Building sustainability and informing policy: The MicroPasts programme of knowledge exchange

这个后续项目将以最初的micropast项目（“群众和社区推动的考古研究”）取得的成功成果为基础，并将通过两个相互关联的知识交流项目推进这些成果，这将对遗产政策和实践，以及micropast的开发者和贡献者产生变革性和持久的影响。micropast最初获得了AHRC艺术和人文领域社区研究合作生产数字化转型的资助，在18个月的时间里（2013年10月1日至2015年3月31日），该团队开发、实施并开始评估一种新的模式，以支持考古、历史和遗产领域的合作研究，该模式结合了众包、共同设计和众筹。我们现在建议进行知识交流和进一步评估，目的有两个：(1)研究并建立一个长期可持续的社区主导的平台和项目管理模式，以及(2)为英国的遗产政策和实践提供信息，并指导使用众包和/或众筹的参与性项目的投资。考虑到这些目标，我们计划让对micropast感兴趣的贡献者参与讨论，讨论他们如何负责micropast网站的日常运行，然后开发技术资源、指导方针和技能，这些都是社区主导的平台和项目管理模式全面运作所必需的。我们希望与遗产界的政策制定者、分析师和从业者一起，回顾micropast迄今为止所进行的评估方法和结果，引导人们进一步思考和了解使用众包和众筹为个人、社区和遗产带来的好处，以及如何最好地利用这些好处。我们将响应micropast贡献者的愿望，推动micropast迄今为止的工作，并帮助维护micropast生命周期中创建的数字资源，以便他们能够继续使用并从中受益。此外，与志愿人员的知识交流方案将为贡献者和目前的核心工作人员提供有意义的学习机会，这对就业和职业发展也很重要。除了显著加强micropast的共同创造性质外，我们期望这种社区主导的管理模式可能为其他使用众包或众筹的基于网络的参与性项目的长期可持续性提供一个范例。这个知识交流计划将制作教程和指南，任何人都可以免费下载和重复使用。此外，文物政策制订者和从业员之间的知识交流，将会弥补很大的知识差距，让他们了解如何与公众进行更多的参与性和数字化互动合作，以支持文物机构在经济衰退的背景下重新设计和改善其服务。此外，该项目将帮助遗产机构和资助机构面对评估社区和人群推动的项目的众多技术、伦理和方法挑战。这部分的知识交流计划将通过研讨会讨论进行，随后将撰写一份摘要论文和评估指南，以及一份关于micropast评估的完整报告。这些资源将在网上提供，但也会直接在与项目人员及其拟议合作者有联系的广泛的文物专业人士网络中传播。

This Follow-on project will build on the successful results achieved by the original MicroPasts project ('Crowd- and Community-Fuelled Archaeological Research') and will take them forward via two linked programmes of knowledge exchange that will have a transformative and long-lasting impact on heritage policy and practice, as well as on MicroPasts developers and contributors. MicroPasts initially received funding under the AHRC call for Digital Transformations in Community Research Co-Production in the Arts and Humanities and, over its 18 month duration (1 October 2013-31 March 2015), the team have developed, implemented and started to evaluate a novel model to support collaborative research in archaeology, history and heritage that draws on a combination of crowd-sourcing, co-design and crowd-funding. We now propose to undertake knowledge exchanges and further evaluation with two aims: (1) to study and enable a community-led model of platform and project management that is sustainable in the longer-term, and (2) to inform heritage policy and practice in the UK, and guide investments in participatory projects that use crowd-sourcing and/or crowd-funding. With those aims in mind, we plan to engage interested MicroPasts contributors in discussions about how they might take responsibility for the day-to-day running of the MicroPasts websites, and then develop the technical resources, guidelines and skills that are necessary for a community-led model of platform and project management to become fully operational. With policy-makers, analysts and practitioners in the heritage sector, we wish to review the methods and results of the evaluation conducted over the lifetime of MicroPasts so far, to steer further reflection and develop knowledge about the benefits generated by the use of crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding, for individuals, communities and heritage, and about how best to capture these benefits. We will respond to MicroPasts contributors' stated desire to take forward the work conducted until now and help maintain the digital resources created in the lifetime of MicroPasts, so that they can continue using and benefiting from them. In addition, the knowledge exchange programme with volunteers will offer both contributors and current core staff meaningful learning opportunities, which can also be important for employment and career development purposes. Beyond significantly strengthening the co-creative nature of MicroPasts, we expect that this model of community-led management could potentially provide an exemplar for the longer-term sustainability of other web-based participatory projects that use crowd-sourcing or crowd-funding. This knowledge exchange programme will produce tutorials and guidelines that will be made available open access for anyone to download and re-use.Furthermore, knowledge exchange among heritage policy-makers and practitioners will bridge a substantial knowledge gap about the ways in which more participatory and digitally interactive cooperation with the public can support heritage organisations in re-designing and improving their services in the context of economic downturn. In addition, the project will help heritage institutions and funding bodies to face the numerous technical, ethical and methodological challenges of evaluating community- and crowd-fuelled projects. This strand of the knowledge exchange programme will be conducted via workshop discussions, followed by the write up of a summary paper and evaluation guidelines, together with a full report on the MicroPasts evaluation. These resources will be made available online, but also circulated directly amongst the extensive network of heritage professionals with whom the project staff and their proposed collaborators are in contact.