Citizen curation: the future of cultural heritage | H-FARM Innovation

Elder people, children and teenagers, asylum seekers, people with medical conditions, citizens from different religious and secular communities are all groups at risk of exclusion from participation and decision-making in activities related to cultural heritage.

Thanks to SPICE, a project supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Programme, citizens will be supported in taking part in curatorially-inspired activities such as collecting, storytelling and exhibition design. They will be involved in decision-making processes within museums, archives and cultural and scientific collections — thus becoming citizen curators.

Through CELI (our company specialized in artificial intelligence and natural language computing), we are one of the 14 partners.

The others are GVAM (mobile guided experiences), Padaone (mobile games), Design Museum Helsinki, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Gallery of Modern Art Turin, Hecht Museum, and 7 research centers (Bologna, Aalto, Aalborg, OU, UCM, Turin, Haifa, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) with expertise in co-design, museology, human–computer interaction, linked data, narratology, ontologies, visualization and user modeling.

Through digital and non-digital technologies, citizens will be encouraged to actively care for art and cultural objects. They will be supported to develop their own personal interpretations, collaborate to present their collective view of life through culture and heritage, and gain an appreciation of alternative cultural viewpoints.

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 to enable inclusive participation in citizen curation activities across cultures and abilities.