Virtual reality Archives - Assembly of European Regions

The objective: extraordinary experiences via digital  

We want to explore new ways to disseminate European world heritage through innovative digital technology. Our goal is to create extraordinary experiences for the public, and to solve key challenges for the participating World Heritage Sites. 

Placed-based approaches, exchanges & explorations

With central issues in the dissemination work as a starting point, we will create workshops with broad interdisciplinary and European participation tailored to each world heritage site. The workshops will work on how to meet the challenges the individual place has with the combination of creative eagerness and new technology. We will follow up with experiments and exploration of some of the suggestions. 

What kind of “innovative digital technology”?

With innovative technology, we mean virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality and gamification, without this being a limit.

The choice of technology must be guided by what is best suited to solving the challenges we face in each case.  New technologies require new understanding of the possibilities these mediums offer:

How to tell good stories in a medium that demands and interactive user?
How to best adapt the dramaturgy of a story to make it efficient and well-communicating?

To learn more about interplay between digital environments, stories and the user we are looking for partners who are keen to experiment and take part in prototyping and doing workshops on this. 

A sustainable network on cultural heritage and digital technology

We will make sure that the ongoing progress and results from the project is widely spread. Also building a wide network of world heritage sites and cultural institutions in Europe interested in innovative technology in their work with dissemination. 
Since this is a long-term work that requires both time, knowledge, experience and resources, we will make a plan for further joint work after this short (18 months, starting January 2021) project.  

If this is you:

We are looking for a partner who:

is or includes a Unesco World Heritage site 
faces challenges at its World Heritage site that are linked to accessibility and to sustainability (resulting from wear & tear)
is concerned with dissemination to the public and working with pedagogic challenges. 
is curious about interpretation and the opportunities technology can provide to engage the audience.

Expectations & engagement

Interested parties are asked to consider the following questions:

  What do you hope this project will bring to your organization
How do you see it affecting the work that you do and communicate? 
What insights, skills and/or other resources can you to contribute with to the project?

Partners

As of today – we are the following two partners:  

Region Gävleborg with the World Heritage Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland. The Gävleborg region will have close cooperation with the County Museum in Gävleborg, during this project. Region Gävleborg’s cultural department has been working with VR and the world heritage since 2016.

https://www.regiongavleborg.se/kultur/verksamhet/crossmedia/vr/ 
https://vimeo.com/372556963 

Tied to Region Gävleborg is also a phd project researching dramaturgy for participatory experiences such as VR. The phd project is conducted at Stockholm University of the Arts (Uniarts). 

Inland county municipality with the World Heritage Mining Town of Røros and the Cirkumference. Hedmark County Council will work closely with the World Heritage Coordinator, Anno Museum, VRINN business cluster, Hamar Game Collective and Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences along the way.  

Both partners have experience with, among other things, the use of VR (virtual reality), and among the partners there is also extensive experience with VR / AR / XR and gamification. 

Practicalities

Interested parties are asked to respond to this call for partners by the 15th of February. 

The first draft of the application will be ready by the 15th of March, the deadline for the application is on the 14th of May.

The call is published on the European Commission’s Single Electronic Data Interchange Area (SEDIA)

Contact 

For questions or to express interest please contact as soon as possible: 

Amund H. Steinbakken 
Innlandet county municipality 
Adviser – Culture, art and business 
+47 41613833 
[email protected] 

Anna-Karin Ferm
World Heritage & Cultural Developer 
+46 26 650 216
+46 73 275 37 66 
[email protected] 
www.regiongavleborg.se/halsingegardar 

Follow AER!

At AER Summer Academy in Maramures, Ms Sofie Notstrand of Region Gävleborg (SE) will deliver a workshop entitled “Communicating the essence of a heritage site” on virtual reality and storytelling techniques to visualise, communicate and bring out the narrative potential of a place. The workshop will showcase ways to explore different methodologies to describe a location in a suggestive way. Indeed, the Region of Gävleborg has worked in the last years to develop projects that highlight what the region can do to promote conservation, digitisation, infrastructure, research, and skills development.

One of the main projects is The Virtual Heritage project, which was initiated by the world heritage site “The Decorated Farm Houses of Hälsingland” within the framework of the European year of cultural heritage 2018. Ms Notstrand has been working on it, creating a room designed for a VR (virtual reality) exhibition of the Cultural World Heritage with the goal of developing a VR experience in a museum that allows visitors to get access without guidance from the staff on the spot. This has meant adapting the room in an unique way to make it enjoyable and accessible during the users’ tour.

Methodology

During the workshop, Ms Notstrand will give practical examples to make stories come alive; she will show how to:

focus on the different senses and aspects of a location;
present it through a storytelling approach;
involve a wider range of visitors.

The participants are asked to take active part of the exercises and to keep an open mind in order to become fully involved in the workshop.

Take-away

This workshop will give the participants a practical experience of how to:

exploit a narrative in different ways;
make heritage accessible to a wider range of people;
create an embodied understanding of an object or place narrative potential.

Registrations open!

If you want to participate in this workshop and in many others, just check the Summer Academy practical information and then fill in the registration form available at the AER event page for the 2018 Summer Academy in Maramures (RO).

Check every detail of the event by clicking on the link below!

2018 AER Summer Academy in Maramures

Credits Photo: Jeshoots.com on UnsplashFollow AER!

Cultural heritage: Join Gävleborg for a Creative Europe project!