Heritage Innovation Diary: Winging it with purpose – co-creation
1. A unique time for digital skills development in heritage
A great privilege of my work – running AI training and consultation sessions for cultural and heritage projects across the UK, such as Tate, RADA and Arts Council England – is being part of conversations at the very beginning of an organisation’s AI learning journey. This gives me a unique opportunity to hear a rich mixture of perspectives, concerns and ambitions from across the sectors. I also learn first-hand about the practical roadblocks teams face when developing technical confidence and finding safe avenues to explore AI.
I’m particularly passionate about this aspect of AI training. Increased digital literacy and confidence are exceptionally important for these sectors in shaping emerging technologies and advocating for their interests as new policies and working styles solidify. Incredibly significant AI conversations are already happening around us, and I believe our society will be better off if my colleagues in the culture and heritage sector can confidently represent themselves in these discussions.
However, this requires developing a wide range of skills throughout the sector. While I love running my own training programmes, it’s clear the heritage sector needs a solution (at minimal or no cost) that can be scaled up. This can’t be a static resource like a textbook, learning portal or series of videos; AI may be the most extreme example, but proficiency in any digital skill requires constantly refreshing knowledge from new resources.
New iterations and working practices in these fields evolve continuously – even if we could write a perfect AI or digital engagement strategy textbook today, it might quickly become obsolete without a way to apply its knowledge to emerging aspects of technology and societal change.
2. Partnering with the Arts Marketing Association
For these reasons, I was hugely excited in September 2023 when I was invited to collaborate with the Arts Marketing Association for its Heritage Innovation Fund project, which sought to develop new solutions to digital learning within the Heritage sector. From the very beginning, we envisioned that the project would follow a co-creation model. We worked with several different cohorts of professionals from the Heritage sector to help develop and sketch-out a new learning solution based on their own experiences and perspectives about what would most benefit the sector and be most practical.
3. Working in a co-creation model
Co-creation is deliberately intended to be an adaptive and iterative process, and I particularly liked that it’s inherently democratic and empowering for the participants. Every member of the cohort is invited to help shape every aspect of the process, including how we structure our meetings, the content of our sessions, the ideas we choose to focus on, and anything else which becomes relevant for the project. The ambition is to genuinely empower the cohort so we are working with them as peers, and we are always prepared to throw out any ideas on the table or amend them depending on the thoughts we receive during and between the sessions.
It’s worth underlining the point that we genuinely changed our primary idea and concept multiple times throughout the process, based on the evolving discussions and contributions from the cohort. At the time, it could feel initially destabilising to dispatch with an idea we’d previously been excited about. But as the project continued we also regularly re-affirmed our belief in trusting the process and that new conceptions would begin to emerge from the collaborative approach.
As a professional facilitator, the co-creation process is quite invigorating; I’m used to structuring a session in such a way that every 5 minute block is generally accounted for, and that I’m fully confident in shaping a workshop which I’ve planned in advance to cover certain topics and bring in particular learning exercises. For this project, though, we quickly realised that too much preparation could actually become antithetical to the democratic and responsive nature of the creation sessions, and we began to experiment with a looser and more flexible approach which we soon realised could be really effective for generating more ideas, discussion, and ideally increasing the agency of all our cohort members.
4. Responsively widening our focus
As the process took off in earnest, it became apparent that the learning needs of the sector were extensive. We used AI training to underpin this test phase but AMA had also considered other topics including EDI and Essentials of Marketing. The topic of the training was much less important than testing how AI could be used to upskill the sector at scale. With our cohorts, we began to unpack and explore concepts which became the central focus of the project: the desire for continual co-learning, better sharing of innovations among colleagues, processes enabling good ideas to travel quickly between organisations, and improved connectivity within the sector – particularly following the rise of hybrid and remote working post-Covid.
From my perspective, there were numerous mini ‘breakthrough’ moments, especially when we critically examined other digital collaboration projects and questioned how they could better address the needs we’d identified in the culture sector. Wikipedia became a particularly interesting subject of discussion, representing an ever-evolving information resource that encouraged frequent collaboration and knowledge-sharing – aspects we knew we wanted to incorporate into our own project.
I’d been pondering Wikipedia recently, especially after attending a talk by Lucy Crompton-Reid, the Chief Executive of Wikimedia UK, at the British Library’s Press Play event. I found myself wondering what Wikipedia might look like if it were created in 2024 instead of 2001, with recent AI developments integrated into its core operations. Taking this further, we considered how it might function if it had been designed specifically for the heritage sector. What features would ensure it was high-quality, reliable, self-updating and fostered a genuine community of contributors? These ideas began to percolate, and we sensed we were onto something new.
5. Discovering Goose
After much iteration, discussion and redesigning, we’ve arrived at a project we’re now excited to champion. Currently called Goose, it’s a co-learning and knowledge sharing platform that addresses real, front-line challenges in the heritage sector. It’s being built on proven principles of digital community collaboration, interwoven with reliable resources and the ability to scale up or down, offering tangible value at every level of size.
Goose functions broadly like a chat assistant, but with a range of static and evolving resources built atop current AI systems to maximise its value for the heritage sector. It accesses libraries of verified high-quality articles to shape its foundational advice, an evolving collection of user ‘field reports’ highlighting new experiences and practices, and a personal layer tailoring information to each user’s learning style, professional environment and technical proficiency.
6. A tool to share existing value
While AI enables some of Goose’s most dynamic features – such as intelligently recording and extrapolating individual user experiences to address challenges faced by others – it’s not simply an ‘AI tool’. Rather, it’s a new way of organising an existing thriving and innovative Heritage community, enabling more effective sharing and acceleration of the value this community is already producing through individual learning and development.
By encouraging each user to act as their own R&D department (for new tools, ideas, strategies and experiments), feeding into a centralised resource where insights can be discovered and extrapolated for the benefit of all, I believe Goose could become a powerhouse for advancing skills sharing and enhancing connectivity among its users.
7. Moving forwards
I’m optimistic about Goose’s continued development. Each element has been crafted to meet a specific need identified in the Heritage sector, aiming to provide meaningful value to all who engage with it.
While Goose will undoubtedly evolve with further testing and development, its core principle will remain: listen when people tell you what they really need. From everything I’ve seen in this project, and with the continued input from our incredible cohorts, I’m confident that we’re following that principle with all our combined commitment.
Except where noted and excluding company and organisation logos this work is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) Licence
Please attribute as: "Heritage Innovation Diary: Winging it with purpose – co-creation (2024) by Jocelyn (Jo) Burnham supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 4.0
