Abstract
This paper discusses a 2024 study focused on infrastructure futures for digital cultural heritage. The project involved interviews, scenario-creation, workshops and surveys with cultural heritage experts and professionals, aiming to understand current priorities, concerns, and hopes by imagining future possibilities through speculative design. We learned that, to realise the potential for innovation in the GLAM sector, the nature of digital infrastructure must be understood as multiple, complex, unsettled, and in need of imaginative thinking. However, persistent issues in digital cultural heritage act as constraints to imagination, including sustainability challenges due to short-term funding, difficulties in sharing knowledge across diverse disciplinary and operational contexts, and the impact of power dynamics on the inclusivity and accessibility of infrastructures. In this paper, we focus on the importance of both a diversity of voices developing expertise about infrastructure futures, and the stability, space and time needed to imagine new, inclusive digital futures.
Presenters
Jen RossProfessor, Centre for Research in Digital Education, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom Cate Schofield
Student, PhD, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom Philippa Sheail
Melissa Terras
Professor, Design, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, City of, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Infrastructure, Scenarios, Digital Cultural Heritage, Speculative Design, Sustainability, Imagination
