Tracing the Digital Thread: A Scoping Project of Culture Heritage Practise in India
Lead Research Organisation:
Lancaster University
Department Name: History
Abstract
The vibrant, polyvocal and potentially contested nature of heritage was a core theme that emerged from both the 2015 and 2018 Delhi AHRC-ICHR workshops. This cultural heritage projects that received funding over the past seven years reflected this diversity and complexity. Tracing the Digital Thread: A Scoping Project of Culture Heritage Practise in India will encompass that variety and nuance of cultural heritage in a variety of physical, intangible and digital formats: as objects, ideas, performance, images, texts and landscapes. The project will conduct in-depth examination of innovation, sustainability and knowledge transfer strategies and seek to understand the broad, dynamic socio-economic, political and cultural contexts of heritage projects in the UK and India. The scoping project will gather and synthesize information relating to programmes of work, engagement and outcomes. It will collect information about unexpected challenges and opportunities that emerged during the projects' life spans. The scoping project report will use qualitative, quantitative data and case studies in order to offer models of good practise and suggest new directions for future work, consolidating and advancing the cultural heritage work undertaken in the past seven years.
Tracing the Digital Thread: A Scoping Project of Culture Heritage Practise in India will pay particular attention to the digital component and strategies of cultural heritage projects funded since 2014. A discussion of digital technologies was introduced by the 2015 AHRC-ICHR workshop and was a significant aspect of the discussion at the 2017 AHRC-ICHR event. The Praxis report on Heritage for Global Challenges makes clear the prominence of digital innovation in cultural heritage projects in India and elsewhere. Digital projects have transformed the relationships between diaspora and Indian heritage and now represent the most significant means to orchestrate and curate cultural heritage projects across the world. All projects in the AHRC-ICHR portfolio included some digital element, whether through digitisation, the creation and use of digital interfaces and artefacts, and the storage of heritage materials as archival data. Data Management is a fundamental component of all funding applications and UKRI collects and disseminates project engagement, impact and dissemination using web-based platforms. The scoping project will add significant and original value to the AHRC-ICHR's portfolio of cultural heritage projects by offering advanced analysis of the place of the digital within that portfolio, by identifying and understanding specific challenges and creating insights and resources that will support innovative future work.
Amidst the ongoing pandemic, our engagement with digital technologies as a means of recording, archiving, manipulating and sharing data has become both more urgent and enterprising. The scoping project will collect information relating to different forms and stages of disruption caused by the covid-19 pandemic and explore the new ways of working that were devised.
Tracing the Digital Thread: A Scoping Project of Culture Heritage Practise in India will pay particular attention to the digital component and strategies of cultural heritage projects funded since 2014. A discussion of digital technologies was introduced by the 2015 AHRC-ICHR workshop and was a significant aspect of the discussion at the 2017 AHRC-ICHR event. The Praxis report on Heritage for Global Challenges makes clear the prominence of digital innovation in cultural heritage projects in India and elsewhere. Digital projects have transformed the relationships between diaspora and Indian heritage and now represent the most significant means to orchestrate and curate cultural heritage projects across the world. All projects in the AHRC-ICHR portfolio included some digital element, whether through digitisation, the creation and use of digital interfaces and artefacts, and the storage of heritage materials as archival data. Data Management is a fundamental component of all funding applications and UKRI collects and disseminates project engagement, impact and dissemination using web-based platforms. The scoping project will add significant and original value to the AHRC-ICHR's portfolio of cultural heritage projects by offering advanced analysis of the place of the digital within that portfolio, by identifying and understanding specific challenges and creating insights and resources that will support innovative future work.
Amidst the ongoing pandemic, our engagement with digital technologies as a means of recording, archiving, manipulating and sharing data has become both more urgent and enterprising. The scoping project will collect information relating to different forms and stages of disruption caused by the covid-19 pandemic and explore the new ways of working that were devised.
Organisations
| Description | The project 'Tracing the digital thread: A scoping project of cultural heritage practise in India' was awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to the Department of History, Lancaster University in November 2021. It was led by Dr Deborah Sutton (PI, Lancaster University), Dr Ian Magedera (Co-PI, University of Liverpool), Dr Krupa Rajangam (India-based Research Associate, Lancaster University) and DHARTI, the Digital Humanities Alliance for Research and Teaching Innovation. After a delayed start, the project ran for seven months between June and December 2022. The project submitted a report to the AHRC in January 2023. |
| Exploitation Route | The report summarises the findings of the scoping project and made a set of recommendations for the forthcoming AHRC cultural heritage funding calls. The recommendations concerned data and software sustainability, building resilient collaborative relationships and broadening the scope of future work. |
| Sectors | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Description | In discussing the relationship between cultural heritage and development certain paradoxes inherent to such projects came up. For project partners for whom development was a priority, cultural heritage arguably presented a subterfuge, or leverage, for development. Conversely, for academic partners the case was reversed, their engagement with GCRF was a pathway to funding cultural heritage. Considering India's non-ODA status currently, the paradox might be something to think about for future India-UK collaborations. Key issues and suggestions to inform the preparation of future funding calls: i. Equitable working practices in the projects should be explicitly addressed in the application both in terms of project design and reflexive opportunities during project lifespans. ii. Project partners provide an indispensable link between academics and communities but their role is less defined that the PI and Co-I. While, in theory, this could provide the greatest latitude for organic development, a distancing of the relationship between project partners either during the project or soon after was a comparatively common challenge. iii. Successful partnerships appeared to be preceded by, and founded on, a pre-existing relationship between participants, especially between academic and non-academic project partners. iv. In discussion, a paradox emerged in the imagined relationship between cultural heritage and development. While for NGOs, cultural heritage was a conduit or leverage for development, the reverse was the case for academic participants. Given India's non-ODA status currently, the paradox might be something to think about for future India-UK collaborations. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2023 |
| Sector | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural |