Culture shapes the ways in which people interact, connect, relate, know, create, imagine, and exist. Culture can be conceptualized as a technology, and leveraged as a tool for social transformation, community development and wellbeing, collective action, and the exercising of our individual and collective rights and agency. Historically, culture has been targeted and undermined as a means of subjugating, oppressing, erasing, and enacting violence on marginalized communities.
Digital technologies, including advanced digital tools such as extended reality, autonomous drones, and AI, are being used to both support and undermine cultural heritage. The absence of comprehensive digital governance mechanisms poses specific threats and challenges to the arts and culture sector, as well as artists, cultural practitioners, and heritage (tangible and intangible), especially in crises contexts.
The Safeguarding (Digital) Cultural Heritage in Crises [Safe(D) CHIC] aims to support communities with knowledge, tools, and relationships to both address technology-facilitated harms to and enable documentation, protection, and revitalization/restoration of cultural heritage in crises. Co-creative cultural and digital governance mechanisms, policies, and tools can support communities as they work to safeguard and protect their culture in increasingly complex and challenging contexts.
The current iteration of the project focuses on cultures that are being undermined and threatened by crises in West Asia (Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, and Syria), West Africa (Mali and Nigeria), Northeast Africa (Ethiopia and Sudan), and Indigenous, queer, and diasporic cultures in these contexts as well as in what is currently referred to as Canada and the United States.
Activities
A1. KNOW Safe(D) CHIC: Deepen understanding of how different technologies support and undermine cultural heritage in crises.
A1.1. Conduct mixed-methods of research, including arts-based research, community-participatory action research, strategic foresight, and interviews.
A1.2. Facilitate intergenerational, intercultural, and intersectoral knowledge sharing across different crises contexts, including best practices and methods.
A1.3. Expand understandings and conceptions of knowledge to include Indigenous knowledge systems and ways of knowing.
A2. CREATE Safe(D) CHIC: Facilitate and support the co-design, co-creation, and co-production of art, culture, heritage, and knowledge related to technology and culture in crises.
A3. BUILD Safe(D) CHIC: Support co-learning and engagement of artists, cultural practitioners, policymakers, and advocates on safeguarding cultural heritage.
A3.1. Develop and/or facilitate education, training, capacity development and/or skills-sharing opportunities.
A3.2. Translate research insights to actionable recommendations and inform meaningful cultural and technology policies and governance mechanisms.
Deliverables
D1. Co-create Safe(D) CHIC Library.
D2. Design and facilitation of strategic foresight workshops.
D3. Co-produce, publish, and share knowledge (research papers, journal articles, and creative. productions)on the relationship between technology and cultural heritage in crises contexts.
D4. Translate research insights into policy recommendations and strategies.
D5. Co-design and organize Digital4Culture workshop(s) and/or seminar(s).
D6. Co-design a tech(xistential)culture fellowship (pilot) programme to host artists and cultural practitioners at risk.
D7. Co-create, curate, and facilitate the production of mixed artistic mediums (including exhibits, zines, digital art, etc.).
D8. Co-create and convene Safe(D) CHIC Community of Practice.
D9. Nurture relationships and develop partnerships to mobilize resources and advance research on safeguarding cultural heritage in crises.
D10. Co-construct and steward the Digital4Culture UNU-EGOV Repository.
