Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Cultural heritage represents one of the most important drivers for personal development, social cohesion and economic growth in Europe. Although the general population is aware of this fact, cultural heritage is still underexplored and cultural activities are not incorporated into citizens’ lifestyle. Technology offers a potential to increase awareness about cultural offerings and create a public engagement with Culture. The current digital solutions adopted by cultural heritage institutions fail to achieve a lifelong engagement, and thus do not support institutions in increasing the number of visitors and retaining them. This chapter illustrates how cloud-based technologies can be exploited to increase a cultural lifelong engagement. We use the cloud to support technologies that enable adaptive and personalised cultural experiences according to individuals’ interests, co-creation of cultural heritage experiences, and active user contribution to social storytelling. The work presented here is a result of the European co-funded project TAG CLOUD.

Urban cultural heritage festivals have a long tradition of contributing to the cultural and economic development of towns and cities around the world. Moreover, the increasing role of culture in city making has rendered them spaces of consumption, entertainment, pleasure, and festivity. Large European events such as London’s Notting Hill Carnival, Berlin’s Carnival of Cultures, and the Rotterdam Summer Carnival attract huge global audiences. Despite being mass gatherings where representations can be extreme, virtual, and somewhat fleeting, the intensity and intimacy of social interactions generated at festivals can induce a sense of belonging. Festivals are thus sites where community values, identity and cultural continuity are performed. In this sense, they are connected to cultures and to places, can help bind people to their communities, foster and reinforce group identity, and are central to the transmission of tradition. The ephemerality of festivals, as well as the inconvenience, expense, and gentrification-effects to which such large scale events can contribute, has led to questions about their ability to sustain community cohesion and socio-economic wellbeing. Drawing on the example of London’s Notting Hill Carnival, this chapter explores the extent to which urban cultural heritage festivals can be regarded as catalysts in the promotion of community cohesion. Findings from this exploratory study suggest that the event promotes a sense of belonging and cohesion in an urban space, particularly amongst younger age groups in the community, as well as festivalgoers more generally.

This chapter will examine the role of co-design methods in relation to the recent () that took place between 2013 and 2015 at the University of Leeds. It will draw on the experiences of conducting the project and broader critical frames to examine the nature of collaborative working in the field of cultural heritage and storytelling. It will outline the lessons we have learned from the process and the ways in which the relationships between citizens and cultural institutions are central to working in the heritage sector. It seeks to advocate for the necessity of collaborative methods in the creation of cultural heritage tools that are trusted and adopted by communities.

Cultural heritage is a perishable resource that is not renewable and is at constant risk of permanent loss. Galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) have traditionally been regarded as the guardians and gatekeepers of a nation’s culture and have taken on the role of “protecting” heritage. This traditional role can now be extended to incorporate the curation of digital cultural heritage, including that sourced by citizens (crowdsourced). By asking the public for their assistance to preserve their heritage, albeit by digital means, two objectives are achieved. One outcome is the creation and preservation of digital cultural heritage for future generations. Another significant outcome is that crowdsourcing provides a conduit for increased public engagement with heritage that is of significance and relevance to them. The current ability to crowdsource digital cultural heritage potentially challenges the role and status of GLAMs as primary caretakers of heritage. Since the public can play a greater role in preserving their heritage, authoritative control will need to be reconsidered and adapted to align with heritage that has been deemed important by people. Irrespective of these challenges the opportunity to digitally preserve heritage should take precedence, especially in high risk countries facing conflict and socio-political unrest. This chapter will highlight some of the challenges of engaging people with crowdsourcing cultural heritage and the requirement of designing appropriate engagement strategies. The need for crowdsourcing Afghan cultural heritage will be considered given that it is currently facing many threats to its preservation for future generations.

In recent years there has been an increasing number of websites dedicated to providing information about the Spanish Republican exile. These are generally created by exile descendants’ associations, research groups or private individuals. The recent growth of social networks, especially Twitter and Facebook, has simplified the exchange of this information and allowed the culture of the Republican exile to spread through the Internet and beyond, also influencing the scientific literature on this topic. This paper aims to analyse how the memory of the exile has grown through the Web with the passing of time and to examine the channels of communication that have become places of identity and belonging for the exiles, creating and enhancing a culture that permeates not only communities interested in the subject, but also people not directly linked to it. At the same time, it also aims to lay the foundations, for the first time, for the study of the memory of the exile in the digital domain. We start by recounting the burgeoning creation of websites and social media groups devoted to the republican exile, from 1998 to 2015, and link it with both contemporary Spanish political events and an in-depth look at recent Twitter activity. We then move to a fresh look at the digitised literature in Spanish on this topic present in the Google Books corpus, and finish by exploring the results from an online survey conducted in order to gain an insight into the motivations behind the increasing interest in the Spanish Republican Exile in contemporary global society.

This work focuses on how going ‘digital’ had an impact on and still influences Chinese culture. After a period in which Chinese tradition and culture has been undermined, since the 1980s until now China has entered a phase of rapid economic development, but the development of culture and education has not always equally kept pace. Universal education is still a problem for China, and Chinese tradition risks becoming a ‘relic’. Now, we want to rebuild our culture, get back our traditions. With digital technology, getting knowledge from our history becomes easier for everybody. It will let people understand tradition faster, and be educated faster. It will also let us protect our cultural heritage better. This chapter also investigates how Chinese artists work with the ‘digital’ and how Chinese people are experiencing the cultural changes of this digital era.