Collaborative approaches to cultural heritage for social cohesion

While a key mission of the cultural heritage sector is to provide inclusive access, some socio-cultural groups are still not sufficiently integrated in cultural heritage experiences. The challenge is to improve the design of cultural experiences by enhancing participatory and collaborative approaches and by fostering mutual cultural understanding and resilient strategies.

Scope

Proposals should develop strategies for fostering collaborative and participative approaches to cultural encounters via communication channels such as social media platforms, participatory approaches, art and co-designed activities. Proposals should consider both tangible and intangible heritage, researching new applications and tools that allow for a more inclusive approach such as digital tagging of objects or co-authoring of societal and place-based memories. The active involvement and engagement with, different groups or communities such as migrants and other communities at risk of exclusion should be promoted. Proposals should design options for these social groups to review or shape both contemporary and historical content, contribute new material or customise and personalise cultural heritage and digital humanities content in a meaningful and effective way. Collaborative tools and applications should help the cultural tourism sectors and cultural heritage institutions, NGOs, community organisations etc. in Europe and beyond to enhance the analysis and understanding of cultures and communities.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 3 and 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact

The action will contribute to fostering cultural diversity and social cohesion and to the recognition of multiple identities and voices. It will also have a positive impact on cultural institutions by attracting contributions from and boosting involvement of new audiences. In addition, the action will provide disciplines such as computing, design and the social science and humanities with new research tools.