09 Feb Let the Crowddreaming begin!
09 Feb, 2019
Monuments have a purpose; they relate to our culture and our cultural heritage. Even today a physical monument can be a point of cultural debate, the discussion around it serving as a cultural practice, in which the public discourse can demonstrate as a measure of our values, our heritage, and culture. Today, however, the public sphere and related public debates take place in the digital realm. Can a monument serve the same purpose, as it has throughout our history, if it is a ‘digital monument’?
Crowddreaming pursues to place consideration on the development and conservation of a digital cultural heritage, how can it be created? Can it have the same impact as physical monuments? And what messages should be passed down to future generations? Today’s young generation will be the first to consider what it will mean to pass on a truly digital cultural heritage. The Crowddreaming best practice has been a project developed by Stati Generali dell’Innovazione and has been running in Italy for 3 years as contest for schools.
The “Crowddreaming: Youth co-create digital culture” (CDDC) project answers the Erasmus+ KA3 Social Inclusion call with a thematic focus developed for the European Year of Cultural Heritage. This offers the opportunity to take the best practice of Crowddreaming and develop it into a formal programme reaching new countries and students in schools around Europe. It will increase the reach of this best practice and provide valuable insight to the European community at large on what can be a European Digital Cultural heritage.
The project will eventually invite 400 young Europeans (from schools participating in the project) to create 80 digital monuments, or digital “scenes”, which will be embedded on a digital Europa Square. Europa Square will be the platform of the project and will host the digital cultural heritage scenes.
While the concept of a digital scene, or a platform, such as Europa Square, may come across as abstract, it is simply because it is waiting for the outcomes of the project to be developed. In the meantime, the methodology and curriculum will be created to provide a template wherein schools can replicate the practice of crowddreaming.
The “Crowddreaming: Youth co-create digital culture” (CDDC) project kicked off on 31 January 2019 in Rome hosted by Stati Generali dell’Innovazione. All project partners are coming from the ALL DIGITAL network:
- ALL DIGITAL, Belgium – lead partner
- Stati Generali dell’Innovazione, Italy
- LIKTA, Latvia
- Hellenic Open university with its DAISSy Research Group, Greece
- Centre of Technical Culture Rijeka, Croatia
At the meeting, the partners reviewed a working plan to realise the grand vision of developing a methodology wherein young people will be guided to realise a digital monument. Partners were given first-hand insight onto the history and basis for the crowddreaming project, and insight into the curriculum which will be given as a training of trainers. They then participated in a coaching circle where the question of a sustaining the vision of crowddreaming was discussed and developed.
There was also a visit to an augmented reality square where partners got to experience how digital scenes related to cultural heritage can be presented.
The project will move forward through proceeding with a bottom-up research on crowddreaming and developing a curriculum. The CDDC consortium will meet again when the curriculum is ready to be delivered in a training of trainers in Rijeka.
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