Culture Labs: recipes for social innovation

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CultureLabs (Culture Labs: recipes for social innovation)

Periodo di rendicontazione: 2019-04-01 al 2021-07-31

The Horizon2020 Research and Innovation CultureLabs (2018-2021) project investigated, proposed, and tested in practice participatory models that create bridges between institutional and communities’ cultural heritage, with a particular focus on the engagement of migrant and refugee communities. In dialogue with ongoing practices in the field, the findings and achievements of the CultureLabs project come to offer a timely and fresh perspective on the social role that cultural heritage can play. How can cultural heritage institutions promote social inclusion and particularly the inclusion of under-represented or marginalised communities? And how can digital technologies facilitate the adoption of socially purposeful and participatory practices in this context?

In order to gain a better understanding about the current situation in the intersection of cultural heritage and social innovation, the CultureLabs project has collected and analysed multiple perspectives from institutional and community actors involved in the field. The research findings of this analysis shed new light to the complex relationship between migrant communities and Cultural Heritage institutions and have guided the contributions of the project, which can be categorized along three dimensions: the digital technologies dimension; the policy dimension; and the practical one.

The technical dimension

CultureLabs has developed an online platform that aims to streamline and facilitate the organisation of participatory projects. The platform makes openly available and searchable a rich pool of resources, including policies, methodologies, digital tools, descriptions of past participatory projects representing good practices, as well as novel ideas for new projects that can facilitate social innovation through culture. These resources, which we call “ingredients”, can be combined in various ways to form a “recipe” that describes the process of carrying out a participatory project. Through a well-defined template and multiple functionalities, users are guided to capture the “internal” knowledge of projects, by including information about the steps followed, the challenges encountered, tips and resources that can be useful for the replication of similar projects in the future. The platform also offers a set of added-value functionalities that allow users to collaborate with each other on a common project and adapt existing recipes to their own needs.

The practical dimension

Four different recipes for participatory projects have been implemented as pilot actions in Finland, Italy, and the United Kingdom, to demonstrate and evaluate in practice how various means of creative interactions with cultural heritage can engage different migrant and refugee groups, with the ultimate aim to promote intercultural understanding and social inclusion.
- “Zoom In On Heritage” in Helsinki, Finland was led by Museovirasto, the Finnish Heritage Agency, and involved members of the Russian-speaking minority and a group of women migrants.
- “More in Common” in Manchester, UK was led by the People’s History Museum and created opportunities for people with diverse backgrounds living in Greater Manchester to meet, discuss, and explore what they have ‘in common’.
- “Bridging Culture Through Arts” in Ancona, Italy was led by Cooperative Sociale Marche Onlus and brought together migrants and locals living in a neglected neighbourhood with multicultural variety.
- “So distant, incredibly close” in Pisa was led by Fondazione Systema Toscana and engaged sub-saharan migrants and women with several migration backgrounds living in the area of Pisa.

The policy dimension

Building on the empirical findings of the needs analysis, the literature research of past and ongoing participatory projects, and on the hands-on experience gained from the pilots, CultureLabs has also produced a set of policy recommendations which can be useful for policy makers at the EU, national, regional and local levels as well as decision makers in museums and other organisations from the Cultural Heritage sector who wish to assume a socially active role and engage with communities and in particular with migrant and refugee communities.

CultureLabs has thoroughly investigated the interests, needs, and current practices of a wide range of actors, including institutional stakeholders from different sectors as well as actors from the civic society and migrant communities. Moreover, extensive data on user requirements for the CultureLabs online platform have been collected and analysed to guide the implementation work, leading to a fully-functional platform prototype at TRL between 6 and 7. Currently, there are more than 200 ingredients of various types to be found on the platform as well as more than 40 recipes, which either describe past projects representing good practices or ideas for new projects. All methods exposed by the platform are openly available through 62 REST API methods, which are documented on Swagger and can be invoked by third-party applications for performing different interactions with the CultureLabs backend (e.g. retrieve, add, edit and share resources etc). The platform has been evaluated by different types of users and has received very positive feedback. Moreover, the four pilot projects organised in the framework of the project have directly engaged and benefited more than 380 participants and led to multiple and impressive creative and social outcomes, from physical exhibitions and webcomics to digital photographic exhibitions and costume constructions. Finally, a set of recommendations addressed to organisations and policy makers have been produced.

All results of the projects have been disseminated via various channels, including scientific publications; presentations at numerous events; the project website and magazine; via the production of rich video material; on social media; on press media; via workshops and seminars organised by project participants.

Exploitation plans for each of the project's exploitable assets have been defined and initial steps towards their implementation taken, such as the foundation of a spinoff for exploiting the online platform; plans for using and enriching the platform in the context of future projects; plans to capitalise pilots' outcomes (e.g. exhibit them in new premises); plans for scientific/academic capitalisation (e.g. edited book); plans for promoting policy recommendations to local and regional actors.

CultureLabs created societal impact through participatory activities that foster cultural integration and social equity. It cultivated a greater sense of collective CH production and ownership in the community, fostered equity feeling, social and cultural integration and combated xenophobia; it promoted communities’ well-being and quality of life through social innovation in various domains (learning, career support, vocational training, etc.); and facilitated the sustainability and innovation of the organisations involved.

CultureLabs advancee the state of the art of research and practice at the intersections of CH and social innovation. It innovated the state of participatory heritage by operationalising its societal value through research findings, recommendations and methodologies, a knowledge base of good practices, and the functionalities offered by the digital platform.

CultureLabs partners at the project's ignition workshop

Photo from pilot

Photo from pilot exhibition

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CultureLabs (Culture Labs: recipes for social innovation)

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