About

Heritage Dot focuses on the ways in which heritage practitioners, professionals and researchers can work together in delivering innovative and effective digital cultural heritage

Heritage Dot is an international conference focusing on the ways in which heritage practitioners, professionals and researchers can work together to deliver innovative and effective digital cultural heritage. The conference is hosted by the Centre for Culture & Creativity at the University of Lincoln and is supported by a number of heritage sector and academic partners, including the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Imperial War Museums.

The second Heritage Dot conference ‘HDot 2.0: Ambition, Access & Added Value’ took place online on the 22nd March 2023.

Heritage Dot explores the exciting collision between the worlds of digital tools and technology and cultural heritage. This fusion creates new relationships between past and future, tradition, and innovation. It enables new audiences to reinterpret the past and technologies of the future to reimagine professional practice. At the same time, its continually evolving nature can be a confusing space, placing demands on people and organisations within a changing landscape in terms of access to resources.

2019’s inaugural conference, ‘Joining the Dots’, proposed that partnerships are becoming ever more crucial to the success and survival of organisations and projects involved in the preservation of and access to cultural heritage in the digital age. This first edition of the conference explored how collaborations and the use of digital tools and technologies can be effectively employed to increase participation in cultural heritage.

The conference recognised that those working in the sector often feel isolated or lack resources and expertise in their attempts to satisfy increasingly discerning, diverse and hard-to-reach audiences. Sometimes it is difficult to perceive what the added value of digital could be, how to define, manage and resource what is required, and understand the opportunities, solutions and expertise available. Heritage Dot brings together those in higher education and cultural heritage organisations to share ideas, practice, and experience to provide practical insights and move debates forward on the role of digital in cultural heritage.

HDot 2.0 therefore aimed to:

• Share ambitions, experiences, and best practice for next steps in using, preserving, curating and funding digital cultural heritage, and making it sustainable
• Identify access needs, empowerment and co-creation opportunities, challenges and lessons learnt in delivering innovative and effective digital solutions that have increased engagement with cultural heritage
• Explore the ways in which digital solutions have added value to engagement with heritage during the pandemic: what do these dynamic, responsive solutions look like?

There has been a huge leap forward in terms of digital engagement as a consequence of the pandemic – from participants and users, to memory institutions hastening the production of digital content – yet there remains an enormous and widening digital divide. Building on the theme of partnerships, it is relevant to consider how co-creation can help to bridge this divide.

Heritage Dot takes a broad view of cultural heritage, from landscapes and the built environment to individual sites and collections across different media, including virtual representations. It encompasses intangible and tangible cultural heritage whether held by galleries, libraries, archives, museums or elsewhere.

Timetable:

• Call for participation – closed 22nd January 2023
• Book a ticket – now closed
• Draft programme announced – late February 2023
• Finalised programme – early March 2023
• Conference – 22nd March 2023

Conference Organisation

We would like to thank the following for contributing to the preparation of the conference: