Digital Tools in the Service of Difficult Heritage: How Recent Research Can Benefit Museums and their Audiences

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This proposal sets out to realize unanticipated impacts of the AHRC 'Cultural Value' project AH/L014424/1 'Experiencing the Digital World: the Cultural Value of Digital Engagement with Heritage'. We will work with the National Holocaust Centre, the Thackray Medical Museum and the Science Museum to realize the practical potential of the original project's findings on the ways in which digital tools can support the co-production of museum exhibitions and resources with diverse audiences. While this potential was uncovered during the original project, we now seek to test how this might work in practice. Our three partners, all of which were involved in the original project, are currently redeveloping their digital strategies in the light of our research findings, with the aims of broadening the demographic range of their visitors, and seeking new and better ways to engage visitors, particularly in the exploration of 'difficult' histories, challenging subjects and traumatic experiences. Our follow-on funding project will allow our partners to achieve these aims, ensuring that they realize the full impact potential of our original project in a way that could not be attained on their own. Moreover, it will also generate synergies with other areas of expertise within the academic team, not explicitly invoked in the original project, that will significantly enhance its reach in ways we had not previously envisaged. The National Holocaust Centre is currently focused on working with ethnically-diverse groups of primary-school children to explore the legacy of the Holocaust in contemporary debates on social discrimination and prejudice. The Thackray Medical Museum is developing a new exhibition on childbirth and its attendant risks, which it wishes to be informed by the experience of its visitors. The Science Museum is looking to work with disabilities support groups on an exhibition about the impact of the First World War on our understanding of disability and mental illness. We will work with each museum to exploit the potential of digital engagement to co-produce an online exhibition and supporting digital materials with appropriate community groups that the museums are seeking to reach, while also providing an opportunity for each to learn from the experience of the other museums involved in the project. These cases can provide valuable insight into how digital technologies can transform our engagement with heritage: lessons which can prove useful for other museums, galleries and heritage organisations seeking to open their curatorial strategy to new approaches, ideas and experiences.