Digital Building Heritage: Phase II

De Montfort University has world leading expertise in the development and use of digital technologies to explore, visualize, interpret and present historic buildings and the people and artifacts associated with them. This project gives eleven community heritage groups in the UK the opportunity to work with De Montfort University to learn how to best use these technologies to understand and present their own buildings and the physical and cultural heritage associated with them. Working with these community heritage groups De Montfort University will prepare 3D digital reconstructions of their buildings, each one specifically tailored to the needs of each community heritage group and will assist with enabling the presentation of these reconstructions and associated information by the groups on mobile devices (Apps), mobile enabled web-sites, digital museum displays and exhibition installations. The groups will be also be assisted in techniques of information gathering, survey, and archival searching for the information required to build these reconstructions and will take an active part in developing, testing and evaluating the on-line and exhibition presentation of the results. Experience has shown that this form of initial, assisted engagement with digital technologies rapidly leads to self selected, in-house uptake within community heritage organizations. Part of the reflective aspect of this project will be for De Montfort University researchers to learn from the community heritage groups in a process of co-production about how these digital technologies may be most appropriately developed and used in the in the future to meet the aspirations of society for tools to better explore and shape our understanding of built heritage and its wider historical context. The project will continue to have a public presence based around the existing high quality website linking community heritage groups, De Montfort University and the wider public and will be further developed to act as a best-practice vehicle for the eleven projects that that will be co-produced by De Montfort University with its community heritage group partners under this programme.

The ability of digital technologies to reach wide audiences and present large, complex data sets in engaging and immediately intuitive ways through 3D visualization is becoming of increasing importance to the heritage sector. The preservation of physical and cultural heritage at all levels depends upon public awareness and understanding. Digital technologies can substantially assist in achieving this but exemplar project are required which show how. This research is intended to deliver impact in this key area by providing high quality exemplar projects in the use of digital technologies within the community heritage field that can subsequently be widely replicated by a broad range of public and academic beneficiaries who could potentially benefit from the use of these technologies and the methodologies and concepts associated with them. Beyond the eleven community heritage groups who are partners in this proposal and who will be immediate beneficiaries there will be large number of other community heritage groups and associated organisations like the Association of Heritage Interpretation (AHI), English Heritage (EH), the National Trust (NT) throughout the UK who will look to the outcomes of this research to inform their own outreach, interpretation and education activities. In the longer term this research will also contribute to the mainstream commercial tourism, heritage and conservation industry both at an enabling level and an economic one, enhancing the UK's economic performance, and competitiveness. Academic institutions engaged in wide range of research from architecture and archaeology, to social history and computer science will also benefit from the outcomes, in that through the normal process of publication and dissemination they will able to build on the outcomes that will be achieved through this proposal. This may extend to related fields such as the computer games and other digital creative industries that have vested interests in the use of digital technologies for arts and entertainment and whose technologies are now beginning to be used for digital heritage purposes. In effect any organization, be it public or private, in the UK or elsewhere who has interests in historic buildings or building related heritage material will be able to directly and indirectly use the results of this proposed research for examples of best practice in the use of digital technologies to analyze understand, interpret visualize built heritage. This includes local and national government, and national conservation and heritage bodies who determine and influence heritage policy and who may utilize the research to increase the effectiveness of public services and also institutional heritage outlets and repositories such as museums and galleries who may wish to employ digital technologies at a range of levels to more fully engage with their visitors and by doing so enhance the quality of life in the UK and its cultural and creative output. The results of the proposed research will be available at the end of 2013 and will be on-line and so widely available immediately on launch. In carrying out the research De Montfort University researchers will develop skills in co-production with community heritage groups. These skills will be both technical, in adapting technologies to the needs of specific audiences, users and providers and managerial in developing the mechanisms to collaborate with a diverse range of collaborators with widely different technical abilities, organizational structures, interests and frames of reference. In doing so it will enable De Montfort University's researchers in this project to further enhance their usefulness to wider society in the heritage field.