Digital Heritage Hub Search

On 12 September 2024 over 70 heritage professionals, academics, technologists and open knowledge advocates from across the UK were brought together at a Leadership Roundtable event at Bishopsgate Institute in London to discuss Changes and Challenges in Heritage and Open Knowledge. Hosted by the Arts Marketing Association (AMA) and supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund (The Heritage Fund), the key discussions and recommendations from this event, including reflections from speakers, panellists and participants are shared in this report.

The Heritage Innovation Fund is supporting 17 organisations to make the sector more sustainable, inclusive, and fit for the future. One of the organisations is the Arts Marketing Association.  Jocelyn Burnham, AI For Culture, discusses her journey through the project and the development of a community-driven knowledge solution fuelled by a co-creation approach.

The Digital Skills for Heritage’s end of programme evaluation report reveals thousands of people and organisations took part in and benefited from The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s investment. The full report, which includes recommendations for the future, can be downloaded below and is available in English and Welsh. You can also watch a video recording of the Digital Skills for Heritage Initiative Evaluation webinar briefing that took place on 8 March 2024.

To accompany the publication of the report: Evaluation of the Digital Skills for Heritage initiative, a webinar was hosted by The National Lottery Heritage Fund on 8 March 2024. The speakers included Tom Keyte, Co-founder and Senior Consultant at inFocus and co-author of this report, and Josie Fraser, Head of Digital Policy at The National Lottery Heritage Fund. This webinar discussed the impact and legacy of the Digital Skills for Heritage initiative including recommendations for the future.

In 2022-23, 17 heritage organisations took part in the Digital Volunteering programme that was funded as part of the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Digital Skills for Heritage initiative. Some of these organisations used Google and Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp) advertising to recruit volunteers to work remotely on digital projects. This ‘how to’ guide shares the process, learning and challenges of using Google and Meta Ads to recruit volunteers.

LGBT Foundation is a national charity delivering advice, support and information services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) communities. This project recruited volunteers to use online tools to preserve the oral histories of LGBT activists in Greater Manchester. Volunteers were trained in oral history techniques and how to use tools such as Zoom to conduct, record and transcribe interviews.

The #CrowdCymru digital archives volunteer project was jointly run by Gwent Archives, Glamorgan Archives and Cardiff University & Special Collections. Using a newly created bi-lingual online platform developed by the National Library of Wales, #CrowdCymru invited volunteers to tag, index and transcribe documents to make them more accessible for researchers.  Although the majority of the remote volunteers came from Wales, there were also sign-ups from USA, Canada, Australia and South Korea.

Ripon Cathedral recruited five key volunteer roles — photography, visitor experience, heritage collections, website and social media — to help create digital content to promote and increase audience engagement with the cathedral. By creating different roles the project was able to engage with new and existing volunteers to participate in the interpretation of the site, with the aim of making more accessible content for visitors.

The East Riding Blockdown project invited 11-16 year olds based in the East Riding of Yorkshire to contribute their thoughts and memories of life during lockdown in the Covid-19 pandemic using the Minecraft videogame. The purpose of the project was to record contemporary responses to a historically significant period and preserve the contributions as digital image files whilst introducing a new audience to the East Riding Archives.

Wikimedia UK is the UK charity for the global Wikimedia movement. Its vision is of a more tolerant, informed and democratic society; committed to open knowledge and free access, not just in the UK but on a global scale. In this resource, Wikimedia UK provides a ‘how to guide’ on Editathons — its tried and tested method of teaching people to edit Wikipedia and upload images to Wikimedia Commons. 

The National Lottery Heritage Fund commissioned Dr Mathilde Pavis to produce a snapshot of what innovation in Artificial Intelligence (AI) looks like across the UK heritage sector. This guide can help you decide whether to, how and when to use AI within your heritage organisation.

To accompany the release of the Artificial Intelligence: a digital heritage leadership briefing, a webinar was hosted by The National Lottery Heritage Fund on 16 November 2023. The speakers included Dr Mathilde Pavis, the author of this briefing and an expert in intellectual property law, ethics and new technologies, and Josie Fraser, Head of Digital Policy at The National Lottery Heritage Fund. This webinar discussed Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the context of the UK heritage sector – the use of AI and its impact on the sector.

It’s estimated that about 24% of the UK population has a disability and the prevalence of disability rises with age. In this Reflect, Share, Inspire online session, Ellen Cole and Maisie Burn talk to Jane Cordell and share their knowledge and experiences of creating accessible digital content. They provide advice on the ways in which you can make your digital activities more accessible which in turn will help your heritage organisation reach more people.

The Digital Skills for Heritage’s Connected Heritage programme was set up to explore how digital tools can help solve some of the challenges organisations experience when collaborating with each other. In this Reflect, Share, Inspire breakout session recording, John Coburn gives an overview of the programme and is joined by Lucy Hinnie from Wikimedia and Cesare Cuzzola from the Queer Heritage and Collections Network, who share their learning and experience of the programme.

The Digital Heritage Lab took place between April 2020 and June 2021 and as well as providing programme of free online training events it also gave 60 heritage organisations the opportunity to develop their digital potential with the support of a digital skills mentor. In this Reflect, Share, Inspire session Ed Archer from the Lanark and District Archaeological Society (LADAS) and Laura Drysdale from The Restoration Trust are reunited with their respective Digital Skills Mentors Alex Wilson and Janet Alderman.

AI or Artificial intelligence is undisputedly the digital trend of 2023 but what is AI and what impact will it have on the heritage sector in the coming years? In this Reflect, Share, Inspire online session, Jo Burnham explains what AI is and the ways in which it can help support day to day tasks within your heritage organisation.

Navigating copyright and open licensing laws is challenging for many heritage organisations. In this Reflect, Share, Inspire session Naomi Korn and Sean Waterman, from Naomi Korn Associates, draw upon resources on the Digital Heritage Hub to recap on copyright and open licensing to help you understand when you need to ask permission to use and share content you do not own the rights to. This includes consideration of the Creative Commons license required as part of National Lottery Heritage Fund grants.

The Digital Skills for Heritage digital volunteering programme was created following feedback from the Digital Attitudes and Skills for Heritage (DASH) survey, which identified the need for the heritage sector to create new types of volunteering opportunities that make use of digital skills. In this Reflect, Share, Inspire panel session five of the 17 heritage organisations that took part in this programme discuss their digital volunteering journeys.

Achieving environmental sustainability can seem like a huge challenge for your heritage organisation. In this Reflect, Share, Inspire online session, James Coleman from Supercool explores how small changes to the way you undertake your digital activities can make a big difference to the environment. This session will help you identify how your digital activity can impact your organisation’s carbon footprint and suggest ways of mitigating that.

In this Reflect, Share, Inspire ‘workshop style’ breakout session, Dr Amelia Knowlson and Dr Ruth Daly from the University of Leeds explore the importance of embedding a digital strategy within your heritage organisation to help you support and achieve your organisational goals. Drawing upon resources from the Digital Heritage Hub’s Digital Leadership and Digital Planning themes, they guide delegates through a series of tasks to help you to start thinking about how to embed digital within your organisation.