Citizen Curation Methods for Interpretation and Reflection on Cultural Heritage: Insights from SPICE

Abstract

Developed in the context of the Horizon 2020 project SPICE, this paper explores methods and tools for citizen curation, with a focus on designing activities that can effectively elicit and motivate citizens to produce meaningful interpretations and reflections on cultural heritage. Additionally, the paper aims to evaluate the potential of such methods and activities in supporting the analysis and reflection processes within the SPICE Interpretation-Reflection loop (IRL). We explore a selection of narrative-based methods for citizen curation to propose an approach for eliciting meaningful stories related to cultural heritage artifacts from citizens. The proposed approach is subsequently applied in a digital co-design workshop, conducted with members of the SPICE consortium, including the five SPICE museum partners. The collected story contributions are thereafter analysed using qualitative methods and tools adapted from narrative inquiry and the study of narrative identity. The findings provide valuable insights into the potential of narrative-based approaches for citizen engagement in the cultural heritage domain and support the development of the SPICE digital tools for promoting reflection, i.e. sentiment analysis, personalization, recommendation systems, and user- and community modeling tools. In SPICE, such tools play a central role in enabling citizens to create representations of themselves, while also cultivating an understanding and appreciation of similarities and differences across citizen groups. In this direction, the paper offers ideas and insights for designing engaging participatory approaches to elicit citizen input. At the same time, it aims to support the development of digital systems and tools in the cultural heritage domain, with the goal of fostering more inclusive and dynamic representations of citizens and citizen groups.