Urban Innovation Actions - CoGhent

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Introduction

CoGhent, Collections of Ghent
The Urban Innovative Actions project CoGhent aims to connect citizen-sourced cultural heritage and the collections of the city’s museums through a central open data system. In addition, the project aims to improve cultural participation and social cohesion in public and third places through the use of these data and visualizing it in an immersive digital experience room. By linking heritage on a city level and using it to capture and show stories in cultural public spaces, the goal is to leverage digitized heritage to be used in an engaging and purposeful way, as a shared connection amongst citizens.

The project is a coordinated by the city of Ghent. The other project partners are: Ghent University, Design Museum Gent, District 09, Industriemuseum, Huis van Alijn, STAM, Chase, Inuits, FishEye, Meemoo, iDrops en Studio Dott. The project runs from 01/07/2020 till 30/06/2023.

Project description

Cities all over Europe are digitizing their cultural collections, but often lack the tools to use it to engage citizens. Data are stuck within institutional silos or used on single-purpose digital platforms that do not reach out to new audiences because they lack an open infrastructure. In addition, citizens have few means to contribute to and participate in the creation of our digital cultural heritage. However, culture is essential to improve social cohesion and citizens’ sense of belonging. Therefore, this project aims to contribute to the transition of cultural heritage institutions into places of community sense making.

For Collections of Ghent, Ghent University, the City of Ghent and its museums and archives are collaborating with partners from the corporate and cultural world to digitize an invaluable collection of more-or-less 100,000 objects, stories and documents. This collected heritage will converge in CoGent, an immersive, high-tech and mobile experience room. The CoGent box will go on tour in three neighbourhoods of Ghent: Watersportbaan - Ekkergem, Tolhuis-Sluizeken-Ham and Wondelgem. Visitors will be able to participate by adding personal stories about the cultural heritage displayed in the CoGent box.

The Collections of Ghent will be an intersection where heritage, research, and technology will meet.

Objectives

These are the objectives of CoGhent:

  • Open up cultural data, making it usable, useful, and used.
  • Gain insights into cultural needs, thresholds, and opportunities regarding digitized cultural heritage in order to figure out which data to open up and how to bring it all together.
  • The development of tools to capture citizen stories and insights, enriching our city-broad digital cultural heritage.
  • Finally, to deploy a high-tech neighborhood experience room that will traverse three neighborhoods. Within this space, neighborhood residents can enjoy a broad view of the cultural heritage in Ghent. Moreover, neighbors will also be able to participate by adding personal stories to enrich the shared cultural heritage of Ghent.
  • This way, we aim to increase the dialogue between citizens of different backgrounds, enhancing social cohesion.

Role of Ghent University

Ghent University participates from two perspectives. Research group UGent-MICT is responsible for the work package user research, which entails the development of urban interaction design frameworks, defining design requirements, identifying behavioral patterns regarding cultural participation and social cohesion, co-designing the high-tech neighborhood experience, and finally, assessing the impact of the neighborhood intervention on social cohesion. Research group UGent-IDLab is responsible for the identification and formulation of value network configurations and business models as well as the technical design of the data queries, the development of a blueprint integration layer, ETL processes and open web API’s (WP5).

Dutch summary

Het Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) project de collectie van de Gentenaars tracht citizen-sourced cultureel erfgoed en de (gedigitaliseerde) collecties van de Gentse musea samen te brengen via een centraal open datasysteem. Daarenboven is het doel van dit project om zowel cultuurparticipatie als sociale cohesie op buurtniveau te bevorderen door te experimenteren met nieuwe publieke ‘derde plaatsen’. Meer specifiek zal worden geëxperimenteerd met een hoogtechnologische immersieve interface waarin cultureel erfgoed op een interactieve manier kan worden ervaren en verrijkt. Door cultureel erfgoed te verbinden met de wijk en door dit te verbinden met verhalen in de publieke ruimte tracht dit project nieuwe instrumenten te ontwikkelen die de verbinding tussen buurtbewoners kunnen versterken.

Dit project is gecoördineerd door Stad Gent. De andere projectpartners zijn Universiteit Gent, Design Museum Gent, District 09, Industriemuseum, Huis van Alijn, STAM, Chase, Inuits, FishEye, Meemoo, iDrops en Studio Dott. Het project loopt van 01/07/2020 tot 30/06/2023.

French summary

Le projet CoGhent (UIA) vise à connecter le patrimoine culturel issu des citoyens et les collections (digital) des musées de la ville de Gand à travers un système central et ouvert. En outre, l'objectif de ce projet est de améliorer la participation culturelle et la cohésion sociale (au niveau du quartier) en expérimentant de nouveaux «tiers-lieux» publics. Plus précisément, des expériences seront menées avec une interface immersive de haute technologie dans laquelle le patrimoine culturel peut être vécu et enrichi de manière interactive. En reliant le patrimoine culturel au quartier et en le reliant aux histoires de l'espace public, ce projet tente de développer de nouveaux instruments qui peuvent renforcer les liaisons entre les résidents locaux.

Ce projet est coordonné par la ville de Gand. Les autres partenaires du projet sont l'Université de Gand, Design Museum Gent, District 09, Industriemuseum, Huis van Alijn, STAM, Chase, Inuits, FishEye, Meemoo, iDrops et Studio Dott. Le projet se déroulera du 01/07/2020 au 30/06/2023.

Website

CoGhent         

Contact

Prof. Lieven De Marez
Department of Communication Sciences
Phone number: +32 9 264 68 85
E-mail