CoGhent

Urban new media
Social cohesion
Cultural participation

What if the museum came to your neighborhood square? What if this looked like a futuristic box full of screens, buttons, sensors, etc. that you could interact and play around with? What if this brought together museum collections and local stories? Would that bring the neighborhood closer together? Would that provide an inspiring space to come together, to talk, learn and share?

To leverage the full potential of cultural heritage in a digital way, this project aims to open cultural data, making it usable, useful, and used.

To create this open knowledge, CoGhent establishes the necessary data architecture and a city-broad data management plan. We also conduct user-research to gain insight into cultural needs, thresholds, and opportunities regarding digitized cultural heritage to figure out which data to open and how to bring it all together. Additionally, tools are developed to capture citizen stories and insights, enriching our city-broad digital cultural heritage. Finally, to reach and engage our target audience, CoGhent deploys a high-tech mobile experience room that will traverse three neighborhoods. Within this space, the local citizen can enjoy a broad view of the cultural heritage in Ghent. Moreover, visitors can also choose to participate by adding personal stories to enrich the shared cultural heritage of Ghent.

In sum, we make use of linked data to foster cultural diversity and raise its visibility. This way, we increase the dialogue between citizens of diverse backgrounds, enhancing social cohesion.

We at imec-mict-UGent study and shape these interfaces together with the different neighbourhood residents. We try to discover what people need, translate these insights in design choices and test if the outcomes are valuable.

Partners: City of Ghent, District09, Fisheye, Studio Dott, Inuits, AGB Art and Design; AGB Heritage, imec-IDLab-UGent, meemoo, iDrops & Chase

Project duration: 2021-2023

Contact: Bastiaan Baccarne