expected results and outcomes
CitizenHeritage comprises various types of activities, in a workflow which will understand, experiment with, and assess participatory approaches and methodologies to enable Citizen Science and crowdsourcing unlock the educational and research potential specifically in Cultural Heritage practice and learning.
The communication of CitizenHeritage project is curated by Photoconsortium Association.
In detail, the project will produce the following results:
- review of practices of Higher Education engagement in citizen enhanced open science in the area of cultural heritage
Exploring the role of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) as incubators of the next generation open science citizens, in terms of staff and student skills, curricula and interdisciplinarity, and as institutions situated in a broader social context where citizens advocate a more important role in decision taking in modern societies with active citizenship, civic engagement, bottom-up public intervention, unlocking the still unused potential in connecting the user engagement generated through civic participation with the open science cycle.
CitizenHeritage produced a substantial, evidence-based Study for a review of practices of Higher Education engagement in citizen enhanced open science in the area of cultural heritage. It defined best practices regarding HEI organisation, open practice, sustainability, and civic engagement. It also identified untapped potential where HEIs can play a more active role thus to connect civic engagement with the open science virtuous circle, in the Cultural Heritage sector.
Until 15 February 2021 a Survey was open for collecting inputs about projects including Citizen Science in cultural heritage.
The results of the Survey and of the desktop research that converged in the Study were published in a open access report that summarizes the findings. The report was published in July 2022, on Zenodo with DOI https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6875125
Leader: Web2Learn
- methodology, user requirements and guidelines for Cultural Heritage Institutions and Universities
Improving methodologies of co-creation and user engagement with cultural heritage with better alignment within the educational context, also making students in Cultural Studies and Humanities closer to Cultural Heritage Institutions, thus lowering the threshold between the university and the later employment field.CitizenHeritage will develop a coherent methodology, based on university research and professional practice in heritage institutions, to better integrate crowdsourcing, citizen science and co-creation into the workflow of cultural heritage institutions. This result will be beneficial to both researchers in HEIs and collaborators in CHIs, since it will provide them with essential knowledge on how to fully exploit the possibilities of the digital transformation for citizen engagement. The methodology will include user requirements and guidelines.
Leader: KU Leuven
- development and testing of participatory approaches
Setting up, organizing and running a series of participatory activities and workshops that will involve researchers and professionals from the HEIs and CHIs in order to produce and test innovative approaches for Citizen Science in the Cultural Heritage field.CitizenHeritage will produce and test models and tools for enabling different communities engage with digital cultural heritage collections, by organizing various types of co-creation activities and participatory workshops in collaboration with Cultural Heritage Institutions, involving both university students/staff and citizens who do not belong to the education sector.
Leader: European Fashion Heritage Association
- lessons learnt about the role of digital technologies in facilitating crowd science in cultural heritage and education
Smart and user-friendly digital technologies offer innovative means for motivating citizens, and especially young people, to contribute to cultural heritage research and practice.CitizenHeritage will investigate and test in practice the use of ICT as a facilitator and mediator of citizen science in Cultural Heritage and Higher Education, spreading awareness about the potential of using appropriate digital tools for the mutual benefit of institutions and citizens. To do so, it will build on the collaboration between researchers and students with technical expertise on one hand, and with professionals, students and citizens with a background in humanities on the other. The outcomes of the lessons learnt from this collaboration will be described in a comprehensive report which will overview good practices, identify needs for new ICT services, and discuss the maintainability and exploitation potential of ICT-enabled approaches.
Leader: National Technical University of Athens
- economic and social sustainability of citizen enhanced open heritage projects
Limited resources and increased need for social relevance are two important reasons driving Cultural Heritage Institutions to involve the crowd in their activities, often in collaboration with Higher Education Institutions. The sustainability of the generated knowledge is a common core activity of both institutions, making collaborative actions natural to reach that end.CitizenHeritage will examine the conditions favoring sustainability of results gathered from collaborations between HEIs and CHIs in Citizen Science projects. Sustainability will be considered both in the use of resources as well as the social engagement with the leading institution. The aim is to develop a framework for the evaluation of social and economic sustainability based on various identified key elements, answering answer whether (1) Citizen Science projects can stimulate citizen engagement to increase CH activities; (2) public support is conductive to increase private support and in what forms; (3) HEIs can serve as anchors to improve sustainability of Citizen Science projects; and (4) citizen enhanced open projects have a greater sustainability rate when embedded in HEI curricula.
Leader: Erasmus Univesiteit
The expected results mentioned above correspond to the project’s Intellectual Outputs:
O1 – Review of practices of Higher Education engagement in citizen enhanced open science in the area of cultural heritage
O2 – Methodology, user requirements and guidelines for Cultural Heritage Institutions and Universities
O3 – Development and testing of participatory approaches
(O4 – Dissemination and Communication)
O5 – Lessons learnt about the role of digital technologies in facilitating crowd science in cultural heritage and education
O6 – Economic and social sustainability of citizen enhanced open heritage projects