Rachel Charlotte Smith and Ole Sejer Iversen, Centre for Participatory IT (PIT), Aarhus University, Denmark: Emerging Spaces for Participant Innovation in Museums Nodem, CultureKick Research Seminar: Collaboration, partnership and participation – exploring methods for innovations in museums and cultural institutions http://www.nodem.org/nodem-actions/culture-kick/activities/research-seminar-oslo-2-2013/

3. NODEM

4. Content:
1. INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND
2. METHODOLOGY, WORKFLOW and IMPLEMENTATION
3. ANALYSIS
4. SUMMARY

5. Digital Natives: Designing Heritage
Centre for Participatory IT, Aarhus University, Denmark

6. Designing Heritage for a Digital Culture
The Challenge: Contemporary museums are under pressure in terms of attracting and engaging audiences in
new ways. They are exploring how digital technologies and media can capture their audiences, especially the
younger part of the population, in issues of culture and heritage. In doing so, these institutions must relate
themselves – not just to the technologies – but to peoples everyday ‘digital cultures’, in order to understand
and create ways of involving audiences as co-creators of heritage issues and experiences.
‘Digital Natives’ is an interactive exhibition project exploring futures and innovations of cultural
communication. The project involved collaboration between a group of teenagers, anthropologists and
interaction designers. It was based on a design-anthropological approach interweaving understandings of
cultural heritage and contemporary digital cultures through the design process as well as the final exhibition
with the aim of creating participatory dialogical spaces and connections between museum space, exhibition
and audiences.
Rachel Charlotte Smith is an anthropologist and PhD scholar in anthropology and interaction design at the
Centre for Participatory IT, Aarhus University, Denmark. She studies how digital technologies can provide new
ways of engaging audiences in cultural heritage communication, within the field of design anthropology.
Ole Sejer Iversen is a Professor in child-computer interaction at the Centre for Participatory IT, Aarhus
University. His research focuses on theory and practices of designing engaging interactive technologies for and
with children, in the fields of Scandinavian Participatory Design and interaction design.

7. Digital Natives Project
Dialogic Participatory Design approach
• Contemporary heritage
• Everyday digital cultures
• Emerging digital heritage
Participatory process
• 7 ‘digital natives’ (16-19y)
• 11 interaction designers
• 2 anthropologists
• Partners: CAVI, Alexandra Institute,
Moesgård Museum, Innovation Lab,
Kunsthal Aarhus
Engaging exhibition
• 5 interactive installations
• public engagement in art museum
• special events, museum community, schools
Project
• EU research funding
• Jan 2010 – Jan 2011

8. Cultural Cultural Audience People’s
(heritage) representation experiences everyday
institutions practices

9. Digital Natives dogma
1.The audience have a central role in shaping content and experiences in the exhibition.
2. The museum experience is addresses as a a socially engaging experience.
3. Communication should be dialogical, but not necessarily true.
4. The exhibition is processual and constantly changing.
5. The exhibition takes point of departure in young peoples everyday experiences
6. The project creates new layers and experiences between the exhibition and the city of
Aarhus.
7. Objects/artefacts in the exhibition should be touchable and used as props for action.
8. The central installations depend upon digital and interactive technologies.

10. DIGITAL NATIVES
Points of departure
Cultural/
Digital Natives
Experiential/
Audiences
Technological/
Designers

11. Vision-based Design
1 2 3 4 5 6
The future Match- Scenarios Mock-ups Prototypes Exhibition
museum making
Questions
• What does future cultural heritage communication look like?
• How do we create exhibitions that can engage young people?
• How do we use new interactive technologies for doing this?

12. Exploring the Natives
Match-making:
natives + designers
• Who are the digital natives?
• What does their everyday look like and how do they understand their worlds?
• How do the youngsters use and relate to the digital technologies?

13. Matchmaking:
teenagers & designers
Soundscapes
Troels
Google My Head The Natives
Troels/Johan
Anne/Metha
P1
P1
DUL
P2 Ole, Christian P1
Talkaoke
Read Me
Anne
CAVI ALEXANDRA
Morten/Storm Liselott, Claus
Karsten,Jens,
Jesper
P1
P1 P2 P2
Portraits of ’00 Catwalk Yourself
Lil/Ida Martin

14. Working in Dialogue

15. Lil’s Digital Poster
DIGITAL NATIVES
FOCUS
- Emerging digital practices
- Exploring everyday communication
- Experimenting with forms of representation
PROCESS
- 7 ‘natives’ (16-19y)
- 10 interaction designers
- 2 anthropologists

16. Digital Sea
DIGITAL NATIVES
PROCESS

17. Google My Head
DIGITAL NATIVES

18. Portraits
DIGITAL NATIVES
PROCESS

19. DJ Station
DIGITAL NATIVES
FOCUS
- Emerging digital practices
- Exploring everyday communication
- Experimenting with forms of representation
PROCESS
- 7 ‘natives’ (16-19y)
- 10 interaction designers
- 2 anthropologists

20. The Digital (Natives) Exhibition
What happened inside the exhibition …
Fragmented narratives and emergent stories – multiple perspectives came alive
No separation between exhibition content and technologies – digital materials
No separation between process and exhibition – dialogue continues in the exhibition
Audiences as co-creators of experiences – connecting to everyday practices
Multiple layers of subjective (individual/social) engagement – empowering audiences
Oscillations between digital, material and virtual – producing new heritage

21. Rethinking the museum through digital technology
The benefits of digital technologies
…is their large potential to connect audiences’ everyday lives and with heritage matters in
museums, motivating audiences to actively participate in exhibitions.
Use of digital technology, highlighting people’s everyday practices, entails a shift from
communicating cultural heritage, to designing platforms for collective action and dialogue.
Digital technologies are characterised by dialogic forms of communication, which democratizes the
museum space, and can create new engaging experiences.
The challenge for museums
…is to rethink ways of curating and collaborating in interdisciplinary fields (of e.g.
design, anthropology, people, artists), and with audiences in exhibition development and in
museum spaces, to find ways of creating new forms of heritage.
This dialogic work process is highly unpredictable and demands many resources. It can be carried
out as small/large-scale experiments in which museum organisations are willing to run the risk, of
both failure and innovation in digital cultural heritage.

22. Challenges of the ‘digital’
How do emerging technologies effect and transform our
conceptualization of cultural heritage, the museum and the
audience?
How do we engage audiences in co-creating experiences and
constructions of cultural heritage in and through technologies in
meaningful ways?