ACCORD - Archaeology Community Co-Production of Research Data

The ACCORD project seeks to examine the opportunities and implications of digital visualisation technologies for community engagement and research through the co-creation of three-dimensional (3D) models of historic monuments and places. Despite their increasing accessibility, techniques such as laser scanning, 3D modelling and 3D printing have remained firmly in the domain of heritage specialists. Expert forms of knowledge and/or professional priorities frame the use of digital visualisation technologies, and forms of community-based social value are rarely addressed. Consequently, the resulting digital objects fail to engage communities as a means of researching and representing their heritage, despite the now widespread recognition of the importance of community engagement and social value in the heritage sector. The ACCORD project aims to address this gap through the co-design and co-production of an integrated research asset that addresses social value and engages communities with transformative digital technologies.

ACCORD will create a permanently archived open-access dataset of community co-produced 3D digital models of archaeological sites and monuments, integrated with expressions of social value and contextual documentation. The project will actively engage community groups that have ongoing relationships to heritage places in the process of creating 3D records and models of those places. With the support of visualisation technologists, community engagement practitioners, and experts in social value, each community group will design, direct and produce their own 3D objects. The use of digital technologies to enhance and generate forms of social significance will be an important outcome, adding distinctive value to existing heritage assets and our understandings of them. Community groups will be able to draw on the resulting digital datasets for various purposes, such as public presentation, education, and tourism initiatives. The records and models resulting from the project will also provide important research resources for community groups, heritage managers and academic researchers.

Evaluation will be an integral aspect of ACCORD project, examining the relationships between community groups, digital heritage professionals and the outputs they have created. This will include a review of the transformative aspects of the process, investigating changes in attitudes to 3D recording technologies during the life of the project, as well as the forms of significance, authenticity and value acquired by the resulting 3D objects. Ultimately, through the co-production of an open-access dataset, and the creation of a 'community of communities' engaged in sharing skills and experiences, ACCORD seeks to broaden capacity for the creation and reuse of digital visualisation technologies in community heritage activities and research.

Impact outside academia is core to the ACCORD project. This research will increase knowledge and understanding of the intersection between digital recording and visualisation activities and social value. The fieldwork activities will be of direct benefit to the community groups involved, allowing a critical reflection on the transformation of attitudes toward recording technologies and processes throughout the life of the project and enable self-sustaining activity from 'ground up' groups to take place in the future. The ACCORD project's focus on the creation of a 'community of communities', to continue after the life-time of the project, facilitated via a shared project web space, means that the initial benefits in terms of capacity building for skills and demystification of technologies should continue to bear fruit.

Specific beneficiaries include:

-Archaeological practitioners and digital recording and visualisation specialists, through the project's contribution to culturally informed recording of the historic environment and critical reflection on appropriate modes of engagement between digital heritage experts and the wider community

-Our partner heritage organisations (Archaeology Scotland and Glasgow Museums as well as the RCAHMS itself) through practical involvement at the heart of research that will feed into their ongoing and future work, informing the assessment and decision-making processes.

- Members of the public, through both the community engagement exercise and more generally through the impact of the research on future recording exercises, improving community engagement practice and cultural heritage management activities sensitive to issues of social significance. Members of the public who are engaged in private archaeological research will directly benefit from the open access to the ACCORD project research asset. Members of participating community groups will gain direct knowledge and experience of advanced digital technologies and the ways in which they can be used to represent cultural heritage assets (approx 10-20 per group for a total of between 100 and 200)

- Interested publics across the world, through the co-produced project assets which will feed into the existing high quality collections held by data archives and aggregators such as the Archaeology Data Service and Europeana

- The general public, through the impact of the research on future recording projects (community or professional). Through dissemination of the results to those involved in the recording of the historic environment, we will raise awareness of the relationship between the social value and the nature of recording and visualisation practice, facilitating future projects that are sensitive to issues of social and cultural significance.