Presentation for Musems and the Web 2015 in Chicago looking at how place as a concept can impact museum engagement and digitised collections.

1. Beyond The Building:
Creating and supporting
communities based on place
Rebecca Hawcroft, PhD candidate, University of Canberra

2. Does place matter…
in the digital
space?
for
collections
?
for
museums?

3. What is place?
• A value attached to a
location
• Enacted through
events, walking,
interactions,
encounters
• Transient, ephemeral
Aram Bartholl

4. Place is…
memoryexperience
belonging
values
Identity / community

5. The Virtuous Circle
BY
UNDERSTANDING
The historic
environment,
people value it
BY VALUING it,
they will want to
care for it
BY CARING for it
they will help
people enjoy it
FROM ENJOYING
the historic
environment
comes a thirst to
understand
English Heritage (now Historic England)

6. Does place
matter in the
digital space..?
• New ways of interacting
with places
• Social networks no
longer dictated by
proximity
• Increased mobility
• Virtual worlds
• Global economics…

7. On Broadway: Daniel Goddemeyer, Moritz Stefaner, Dominikus Baur, and Lev
Manovich

8. On Broadway: Daniel Goddemeyer, Moritz Stefaner, Dominikus Baur, and Lev
Manovich

9. Flowing Data: Where People Run One million tweet map

10. Place in digital culture…
Place remains a key part of identity creation and
community building within digital culture .

11. Does place
matter for
museums..?
• Global audiences
• Increasing online
visitation
• Transient and
amorphous digital
communities

12. New York Times, August 7, 2014

13. The important
difference
between a road
and a street
Charles Marohn,
TEDx Talk,
September 2011
www.strongtowns.org

14. Metropolitan Museum of Art A road

15. • Road • Street
A streetBrooklyn Museum

16. Town square
Walker Art Center;
“…a communal
atmosphere where
participants felt
connected to their
values and interests.
”

17. DMA Friends
Strong community
identity centered
around visitation….

18. Portland Art
Museum
• #captureParklandi
a
• Museum at the
center of place
based networks

20. Strengthening
place
attachment is a
key strategy in
supporting the
collective identity
of a visiting
community
community

21. How can
collections
connect to
places..?
• Traditionally siloed
within central
repositories
• Interaction mediated
by curatorial and
conservation
restrictions

22. Digitized
collections
• Networked objects
• Open to hyper
complex
relationships

23. Collections
connect to many
places
• Links to the identities
of many communities
• Global and local
connections
• Participatory culture is
demanding more
access

24. Spatialised
searching
• Projects adding GIS
coordinates to
collection datasets
• Mapping of
collections
• Add tate art maps
and Ta papa

25. Aram Bartholl

26. Situated
archives
• Re-connecting
digitized archives
to locations
• Digital repatriation

27. Connecting
collections to
communities
• The WALL,
Museum of
Copenhagen
• Singapore
Memory project

29. connecting with place values creates
engaged communities
in the digital
space
for
collections
for
museums