CitizenHeritage

Citizen Science Practices in Cultural Heritage: towards a Sustainable Model in Higher Education

CitizenHeritage leverages citizen science practices in the Cultural Heritage sector and makes them sustainable at Universities

CitizenHeritage will provide Higher Education Institutions with new insights and opportunities to include Citizen Science activities for social purposes into Higher Education Institutions curricula, teaching and learning activities. It will offer them a selection of good practices on how to benefit from the knowledge circulation in and outside academia and how to adopt a more vibrant role in civil society. The digital realm, with the digitisation of vast collections published in open access, and the growing availability of tools for online engagement and interaction, opens up incredible new possibilities to further stimulate knowledge creation and circulation in cooperation with citizens.

The project includes three universities (KU Leuven, National Technical University of Athens and Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam), two Europeana domain aggregators (Photoconsortium and European Fashion Heritage Association) and one specialized SME (Web2Learn).

Citizen Heritage is co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, project number 2020-1-BE02-KA203-074727.

An innovative approach:

Engaging citizens in education and cultural heritage curation

A general reappraisal of citizen generated content is taking place in the cultural sector today. Cultural Heritage Institutions are constantly looking for new ways to involve citizens in their activities.

Collaboration with the Cultural Heritage sector

The project will engage with stakeholders and professionals in the digital cultural heritage domain, establing collaboration for knowledge sharing and co-curation between academics and stakeholders.

Focus on technological innovation and participation

The project aims to test how the latest technological innovations to manage digital cultural heritage can support and enhance Citizen Science participation, both from a pedagogical and heritage perspective.

Favouring sustainability

CitizenHeritage will explore the degree to which Citizen Science can be an element to stimulate sustainability by promoting social ownership of cultural heritage knowledge. To do so, this project proposes the conceptualization of cultural heritage activities engagement as a cultural common in which value is created by social engagement between Higher Education Institutions, Cultural Heritage Institutions and citizens at large. The project will also examine the conditions under which Citizen Science makes both socially and economically sustainable contributions.

A project about Citizen Science

CitizenHeritage takes the citizen science approach to the world of
cultural heritage, where the digital realm creates new opportunities to reach out to broader audiences and facilitate community building. The project encourages citizen science in cultural heritage through the application of crowdsourcing and co-creation tools leveraging open digital collections of European heritage.

The project will deliver a full cycle of citizen science activities that will allow citizens to contribute both on a short and middle to long-term period to participate in higher education and scientific open access outputs. The activities will be coordinated by the universities through their scientific networks and integrated with the university training of students.