Wiki Loves Collective Memories/CultureFLOW
What is CultureFLOW?
[edit]CultureFLOW is a novel method intended to encourage and facilitate public participation and artistic creation around themes related to cultural heritage. It was developed and tested during 2024-2025 in a cooperation setting between the Swiss GLAMhack in Lucerne and the first edition of the Hackatón BAM organized by the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP).
In order to promote the development of artistic projects based on Mesoamerican collections from Swiss museums among students of BUAP's School of Arts, students were encouraged to engage with Mesoamerican collections through an artistic research process. This methodology enabled participants to:
- reinterpret cultural heritage through contemporary creative practices;
- develop accessible artistic projects for audiences without physical access to collections;
- meaningfully engage with descendant communities.
Two projects resulting from the pilot implementation have been finalized and have been presented to the public. One of these cases resulted in a cooperation between the students' team and the Burgdorf castle museum.
Preparation / critical success factors
[edit]- Implementing the CultureFLOW methodology requires active engagement of organizers/facilitators with interested artists over a prolonged period of time; during the pilot phase in 2024-2025, a lot of volunteer time was invested in order to make this work. In the longer run, it may be easier to implement the method if these interactions between organizers and students are taking place in the context of regular university courses, with the possibility for students to gain credits while contributing to the projects. BUAP furthermore has the possibility to recognize important student contributions to the realization of the projects by means of “social service” assignments and to support the projects through in-kind contributions (material, equipment).
- The hackathon in Switzerland was used as an occasion to present the concepts for the artistic projects to a wider audience, while the hackathon in Puebla was used as an occasion to present the finished projects half a year later and to foster new project ideas. These project presentations in front of a wider audience acted as an important motivator for the students.
- In one case, a Swiss museum formulated a concrete “challenge” related to their collection, with the possibility to feed the resulting students’ project into one of their own participatory projects to enhance parts of their permanent exhibition. This led to a very productive cooperation between the students’ team and the museum.
- The first implementation of CultureFLOW at BUAP was used as an occasion to systematically reach out to ethnographic museums in Switzerland. In the second year, we reached out to a variety of museums in Europe and North America, systematically documenting whether they have an online catalogue and an open licensing policy. Feel free to use our database as a starting point to search for inputs for your own CultureFLOW pogramme. In addition, we strongly encourage you to reach out to heritage institutions in your own country or region.
Implementation Plan
[edit]A model implementation plan is provided below; it will need to be adapted / concretized in the light of the concrete implementation context.
| Phase | Description | Goals / Deliverables |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Initialization of the Programme |
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| Phase 2 | Onboarding of Participants and Access to Heritage Material |
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| Phase 3 | Project work before and/or during a cultural hackathon (or in a similar setting) |
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| Phase 4 | Realization of the Projects |
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| Phase 5 | Public Exhibition or Screening |
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| Phase 6 | Documentation |
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| Phase 7 | Reflection and Evaluation |
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Possible variation of the concept
[edit]The implementation plan at BUAP originally foresaw an additional preparation step where participants would carry out research on topics of their interest and contribute to Wikimedia projects. It became however quickly clear that this would have led to an excessive workload for the participants. We therefore dropped this step and are currently setting up a similar process in the context of a WikiClub where the focus is not on artistic creation, but on contributions to Wikimedia projects.