Call for Participation 2019

Call for Participation

The inaugural Heritage Dot conference ‘Joining the Dots: Partnerships, Participation and Platforms’ took place on 3-4 June 2019.

*Please note: the Call for Participation is now closed*

Heritage Dot explores the exciting collision between the worlds of digital tools and technology and cultural heritage. This fusion is creating new relationships between past and future, tradition and innovation. It is enabling 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 landscape of diminishing access to resources.

We invite practitioners, professionals, researchers and anyone with an interest in digital cultural heritage to present your work – which may be a completed project or one in progress – to Heritage Dot. Participants are encouraged to contribute in a range of formats, such as talks, interactive displays, papers, demonstrations, panels, posters, workshops or boot camps. All can be accommodated within the conference programme.

Submissions are especially sought that investigate or relate to the main conference theme ‘Joining the Dots: Partnerships, Participation and Platforms’ or the suggested topics listed below, but we also welcome proposals that explore other aspects of digital cultural heritage. We are particularly interested in proposals that:

Partnerships

• Explore the ways in which practitioners, professionals and researchers can work in partnership across digital-cultural heritage terrains: more than ever, teamwork seems fundamental to success
• Highlight innovations and innovative projects straddling sectors / media / borders / technologies. How are collaborations advancing the digital horizon?
• Seek to understand what a positive client/supplier relationship feels like in digital cultural heritage projects
• Illustrate the benefits and complexities of collaborative working (capacity building, access to funding, skills sharing, increasing reach & visibility, aligning strategic aims/practices, bridging knowledge gaps)
• Engage with managing and responding to the expectations of parent, leading industry and government bodies. Can partnerships strengthen advocacy?

Participation

• Share experiences and identify opportunities to develop confidence, skills and expertise that leads to greater participation by, and successful outcomes for, those involved in preserving, curating and using digital cultural heritage
• Investigate inclusivity and diversity in the context of digital cultural heritage: who is in and who is out? Why? How do we enact change?
• Highlight the achievements and challenges of digital projects/initiatives aimed at diverse, young, hard-to-reach and isolated audiences. What was the roadmap/what were the obstacles to successful outcomes?
• Explore the value, role and practicalities of virtual participation: crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, virtual volunteering/networks/collaborations
• Problematise how shifting technological/user/regulatory contexts impact on digital practice and ability to participate (born digital heritage, interoperability of systems, user behaviours/trends, copyright/data protection)

Platforms

• Identify key challenges and lessons learnt in delivering innovative and effective digital solutions and platforms that support access to cultural heritage
• Offer insights into future and emerging technologies and the relationship between digital tools for access and preservation. What are the practical considerations?
• Examine the main issues faced by, and opportunities offered to, cultural heritage practitioners in using digital platforms to engage audiences
• Consider the ways in which digital platforms enrich or disrupt cultural heritage
• Demonstrate the harnessing of new and emerging applications of digital technology for the analysis of cultural heritage

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.

The deadline for submission of proposals was 14^th January 2019 – due to high demand and requests for late submissions, this was extended for a short time to 25th January 2019.

Heritage Dot is an international conference focusing on digital cultural heritage and developed by the University of Lincoln. 2019’s conference was jointly hosted by University of Lincoln, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Imperial War Museums (IWM) and is supported by a number of heritage sector and academic partners.