Civic Epistemologies Research Project

While working at Coventry University’s  Centre for Dance Research I had the opportunity to work on a project that looked at Cultural Heritage content from the user’s perspective.  The CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project was about the participation of citizens in research on cultural heritage and humanities. http://www.civic-epistemologies.eu/

ICT are powerful drivers of creativity, but specific technical know-how is still generally lacking in the creative industries sectors. In addition, humanities scholarship is not yet taking full advantage of ICT to engage with wider audiences. New skills are needed to enable the cultural sector to grasp employment and commercial opportunities.

The project developed and validated a Roadmap for the use of e-Infrastructures to support the participation of European citizens in research on cultural heritage and digital humanities. Critically, the Roadmap offered support for improved social cohesion arising from the sharing of knowledge and understanding of Europe’s citizens common and individual cultures.

For the project, I was responsible for the Focus Group held in Barcelona, Spain http://www.civic-epistemologies.eu/the-second-focus-group-held-in-barcelona-by-the-coventry-university/ and two case studies carried out in Coventry, UK.  The two case studies were conducted in task T4.2 separated in two sub-tasks for clearer distinction. T4.2.1 ‘Hidden’ cultural heritage –inclusion, access and citizenship: The value of Citizen Science was a case study that examined how community groups of citizens engage with cultural heritage and participate in the generation and reuse of cultural heritage using digital technologies. The second case study T4.2.2 Local Cultural Heritage – inclusion, access and economic development: The value of Citizen Science, examined the contribution citizen science can make to generating new perspectives and understandings of the contribution of specifically local cultural heritage to local economic regeneration and growth.  The full deliverable can be found here: http://www.civic-epistemologies.eu/project/