Digital Building Heritage: Phase 3

This multi-disciplinary community heritage and archaeology project is being undertaken by three UK universities (De Montfort (lead), Nottingham and Durham) by staff who have all led or been Co-I's in successful AHRC Connected Communities projects in 2012-13 working with successful HLF 'All-our-Stories'-funded community heritage projects. This project allows these academics to work with a number of selected community groups on focused and strategic networking and development activities with productive research and dissemination outcomes for the groups. Community heritage and archaeology projects are often focused on 'doing', on the processes of archaeology and the collection of data, but often with limited attention paid to the wider interpretation and then dissemination of their results to varied audiences within their communities and beyond. The aim of the research is to understand how the explanatory and interrogatory potential of mobile device technology (software apps) can be used to build community-led analysis and interpretations, presentation and education within community archaeology projects. Mobile apps can be used to present sophisticated visual and textual interpretations to help understand the history of a particular place or the results of an archaeological project; but they can also be used to acquire a range of data on user preferences, activities, interests and identifying real user needs and unexploited affordances in established mobile technologies. This project explores the potential of carefully designed mobile device apps not just to allow but to positively encourage feedback and input from community users in a three part co-production process of;
1) Visualising archaeological material and historical remains in an app.
2) Inviting communities to question, adapt, challenge, add-to or reshape the interpretation through the app.
3) Recording and analyzing those choices to map preferred ideas and ways of community archaeological interpretation.
These can then be used to widely inform further development and strategic improvement in this field with a view to assisting in developing an industry / research community standard for this kind of community-led interpretation and dissemination. The key innovation of this project is to bring together existing community heritage groups (with advanced projects and datasets deserving wider dissemination), with academics interested in the interpretation and dissemination of archaeological and architectural heritage and technological advisors and specialists at the forefront of mobile software development. The project involves dedicated early career researchers and technology specialists working with the selected community partners to produce and then test apps that meet their varied needs, including developing the necessary software, conducting 3D laser scan surveys, 3D digital modeling and visualization, 'proofing' the apps and providing ongoing technical support during the lifetime of the project. Community partners will share their data and feed into the design at every level, and will receive a tailored product suitable to their needs and capable of being used by their key audiences. The reception and use of the apps will be monitored to gather data about their users and assess their functionality. Critical lessons will be learnt and shared about the challenges and opportunities presented by these new technologies for often small scale community heritage organisations. A central part of the project is a programme of networking opportunities in the form of community participation workshops at the University of Nottingham and the University of Durham and also a number of focus groups targeted at evaluating specific aspects of the software and its use. These are intended to facilitate sharing of experiences and ideas between community partners and across the project team.

This research will create a novel mobile device app which will allow members of community archaeology groups to digitally create their own interpretative explanations of the archaeological artifacts and buildings they are involved with in order to reflect their own points of view about how their archaeology should be understood. It will allow users to become active contributors to archaeological and heritage interpretation and not just passive consumers of it. It will allow contested, divergent and minority interpretations to be heard as well as offer the opportunity for the emergence of completely new insights into communities' understanding of their archaeology. The research will assist in strengthening the nation's public engagement with its heritage and provide a model for similar applications which can be developed to enhance the UK's digital economy and creative output. Beyond the community heritage groups who are partners in this proposal and who will be immediate beneficiaries there will be a large number of other community heritage groups and national organisations like the Association of Heritage Interpretation (AHI), English Heritage (EH) and the National Trust (NT) throughout the UK who may 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 a 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 be able to build upon the results of this research to inform their own work. 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. Other beneficiaries may include local and national government who have interests in promoting heritage in UK towns and cities where they determine and influence heritage policy and where they may utilise the research to increase the effectiveness of public services. It may also be used by local and nationally funded 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. In carrying out the research teams from De Montfort University, the University of Nottingham and the University of Durham will continue to develop their existing expertise in co-production with community heritage groups. This expertise will be both technical, in adapting technologies to the needs of specific audiences, users and providers and also managerial in developing the mechanisms to collaborate with a diverse range of constituents with widely different technical abilities, organizational structures, interests and frames of reference. In doing so it will enable the research teams to further develop their usefulness to wider society. The final results of the proposed research will be available for on-line download in January 2015.