Archives, Assets and Audiences: new modes to engage audiences with archival content and heritage sites

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The arts and humanities have a strong tradition of building, maintaining and using archives as part of their research. The creative industries also exploit archives, but refer to them as databases of assets from which they generate experiences for public audiences. In turn, social media now enable these audiences to contribute back to archives by commenting, tagging, annotating and uploading their own media.Our proposal addresses the potential for a productive collision of archives, assets and audiences to the benefit of all concerned by bringing together academics with the creative industries, and engaging both with diverse audiences. In order to drive this vision forward, we will focus on industrial heritage as a target sector of the creative industries, specifically on the three themes of i) enlightenment and innovation; ii) cultures of work, welfare and play; and iii) the rise, fall and re-invention of industry. This focus builds on the rich heritage of our region; the expertise of our three university partners, Nottingham, Leicester, and Nottingham Trent; and the interests and resources of a wide network of industry and cultural partners.Our objectives are to engage external partners, grow our capacity for knowledge exchange, deliver a portfolio of demonstrator projects, and ensure the future sustainability of our approach. We will achieve this through a year-long programme of engagement activities (theme launch days and a final symposium); mobility and training activities (knowledge exchange fellowships and student internships); feasibility projects; and sustainability activities (ingenuity and reflection workshops). As part of our programme we will work with the REACT Hub in particular to complement their Heritage Sandbox currently underway but which will have concluded by the start of our programme. The Director of REACT, Prof. John Dovey, will sit on the steering group to aid complementarity and shared learning.