Social cohesion, Participation, and Inclusion through Cultural Engagement

The overall aim of the project is to develop tools and methods to support the process of citizen curation in which citizens are supported in: developing their own personal interpretations of cultural objects, working in groups to present their own perspectives on heritage, and gaining an appreciation of alternative cultural viewpoints.
Methods will be co-designed 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 intra-group variety and inter-group similarity in order to facilitate social cohesion. A technical Linked Data infrastructure will support citizen curation in a way that does not tie content and citizens into social media platforms and that gives heritage institutions control over rights protected digital assets and access to citizen responses to their collections.
Interfaces will be co-designed to enable inclusive participation in citizen curation activities across cultures and abilities. Technology will be developed to enable activities to be scripted in productive ways that guide participation and understanding. A series of citizen curation case studies with museums and citizen groups will demonstrate how the approach can promote inclusive participation and social cohesion in a variety of contexts. The approach will provide an infrastructure for research in areas such as humanities, design and computing.

Citizen curation
Citizens are supported in developing interpretations of cultural objects, working together to present their collective view of life, and gaining an appreciation of alternative cultural viewpoints.

Codesign
We collaborate with museum professionals and citizens to design methods that can be used to develop, annotate, and share personal interpretations of cultural objects.

Social cohesion
We develop tools and methods to assist citizens in appreciating similarities and differences within and across community groups to build empathy and understanding.