Roadmap presentation in Rome, 13 January 2015

On Wednesday the 13th January 2016, in the beautiful “Biblioteca delle Corporazioni”, hosted in the premises of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, the CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project organised an encounter to present the “Roadmap for Citizen Researchers in the Age of Digital Culture”, the main outcome developed by the project.

A selected number of different stakeholders were invited to the meeting.

The experts had the opportunity to discuss about the value of engaging citizens in the research, and about the role that artists can have in terms of introducing innovative practices and mediating between sectors of the society, which are not used to work together.

After a welcome message by the Civic Epistemologies Project Coordinator, Mauro Fazio (from the Ministry of the Economic Development), the floor has given to Ralph Dum (from the Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology by the European Commission). Ralph introduced the STARTS initiative of Horizon 2020, based on a previous study about how the Arts can act as a catalyst of innovation in industry and society, with pratical examples of funded projects running on these basis.

Antonella Fresa (from Promoter srl, CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Technical Coordinator) gave an overview of the project, talked about the outcomes achieved by the project and the consortium’s vision about the possibility to engage citizens in the research processes. Antonella introduced also the Berlin Charter, as the legacy of the project: a set of principles aiming to encourage and support the participation of citizens in digital cultural heritage and humanities research. The Berlin Charter is open to be adopted by cultural and academic institutions, private organisations, artists, professionals, researchers and interested citizens. To download the document, please click here.

Borje Justrell (from National Archives in Sweden) who led the team that worked on the Roadmap for Citizen Science, presented this living document: the aim of the Roadmap is to illustrate a path towards the engagement of citizens in the research and valorisation of Cultural Heritage, by using distributed services like digital tools and online communication offered by the e-Infrastructures. Borje explained the importance of disseminate this instrument. The study has been re-focused during the lifecycle of the project, with an iteractive process started with the collection of feedbacks in all the events held by the project until the latest version, which has been presented during the International Conference in Berlin.

The discussion, stimulated by the project’s representatives, was very interesting because the selected audiences, coming from different areas of expertise in CH, had the possibility to explain their points of view about “citizen engagement”.

The experts discussed also about next opportunities offered by the EC funding in this area and how the feedback collected may open interesting prospective in this framework.

An interview with Antonella Fresa (Technical Coordinator) has been recorded during the event and trasmitted by TG Culther (in italian language).

The presentations of the meeting are available below.

Programme

15.00                     Welcome message by Mauro Fazio, CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Project Coordinator, Ministry of the Economic Development, Italy

Key note introductions

15.10                     The STARTS initiative, Ralph Dum, European Commission (presentation, PDF) 

15.30                     CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES: citizen engagement and digital cultural heritage, Antonella Fresa, CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Technical Coordinator, Promoter srl, Italy (presentation, PDF)

15.50                     A Roadmap for Citizen Researchers in the Age of Digital Culture, Borje Justrell, CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES WP Leader, Swedish National Archives (presentation, PDF)

Round table discussion

16.20                     Brief presentation of the participants

16:30                     Discussion

17:30     Closing remarks

A special thanks to all the experts who participated to the meeting (in alphabetical order):

Matteo Bonotto, Associazione Musicale Europa InCanto, Italy

Giordano Bruno, ISIA (High Institute for Artistic Industries) Rome Design, Italy

Maria Pia Bucchioni, Giunti Editore srl, Italy

Manuele Buono, Promoter srl, Italy

Chris de Loof, Belspo, Belgium

Ralph Dum, European Commission

Mauro Fazio, Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico, Italy

Neil Forbes, Coventry University, UK

Antonella Fresa, Promoter srl, Italy

Luis Miguel Girao, Artshare, Portugal

Anett Holzheid, ZKM – Karlsruhe, Germany

Borje Justrell, Swedish National Archive, Sweden

Luigi Perissich, Confindustria Servizi Innovativi e Tecnologici, Italy

Antonella Pitrelli, Journalist and presenter of CultHer TV news, Italy

Elisa Ragni, Associazione Musicale Europa InCanto, Italy

Roberto Rizzo, Director of the CultHer TV news, Italy

Nicola Vita, Meridiana Italia srl, Italy

Roxanne Wyns, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium