Citizen Scholarship in Nottingham: understanding the value of engaging users with heritage and culture
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Nottingham
Department Name: School of English
Abstract
This follow on funding project, developed in collaboration with the Theatre Royal and Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, represents an important opportunity to work with partners across the city of Nottingham to establish frameworks both for enabling participation in cultural and heritage activities at a local level and for understanding the value of such participation in terms of the experience of the organisation and the individual. The project uses the small Heritage Lottery Funded project - 'Our Theatre Royal Nottingham: Its Stories, People & Heritage', led by the Theatre Royal in collaboration with the University of Nottingham and commencing in February 2017 - as a case study to develop, test and evaluate the innovative, transferable model, 'Citizen Scholarship'. The Heritage Lottery Fund project itself developed out of the AHRC funded research project 'Mapping Performance Culture: Nottingham 1857-1867' (2006-09) which led to a key collaboration between the University of Nottingham and the Theatre Royal.
Building from the experience of the Theatre Royal HLF project, we will work with pilot organisations across Nottingham to develop, test and evaluate an innovative, transferable model of 'Citizen Scholarship' for development and support of archives and histories, enabling communities of volunteers to participate in collection, curation and annotation of archive material and oral histories while developing basic research skills through supported training and activity. The value of volunteer engagement with this activity in terms of wellbeing and cultural enrichment will be evaluated through observing volunteer archive sessions, conducting focus groups and interviewing volunteers and other users of the Theatre and archive. Through the provision of this case study and structured activities to share knowledge and learning from this evaluation with a wide range of smaller cultural and heritage organisations in Nottingham, the project will enable an important shared learning opportunity and support those organisations in designing future engagement and evaluation activities with their audiences.
As an outcome of this research, a set of best practice guidelines and a 'toolbox' for Citizen Scholarship participation and engagement, including a publically accessible digital platform for co-curation of archives and histories and frameworks for the evaluation of user engagement through this methodology will be developed. These will be trialled and tested with organisations in Nottingham; the final version will be shared within the UK and Europe through the Heritage Lottery Fund (via the Theatre Royal project) and and more widely through the UNESCO Creative City Network.
Building from the experience of the Theatre Royal HLF project, we will work with pilot organisations across Nottingham to develop, test and evaluate an innovative, transferable model of 'Citizen Scholarship' for development and support of archives and histories, enabling communities of volunteers to participate in collection, curation and annotation of archive material and oral histories while developing basic research skills through supported training and activity. The value of volunteer engagement with this activity in terms of wellbeing and cultural enrichment will be evaluated through observing volunteer archive sessions, conducting focus groups and interviewing volunteers and other users of the Theatre and archive. Through the provision of this case study and structured activities to share knowledge and learning from this evaluation with a wide range of smaller cultural and heritage organisations in Nottingham, the project will enable an important shared learning opportunity and support those organisations in designing future engagement and evaluation activities with their audiences.
As an outcome of this research, a set of best practice guidelines and a 'toolbox' for Citizen Scholarship participation and engagement, including a publically accessible digital platform for co-curation of archives and histories and frameworks for the evaluation of user engagement through this methodology will be developed. These will be trialled and tested with organisations in Nottingham; the final version will be shared within the UK and Europe through the Heritage Lottery Fund (via the Theatre Royal project) and and more widely through the UNESCO Creative City Network.
Planned Impact
The impact of this follow on funding project, which is explicitly focused on engagement and cultural value, will be felt at local, national and international levels.
1. Within Nottingham, through enhanced cultural engagement and understanding of the cultural value of that engagement:
a. the Theatre Royal: Beyond the work carried out with Heritage Lottery Funding, the Theatre will benefit from a detailed record, observation and evaluation of its case study project that will enable it to record progress against institutional priorities.
b. the volunteer communities attached to the Theatre Royal and to other cultural/creative organisations in Nottingham: volunteers will benefit from i) enhanced wellbeing and cultural enrichment, through inclusive engagement with heritage and history and
ii) enhancement of public knowledge through the acquisition of basic research skills in relation to archiving, curation and creation of oral histories. Volunteer skills will be sustained beyond the project, with Citizen Scholars continuing to work with the Theatre Royal and encouraged to share their knowledge and skills with other Nottingham organisations to assist development of their own archiving and heritage strategies.
c.other organisations offered supported access to our 'Citizen Scholarship' model and publically accessible platform: will benefit from opportunities to reflect on their own needs in terms of history and heritage and to explore their own needs in terms of user engagement and cultural value evaluation; to develop and test their own pilot projects and digital platforms with communities of supporters and volunteers in a supportive and guided environment
d. Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature - the project will support the City of Literature's activities in terms of building cross-institutional collaborations and sharing best practice to enable the city as a whole to succeed in raising its cultural offer and in making that offer accessible to all its citizens - those engaged and those currently not engaged. The project will also enable the City of Literature to showcase their work across the International Creative Cities Network.
2. Nationally and internationally, by creating access to new technology and technological advancement:
a. the constituency of smaller organisations across the wider creative/cultural/heritage community which is often neglected and as the Cooke critical review points out, may 'struggle to get to grips with digital tools which are very often beyond their capacity both in terms of funding, expertise and personnel': will benefit from access to a fully developed, practically tested and critically evaluated model methodology and 'toolbox' for Citizen Scholarship and development of histories/co-curation of archives and for the evaluation of user engagement through this methodology that will be shared within the UK through the Heritage Lottery Fund and across Europe through the Europeana network.
b. members of the UNESCO Creative City Network will also benefit from the sharing of this model and 'toolbox' for Citizen Scholarship which can be utilised by organisations within their cities
c. researchers into cultural engagmement and value will benefit from an extended and rigorous case study that will add to the research base on the cultural value of digital engagement with heritage and offer a methodology for participation, engagement and evaluation that has been tested iteratively with a number of smaller heritage and culture organisations.
1. Within Nottingham, through enhanced cultural engagement and understanding of the cultural value of that engagement:
a. the Theatre Royal: Beyond the work carried out with Heritage Lottery Funding, the Theatre will benefit from a detailed record, observation and evaluation of its case study project that will enable it to record progress against institutional priorities.
b. the volunteer communities attached to the Theatre Royal and to other cultural/creative organisations in Nottingham: volunteers will benefit from i) enhanced wellbeing and cultural enrichment, through inclusive engagement with heritage and history and
ii) enhancement of public knowledge through the acquisition of basic research skills in relation to archiving, curation and creation of oral histories. Volunteer skills will be sustained beyond the project, with Citizen Scholars continuing to work with the Theatre Royal and encouraged to share their knowledge and skills with other Nottingham organisations to assist development of their own archiving and heritage strategies.
c.other organisations offered supported access to our 'Citizen Scholarship' model and publically accessible platform: will benefit from opportunities to reflect on their own needs in terms of history and heritage and to explore their own needs in terms of user engagement and cultural value evaluation; to develop and test their own pilot projects and digital platforms with communities of supporters and volunteers in a supportive and guided environment
d. Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature - the project will support the City of Literature's activities in terms of building cross-institutional collaborations and sharing best practice to enable the city as a whole to succeed in raising its cultural offer and in making that offer accessible to all its citizens - those engaged and those currently not engaged. The project will also enable the City of Literature to showcase their work across the International Creative Cities Network.
2. Nationally and internationally, by creating access to new technology and technological advancement:
a. the constituency of smaller organisations across the wider creative/cultural/heritage community which is often neglected and as the Cooke critical review points out, may 'struggle to get to grips with digital tools which are very often beyond their capacity both in terms of funding, expertise and personnel': will benefit from access to a fully developed, practically tested and critically evaluated model methodology and 'toolbox' for Citizen Scholarship and development of histories/co-curation of archives and for the evaluation of user engagement through this methodology that will be shared within the UK through the Heritage Lottery Fund and across Europe through the Europeana network.
b. members of the UNESCO Creative City Network will also benefit from the sharing of this model and 'toolbox' for Citizen Scholarship which can be utilised by organisations within their cities
c. researchers into cultural engagmement and value will benefit from an extended and rigorous case study that will add to the research base on the cultural value of digital engagement with heritage and offer a methodology for participation, engagement and evaluation that has been tested iteratively with a number of smaller heritage and culture organisations.
Organisations
- University of Nottingham (Lead Research Organisation)
- Derby Theatre (Collaboration)
- Bromley House Library (Collaboration)
- NATIONAL TRUST (Collaboration)
- Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature (Collaboration)
- Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- John Moores Foundation (Collaboration)
- NOTTINGHAM CITY COUNCIL (Collaboration)
- Nottingham City of Literature Ltd (Project Partner)
People |
ORCID iD |
| Joanna Robinson (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Robinson J
(2019)
Our Theatre Royal Nottingham: co-creation and co-curation of a digital performance collection with citizen scholars
in International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media
| Description | The 'Citizen Scholarship in Nottingham: understanding the value of engaging users with heritage and culture' project was funded through the AHRC's Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement scheme, under the Cultural Value Highlight Notice, and built on a series of successful research and outreach collaborations with the Theatre Royal Nottingham which had culminated in a successful application for Heritage Lottery Funding (24 months from March 2017) to develop user engagement with the theatre's history and archive, through providing support and training for volunteers to enable co-curation of a digital archive using an open-source platform. We have called that model of collaborative research and co-curation of digital material with volunteers 'citizen scholarship', and the aim of this project was twofold: to evaluate its success in the Theatre Royal context, and to offer 'citizen scholarship' as a supported model to other cultural and heritage organisations in Nottingham. Working with the Theatre Royal volunteers and project co-ordinators, we have been able to develop an in depth evaluation and observation of the Theatre Royal HLF project, its successes and challenges. Focus groups, individual interviews and participatory workshops across the lifetime of the HLF research have enabled us to develop an 'intense and rigorous' case study of both the process of the research and its value to both the Theatre and the volunteers, and drawing on best practice from projects encountered during this research, have developed a simple toolkit based for working with volunteers to capture, describe and evaluate the value of their heritage volunteering which will be made available on our project website (citizenscholar.org.uk). The second part of the project was aimed at developing and testing a transferable model of citizen scholarship with a range of small and medium cultural and heritage organisations within Nottingham, including developing a shareable 'Citizen Scholarship' web platform adaptable for use by different organisations to host their own digital research and stories. This approach was inspired by the call made in the AHRC's 'Cultural Value of Digital Engagement with Heritage' report for smaller heritage institutions to 'let go' and enable a shift in power relations between heritage users and professional institutions. Notable successes here included developing ongoing collaborative projects and relationships set up with partners from Nottingham (Bromley House Library, Nottingham Heritage Partnership) and across the region (Sir John Moore Foundation, The Workhouse at Southwell, Erewash Museum), some of which have already resulted in funding success for emerging projects (see Collaborative Partners and Engagement Activity entries). However, one additional key finding of the project was that even within the context of the 'citizen scholarship' model and offer of mobilising and engaging volunteer knowledge and commitment to research, the issue of institutional capacity remained challenging for precisely the kind of small organisations that the project aimed to support. Although all confirmed the benefit of the opportunity to reflect on their current approach to and strategies for digital engagement offered by our facilitated workshop model, the prospect of managing pilot activity and providing support for volunteers was simply too challenging for some of the small heritage organisations that we initially approached and worked with. Our in depth report on the Theatre Royal project confirms these and other challenges, and offers guidance for avoiding them, but it is clear that even that advice requires a level of institutional capacity that may not be available to small community-led organisations. However we have identified the potential of shared training and resources for volunteers across smaller organisations and indeed for volunteers trained within one project to assist other organisations and this is a model that we aim to develop and share going forward; it is also a model that underpins the successful application to the HLF Resilient Heritage funding stream for the Nottingham Heritage Partnership (see Collaborative Partnerships). |
| Exploitation Route | Findings and models from this Follow on Funding Project will be taken forward in several ways: 1. By organisations directly involved in the project activities: - Based on the learning from our evaluation of the Theatre Royal HLF project, the Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall is developing a further bid to the HLF for a next stage project, which will specifically build in our recommendations on volunteer co-ordination, support and measurement of cultural value. - Our learning on strategies for digital participation and engagement, based on workshops and one-to-one meetings with collaborative partners, will be shared with the community organisations involved in the Nottingham Heritage Partnership supported through funding from the HLF's resilient heritage funding strand. - Those organisations who have developed or are developing 'citizen scholarship' based projects in Nottingham and regionally will benefit from the findings of this project and from our ongoing support with pilot development and evaluation activities: these include the Sir John Moore Foundation, Bromley House Library, the National Trust (The Workhouse at Southwell) and Erewash Museum initially. - The interdisciplinary and outward facing nature of our model has also been shared as a model for other University of Nottingham research clusters, including via presentation at a City of Literature showcase in June 2018. 2. With other organisations, regionally and nationally through direct contact: - Since the project has ended, Robinson has been asked to lead a kick-off workshop at Derby Theatre to introduce the 'citizen scholarship' model and offer consultancy and support on development of that theatre's own potential project around their history and archive. - Robinson has also been invited to speak as an expert at the Research and engagement event: Open Clasp, Open Archive, hosted by Open Clasp and Newcastle University, which aims to engage directly with the archive and the work of Open Clasp, the Newcastle-based company which has achieved national and international recognition for making excellent professional theatre for social change that is grounded in participatory work with women and girls. The workshop will use participatory methods to explore the archive's potential in relation to teaching, research and community engagement and to consider priorities and challenges in making it accessible. 3. With other organisations, regionally, nationally and internationally via the guidance, toolkit and resources hosted and added to on our project website - citizenscholar.org.uk - and shared via the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | https://www.citizenscholar.org.uk |
| Description | As our discussion of Key Findings makes clear, the impact of this project will continue to develop, but at this point in time we can report the following ways in which our findings have been used: 1. For the Theatre Royal Nottingham: Our Citizen Scholarship model has first of all been used and developed - and through this Follow on Funding, rigorously evaluated - in collaboration with the Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, where 60 volunteers have worked on the HLF funded project, developing knowledge and skills through training in oral history and archival practice and working with archives across the city to enable co-curation of a digital archive using an open-source platform, the development of which has been further supported by UoN (ourtheatreroyal.org). The platform was launched on 23 October 2018 and has attracted over 13,000 users to March 2021 from over 76 countries worldwide, with over 60% of users interacting with the newly discoverable archive collections; volunteers also curated and hosted a series of foyer exhibitions and sell-out public talks, which have increased knowledge of regional heritage and enhanced perceptions of the theatre's heritage value. While the volunteer activity has been undertaken through the separate HLF funding, this Follow on Funding has allowed us to track the progress of volunteers and their experiences through the project, refining our understanding of the support and resources needed and identifying and providing guidance on responding to challenges. As a result of this project the Theatre Royal now has a clearer sense of the extent and value of its heritage; in 2019 Robinson supported the venue's development of a further bid to the Heritage Fund to fund a part-time heritage officer in the building and to engage new audiences across the city, an approach based on the findings of our project evaluations with co-ordinators and volunteers. This application was successful and funding commenced in February 2020, with the Citizen Scholarship approach underpinning both aims and deliverability; Covid-19 entailed a delay to the Heritage Officer appointment which finally commenced in March 2021. Activities undertaken since then have led to a complete revision and refresh of the heritage backstage tour offer, education offer to regional schools, and extension of the archive and volunteer work to the heritage of the Royal Concert Hall. 2. For the volunteers at the Theatre Royal The follow on funding has enabled us to work with volunteers to develop frameworks and tools for understanding the value and challenges of their volunteering. Working with and adapting materials from a variety of AHRC Cultural Value programme reports and from elsewhere we were able to test out and utilise a toolkit that enabled our volunteers to articulate the ways in which the project has enhanced their sense of self (through feeling valued, feeling trusted, feeling satisfaction and feeling empowered); has revivified and developed skills and knowledge; and has facilitated a sense of connection and belonging (a sense of place). That toolkit has been shared with our other pilot organisations and will be available via our project website. 3. For other organisations offered supported access to our 'Citizen Scholarship' model: Our key framework activities - a series of staged engagement activities that follow a model of a shared sessions on identifying resources and challenges and introducing tools for digital engagement; one-to-one follow up meeting; shared hands on workshop to develop pilot projects and plans for measuring impact and value - have helped a number of organisations within and beyond Nottingham to reflect on/identify their own needs in terms both of history and heritage and in user engagement and cultural value evaluation, and where appropriate, supported opportunities to develop and test their own pilot projects and digital platforms with communities of supporters and volunteers. Our workshops have been delivered to a total of 9 organisations within the region - over double our initial anticipated number - and as a result of the project we are providing support and input to the development of several projects, some of which have already attracted funding, as noted in the Collaborative Partners section (Nottingham Heritage Partnership, Sir John Moore Foundation) while other more substantial funding applications are being developed (Bromley House Library). Work with the Citizen Scholarship programme was cited by the Sir John Moore Foundation in their successful application. Following the end of project funding, we have continued to work with other organisations and volunteers, notably the National Trust Workhouse at Southwell. 4. For other organisations In addition to local publicity, the Citizen Scholarship model has been presented to information and heritage practitioners at a series of national and international events: - the Heritage Wellbeing Symposium, University of Canterbury, Kent (Robinson invited speaker, see Awards and Recognition) - 13th International Digital Curation Conference, which is attended by a mix of academics and information professionals (see Publications for details of practice paper) - 2018 Digital Research in the Humanities Association conference, which brings together creators, users, distributors, and custodians of digital research and resources in the arts, design and humanities to explore the capture, archiving and communication of complex and creative research processes. - 2018 UNESCO Creative Cities Network, Krakow (see Engagement activity) As a result of this wide publicity for the project, Robinson was invited as expert participant to the Open Clasp Research and Engagement event in Newcastle in June 2019. The Theatre Royal has also been consulted by other theatres around the UK aiming to pursue similar projects including Liverpool Everyman, and Robinson and Longford have led a series of workshops with Derby Theatre targeted towards development of a parallel archive project in that venue. Nottingham City Council sum up the model developed through this funding as 'ground-breaking in terms of developing citizen participation within heritage and culture'. The development and testing of our model of citizen scholarship and digital engagement with archives is already having impact beyond Nottingham to the benefit of small and medium cultural and heritage organisations. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2018 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | Heritage Fund National Lottery Grants for Heritage £10,000 to £250,000 |
| Amount | £70,400 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Heritage Lottery Fund |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2020 |
| End | 12/2022 |
| Description | Bromley House |
| Organisation | Bromley House Library |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Expertise, training and facilitated development of plans to develop projects based on volunteer research and digital technologies for participation and engagement, as set out in the Engagement Activity entry. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Access to facilities and to volunteers, including the opportunity to try out new and accessible 3D scanning technologies within a historic setting. |
| Impact | Ongoing collaboration has resulted in a series of engagement activities towards development of an application for HLF funding for an innovative project based on the principles of the 'Citizen Scholarship' model shared through the AHRC Follow on Funding. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Derby Theatre |
| Organisation | Derby Theatre |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Expertise, training and facilitated development of plans to develop projects based on volunteer research and digital technologies for participation and engagement, as set out in the Engagement Activity entry. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Access to staff, facilities and archives as we begin to collaborate towards developing a Heritage Fund project to explore the theatre's archives and heritage |
| Impact | Ongoing collaboration has resulted in a series of engagement activities towards development of an application for Heritage Fund funding for an innovative project based on the principles of the 'Citizen Scholarship' model developed through the AHRC Follow on Funding and shared with Derby Theatre and staff following completion of that award. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | NT Southwell Workhouse |
| Organisation | National Trust |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Expertise, training and facilitated development of plans to develop projects based on volunteer research and digital technologies for participation and engagement, as set out in the Engagement Activity entry. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Access to staff, facilities and resources for a trial project with research volunteers in 2020. |
| Impact | Ongoing collaboration has resulted in a series of engagement activities towards development of an innovative volunteer research programme which will be shared with other National Trust sites once developed. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Nottingham Heritage Partnership Project |
| Organisation | Nottingham City Council |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Robinson and her collaborative partner at the Theatre Royal were initially asked to present the outcomes of the Theatre Royal HLF funded research outcomes to Nottingham City Council's Heritage Panel in February 2018 and Robinson took the opportunity to share information on the approach and progress of the AHRC Citizen Scholarship project. The City's Heritage Officer met with Robinson and attended one our 'Reflecting on and developing effective digital strategies for community participation and engagement' Workshop on 26 April 2018. As a result, Robinson was named as a strategic partner with the City Council on an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund to support development of a new Nottingham Heritage Partnership for the city, aimed at enabling communities and people to support each other to better manage, understand, enjoy and celebrate the heritage of Nottingham through the creation of an active community forum. In particular, Robinson offers support and expertise in digital participation to enhance volunteer engagement with heritage and will lead the digital engagement workshop activity planned as part of the project. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Nottingham City Council's Heritage Officer developed the bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for the new Nottingham Heritage Partnership, which was funded in December 2018. The City brings its own expertise and resource in management of heritage, and has enabled the development of a network which aims to ensure that all communities are reached through a mapping exercise at the start of the project and outreach so that the Partnership can reflect the diversity of the city where one third of citizens are from a BME group. |
| Impact | Robinson partnered on successful bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund's Resilient Heritage Fund in the amount of £26,800 for the Nottingham Heritage Partnership. The partnership aims to enable communities and people to support each other to better manage, understand, enjoy and celebrate the heritage of Nottingham through the creation of an active community forum. The funding will enable independent facilitation of community heritage groups through a series of activities, including a workshop on digital ambition and engagement for the Partnership to be led by Robinson in March 2020, which will govern the development and shape of the the Nottingham Heritage Partnership. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature |
| Organisation | Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | We worked with Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature to help them identify suitable literary and heritage organisations that could be supported via our Citizen Scholarship project, and developed a set of frameworks for citizen scholarship and digital engagement that they were able to share at the 2018 Creative City Network meeting in Krakow, July 2018. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature team joined the project steering group, providing guidance and support throughout the project. They assisted the project team and our lead partner the Theatre Royal in the recruitment of citizen volunteers for the project, and assisted with partnership building across the city to enable knowledge exchange and sharing of best practice. The Director of the Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature helped Robinson co-deliver the knowledge exchange workshops designed for city organisations and represented the project via the international knowledge exchange workshop delivered at the most appropriate Creative City Network meeting in Krakow, July 2018. |
| Impact | The first key outcome of this partnership has been the sharing of the Citizen Scholarship model and approach with other UNESCO Creative Cities around the world via presentation at the Krakow Creative Cities Network Meeting in 2018. The second outcome has been the enabling of a series of further introductions/collaborations/workshop engagements with other organisations within and beyond Nottingham that we report in the engagement and narrative impact sections. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Sir John Moore Foundation |
| Organisation | John Moores Foundation |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Representatives from the Sir John More Foundation attended our paired workshops - Using digital tools to enhance engagement with history and heritage - in September and November 2018 (for details of these see Engagement Activities). As a result of these participatory workshops and a one-to-one visit to the Sir John Moore Foundation, Robinson and Chamberlain helped the Foundation staff develop plans for volunteer-based activity to research and curate local photographs to be used as part of a village heritage trail. This has resulted in a successful small grant application to The Sandford Award for Informal Learning (SAIL) Small Grant Scheme, funded by the HLF supported Sandford Cascade Project. The grant application references the support of the Citizen Scholarship Project - Understanding the value of engaging users with heritage and culture'which is working with us and other small heritage providers to facilitate our ideas for digital engagement based on their work with the Theatre Royal in Nottingham (http://ourtheatreroyal.org). The project has a focus on evaluation approaches which allow heritage organisations to draw on a range of novel methods and instruments to capture the value of engaging volunteers'. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Sir John Moore Foundation is a charity and an accredited museum based in a Grade 1 listed school building (www.sirjohnmoore.org.uk) . The museum focuses on the history of the school and its benefactor, as well as local history. Their collection, and some exhibition space, are located on an upper floor with accessibility issues, and the building is in a relatively isolated rural location. Their situation thus offered some unique challenges to our project and they have been keen to share their experience of working with older citizens via their Local History Café activities. However, the project / funding model for the Local History Café is for a very limited number of sessions: hence they were keen to work with us - enabling access to their facilities and community participants, to design and develop a project which aims to enable the group to become more self-sustaining as local history volunteers supporting their own learning and to support the organisation's heritage offerings through research and practical activities - as well as being an on-going social and interest group for the participants. |
| Impact | Successful application to The Sandford Award for Informal Learning (SAIL) Small Grant Scheme for £996. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall Nottingham |
| Organisation | Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Robinson and the project team have provided support for and evaluation of the development of the 'citizen scholarship' volunteer research, co-creation and co-curation of the Theatre's digital archive. This has involved support for training, focus groups, interviews, and participatory workshops. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Although this collaboration was already existing and indeed underpinned our application for Follow on Funding, the activities supported by this project have deepened that collaboration and through it, the Theatre Royal has made a significant contribution to the success of this project. Theatre Royal staff have joined the steering committee of the project and also regularly attended our workshops to share their experiences of the citizen scholarship model with other organisations. The Theatre has also provided venues for workshops free of charge. |
| Impact | This collaboration underpins many of the other outcomes of this project, but in particular it has enabled us to develop our toolkit of resources for exploring and measuring the value of volunteer engagement, and to develop our model of citizen scholarship which has then been tested with other organisations. We have been awarded further Heritage Funding from February 2020 to expand the collaborative project. See press release here: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/theatre-royal-heritage |
| Start Year | 2014 |
| Description | April 2018 - Workshop: Reflecting on and developing effective digital strategies for community participation and engagement |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | As part of the 'Citizen Scholarship in Nottingham' project we offered supported opportunities to local and regional organisations to develop and test their own pilot projects and digital platforms to enhance engagement with their communities of supporters and volunteers. This workshop provided a focused space for reflection on each organisation's current use of digital media - on the web or via social media or other apps - before introducing a range of practical case studies and open access digital tools and solutions that might help our partner organisations deliver on those ambitions. This event was attended by representatives from D H Lawrence Birthplace Museum; Bromley House Library; Nottingham Black Archive and Nottingham City Council's Heritage Strategy Officer. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Bromley House |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Following the Citizen Scholarship launch event (see other Engagement Activity) Robinson and the project RA ran a series of workshops with Bromley House Library, including: - workshop with Bromley House staff that replicated some of the same activities undertaken by the Director of the Library at the launch event, to ensure buy in by staff to future development of projects. Workshop had an additional focus on current approach to measuring impact and value of volunteer activities. Then following the project's 'April workshop - Reflecting on and developing effective digital strategies for community participation and engagement' (see other Engagement Activity), the Library invited Robinson to work with their member volunteers to explore the potential for combining volunteer research and digital technologies to spread the riches of the library both within and beyond the walls of this very small and relatively fragile historic building. We ran three separate sessions as the collaboration and project developed: Two linked workshops in June 2018: - 'Introduction to Citizen Scholarship': research and storytelling for a digital space: working with 10 volunteers and the volunteer co-ordinator to identify potential research topics and to develop ideas for trial projects for sharing that research, with a focus on turning research into short 'stories' that could be deployed flexibly in a digital space: within the library using technology such as Art Codes (see below) or externally via the Library website or other means. - Introduction to 'Art Codes': this was a workshop co-led by Robinson, drawing on the expertise of colleagues in University of Nottingham's Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute to introduce Art Codes (https://www.artcodes.co.uk/) to a different group of volunteer members with an interest in art and technology. Artcodes is a new technology that allows users to interact with all manner of decorative imagery and patterns, and is triggered using a smart phone with the artcode app installed: users simply point the app at an image and the app triggers whatever interaction has been allocated to the code embedded in the image. The Library was interested in using this technology as a means of enabling access to volunteer research within the library. In November 2018: As a result of ongoing discussions with the Library staff, we ran a third workshop - Experimenting with 3D scanning - for 6 volunteers from the Library. This was aimed at experimenting with and testing the potential of cheap 3D scanning technologies to enable the library to build an internal model of the library space onto which volunteer research stories could be connected. All this activity is now being taken forward by Bromley House into an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2019 to support innovative models of volunteer research and digital engagement drawing on the 'Citizen Scholarship in Nottingham' model. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | December 2017 - Co-curation and co-creation with 'citizen scholars' - kick off workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | This was the lunchtime launch event for the 'Citizen Scholarship in Nottingham' project 12 December, hosted by our collaborative partner at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham and co-led by the Director of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature. Representatives from five organisations attended: Bromley House Library, the D.H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum; Nottingham Writers' Studio, Nottingham Black Archive, and the National Videogame Arcade. The workshop offered initial focused opportunities for each organisation to reflect on their own needs and ambitions in terms of history and heritage and in terms of user engagement and cultural value evaluation - at the end of the session all five organisations were enthusiastic about participating in initial follow up activity. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Derby Theatre |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | Robinson was approached by Derby Theatre to discuss the potential of sharing the Citizen Scholarship approach to support work with the theatre archives. After an initial meeting at the venue, Robinson and the Creative Learning Manager at the Theatre Royal, David Longford, ran a workshop with attendees from Derby Theatre, University of Derby and creative partners and also hosted a visit to the Theatre Royal where the team met with our Citizen Scholar volunteers. Robinson has been asked to act |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020 |
| Description | Europeana 2017 AGM |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The project RA Carletti attended the 2017 Europeana AGM in MIlan, Italy and was invited to share a slide presentation on the Citizen Scholarship in Nottingham project. 200 members of the Europeana Network Association, a community of experts working in the field of digital heritage with a shared aim to expand and improve access to Europe's digital cultural heritage, attended this event, which was dedicated to the impact culture has on society: the opportunity to showcase the project thus enabled us to raise the profile of our approach beyond regional and national boundaries. Carletti was able to share further information with attendees as requested. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | NT Workhouse at Southwell |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Following involvement in the September 2018 - Using digital tools to enhance engagement with history and heritage in Nottingham and beyond workshop, Robinson's follow up visit to the National Trust Workhouse at Southwell has resulted in development of an ongoing project with their volunteers. Robinson has helped design and develop a series of workshops with National Trust volunteer researchers with the aim of developing an innovative story-based approach to sharing volunteer research findings with visitors to the property, building on and extending the Citizen Scholarship approach. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020 |
| Description | November 2018 - Workshop: Developing and Evaluating Projects |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a follow up workshop offered to attendees of the September workshop - Using digital tools to enhance engagement with history and heritage in Nottingham and beyond (see other Engagement Activity). Following individual visits by Robinson and RA Chamberlain to each organisation, this was a hands on workshop where we worked with particpants to identify and try out different digital tools with a view to supporting development of potential prototype projects. The second half of the session introduced different tools and frameworks for measuring the impact and value of the trial project activity, including the Europeana Impact Playbook, UCL's Museums on Prescription toolkit, and our own tools. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | One-to-one engagement sessions |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This entry covers a series of visits and one-to-one engagements between the project team and the cultural heritage organisations participating in this Follow on Funding project. Each organisation attending our citizen scholarship workshops was offered a follow up visit to enable the team to explore in more detail the organisation's ambitions and challenges in order to ensure and enable responsive design and delivery of our hands on pilot project workshops. These engagement activities were crucial to fully understanding each organisation's needs and capacity, which we came to recognise as a key determinant of successful take up of the citizen scholarship framework. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | September 2018 - Using digital tools to enhance engagement with history and heritage in Nottingham and beyond |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | This was the first of two linked workshops designed to offer our developing Citizen Scholarship model to further organisations across the region in the second phase of our project. A full day's activity was offered, including activities designed to help heritage organisations • reflect on their organisation's current use of digital media - on the web or via social media or other apps • identify their organisation's needs and opportunities to develop digital tools to enhance audience participation and engagement • identify their resources - in terms of knowledge, skills, volunteer time - and the challenges faced • introduce a sample of accessible digital tools to enhance interaction and engagement. Organisations involved were the National Trust (The Workhouse at Southwell), Nottingham Women's Library, the Sir John Moore Foundation, and Erewash Museum. Following the workshop, all four organisations invited Robinson and the project team to follow up visits to help identify potential projects to engage and support citizen scholars to research and create digital narratives of heritage before a follow up workshop (see Engagement Activity: Practical workshop: developing and evaluating projects) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | UNESCO Creative Cities Network Krakow |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | Sandeep Mahal, Director of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, presented the 'Citizen Scholarship in Nottingham' project as one of the portfolio of Nottingham's showcase projects at the annual UNESCO Creative City Network Conference which took place in Krakow in July 2018. This was a great opportunity to showcase the collaboration with Nottingham City of Literature and the potential for volunteers as Citizen Scholars. Other UNESCO creative cities, especially Barcelona, expressed interest in following up the project as our work develops. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Workshop presentation for East Midlands regional meeting of the Archives and Records Association |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On Monday 29 October Robinson was invited to talk about the Citizen Scholarship project and the co-curation of the digital archive enabled by volunteer 'citizen scholar' researchers to the AGM meeting of the East Midlands region of the Archives and Records Association. Present at the event were representatives from the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland; Derbyshire Record Office; University of Nottingham; British Geological Survey; Sheffield Archives; Warwickshire Record Office; The National Archives; University of Leicester; Milton Keynes Borough Council; Lincolnshire Archives. Robinson presented our model of citizen scholarship and digital participation and engagement to 22 participants, focused around the programme of activities with the Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, and the presentation was subsequently shared on the East Midlands section of the Archives and Records Association website. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.archives.org.uk/about/nations-and-regions/ara-east-midlands.html |