climate change and pandemics. Yet the potential or the scope of community involvement in scientific research haven’t been fully explored so far, also in the light of adding to the process of inclusion and diversity representation, by bringing on the table the different views and counter-voices to what has been considered so far – and often unjustly – as canonized socio-historical and cultural narratives. CitizenHeritage project takes the citizen science approach to the world of cultural heritage, where the digital realm creates new opportunities to reach out to broader audiences and allow collective knowledge to bring new inputs to humanities and research. Additionally, in the post-covid scenario it is more important than ever to reconnect with local communities and the tangible and intangible heritage they feel represented with: this can be enabled by deploying compelling user engagement actions such as user-driven storytelling, co-creation, crowdsourcing and citizen participation. This workshop will allow participants to expand knowledge about concepts and enabling tools for citizen engagement with cultural heritage resources and research. It is addressed to cultural heritage professionals, digital humanities researchers, higher and secondary education sector, citizens, culture lovers and other interested users.

Cultural Tourism workshop

The event is organized 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. 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 is 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.

Abstract

Tourism is more than travelling and consumption; it has great potential when it comes to culture, nature, knowledge and personal experiences. Travelling is a way to learn and improve oneself, to enrich one’s vision and improve mutual understanding. The INCULTUM project deals with the challenges and opportunities of cultural tourism with the aim of furthering sustainable social, cultural and economic development. It is exploring the full potential of marginal and peripheral areas when managed by local communities and stakeholders. Innovative participatory approaches are adopted, transforming locals into protagonists, able to reduce negative impacts, learning from and improving good practices to be replicated and translated into strategies and policies.

Ten pilot cases of living territories and communities are investigated, and are expected to generate new knowledge about tourism sustainability and promotion. The implementation of advanced econometric methods and the pioneering introduction of machine-learning tools into tourism research will support data-driven solutions. Findings will suggest recommendations for effective and sustainable policies, create new synergies among public and private stakeholders, and new
paths to market for tourism promotion of local territories.

Scaffolding Creativity: Framework, toolchain, and case studies on how to Create Virtual Exhibitions

Due to COVID-19 pandemic museums have closed their premises for an extended period of time and artists have faced serious economic and social challenges, since the pandemic crisis demolished literally real-world exhibitions. In similar cases, ICT can provide valuable help to foster creativity and help museums and artists to present their artworks. From a technological perspective, eXtended Reality (XR) technologies, like mixed reality (MR), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), represent emerging research fields which allow real-time streaming and replication of physical artifacts through 5G. Such challenges are common; therefore, they require a cross-sectoral perspective to achieve and incorporate far-reaching solutions allowing to understand the diverse needs and challenges of virtual exhibitions. The vision to scaffold the creativity by supporting museums and artists to create, publish and disseminate various kinds of virtual exhibitions in a seamless, innovative, and easy-to-use way is by definition a multi-disciplinary research and development endeavor.

The event will provide an opportunity for stakeholders and all those interested to learn about the recent developments in virtual exhibitions to share, exchange and discuss their expertise as well as practices in this field. This will enable them to gain insights in relation to this expanding field from a variety of perspectives. The event will focus on identifying technologies of digitization, documentation, digital preservation, dissemination, and presentation bringing together researchers and practitioners that will present best practices, success stories and use cases from various leveraging issues on virtual museums, digital collections, technologies, and open-source tools. Emphasis will also be given to identifying ways forward, especially in relation to synthesizing existing approaches, as well as improving or adapting them for specific needs or contexts, through the exchange of suggestions offered by participating stakeholders.

The workshop is organized by the ERASMUS+ project ‘Scaffolding Creativity of Arts Students: Framework, Toolchain, and Educational Material on how to Create their Own Virtual Exhibitions’ – For more info about the project you can visit the project website: http://creams-project.eu/index.php

Organisers

Workshop: Digital Technologies and the future of Illicit trafficking of Cultural Property

This workshop focuses on the latest developments in the use of technologies in the field of illicit antiquities research and on the multidisciplinary dimensions of heritage protection. Various academics will present some of the most important and recent projects, including cross-disciplinary research on already repatriated antiquities and the monitoring of the international antiquities market. European and national funding enabled these academics to research new paths involving technological tools for monitoring, safeguarding, and protecting cultural goods through enhancing authenticity, provenance and traceability. The purpose of the workshop is both to inform the cultural heritage stakeholders and the public about the latest projects related to illicit antiquities research, and, most importantly, to widen the discussion on new institutional approaches and on developing interdisciplinary projects and methodologies for implementing technological tools.

Speakers:

Data Space in Cultural Heritage during the Digital Transformation: The case of Greece and Cyprus

The event is organized by the H2020 MNEMOSYNE project, to discuss how cultural heritage (CH) institutionsin Greece and Cyprus faces the challenges of the digital transition and to emphasize how the developed MNEMOSYNE methodology for a holistic digital documentation can help and support all the CH stakeholders and creative industry. 

Abstract

Cultural heritage assets have been constantly undergoing changes and degradations over time, due to environmental conditions, destruction by human intervention.To preserve the knowledge of the past, all the CH monuments, sites and objects should be protected with the greatest safety measures from environmental and human interventions and must be thoroughly studied and recorded holistically through digitization (tangible and intangible).

The proposed common European data space for cultural heritage is fully supporting the transformation of Europe’s cultural sector, and foster the creation and reuse of content in cultural and creative sectors. Therefore, this workshop is trying to give an inside of the work achieved in the last years in key museums in Greece and Cyprus and highlight the different challenges and future risks (current technical, financial, administrative, and legal barriers).

Speakers, Institutions, Titles of the Presentation: